A vampire with a soul, a witch, a werewolf, a vampiric bad boy, some boss evils from hell dimensions, three wayward nerds, a slayer of vampires and demons, and a librarian – put them together, and you have the makings for a few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We’ve been watching the entire series for a few months. We usually watch one episode at bedtime before an Iron Chef chaser.
Our most recent season of Buffy ended with Buffy sacrificing herself to save her sister Dawn (and the rest of the world) from the collapse of the walls that separate parallel dimensions that would have allowed a hell god, Glorificus aka Glory, from returning to her own dimension to rule over it. Glory was in our dimension accompanied by a small band of obsequious minions whom she constantly berates. They, in return, fawn over her as only toadies can. They address her with random concatenations of superlatives and honorific’s such as, “Your Most Radiantly Scrumptious Magnificence.” Truth be told, it was their pattern of effusive praise that led me years ago to refer to Trump with similar appellations – “His Most Hideous Demented Orangeness” and the like.
Anyway, Buffy sacrifices herself and Glory gets trapped in this dimension; she gets killed in a way that only maleficent gods can be extirpated. In the beginning of the subsequent season, 147 days after Buffy’s death, her friends perform a Wiccan resurrection ritual that brings her back. She returns to this world having clawed her way out of her coffin and grave. She is confused and withdrawn. Her friends assume that they have brought her back from some Hell Dimension (there are many parallel worlds including some dimensions that have no shrimp and others that have nothing but shrimp) where she may have spent several eternities – time running differently in different parallel worlds. Buffy eventually finds her younger sister Dawn and asks, “Is this Hell?” I found that scene profound because hers is a legitimate question. Dawn assures Buffy that she is home and not Hell.
I think that the true answer to Buffy’s question is more ambiguous. This is definitely home, and it might also be Hell. In any case, it isn’t Heaven. If you are an aboriginal person in Amazonia, and the white people are destroying the jungle which has been sustaining your people for thousands of years, it probably looks like Hell. If you are an agrarian Ukranian earning a living from your work in fertile fields, it probably looks and feels like home – until Russian war machines crush your crops leaving ruts in their wake. Then it may well appear to be Hell.
I think that we have the means to make this world Heaven or Hell, and most of the time we do both albeit rather badly. Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot captures much of this ambiguity of human nature and its struggle with itself and with the tiny world around it.