"Mostly I was being extremely literal"I understood that and you're right humanity is a better choice than goodness, having a soul was never the exact equivalent of being good in the verse.
What I was pointing at is that the concept of goodness, which is an interior quality, makes the idea of forcing it onto somebody something impossible: you can force laws, behaviours etc on someone. Litteraly it's what happened to Angel with his curse but from a philosphical POV it's totally flawed. It works in the limits of the show because we're in the domain of myth and because the authors wisely put the focus on the consequences : the fight between good and bad in all of us. The idea works better for Spike because he wanted the soul, you can read it as a metaphor for an interior journey towards goodness and humanity. But still even in his case, there's a little something with this imagery that'll always feel like a cheap deus ex machina. Perhaps it's because the soul quest was treated in such a light manner.
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What I was pointing at is that the concept of goodness, which is an interior quality, makes the idea of forcing it onto somebody something impossible: you can force laws, behaviours etc on someone. Litteraly it's what happened to Angel with his curse but from a philosphical POV it's totally flawed. It works in the limits of the show because we're in the domain of myth and because the authors wisely put the focus on the consequences : the fight between good and bad in all of us. The idea works better for Spike because he wanted the soul, you can read it as a metaphor for an interior journey towards goodness and humanity. But still even in his case, there's a little something with this imagery that'll always feel like a cheap deus ex machina. Perhaps it's because the soul quest was treated in such a light manner.