FINAL POST: SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS 

                                                         "Dean...What Have I Become?" 

Cass is usually pretty steadfast in his resolve to protect Team Free Will and humanity. He is a powerful archangel that is known for even coming back from the dead. There was not one time that Dean prayed to him that Cass did not answer: even when in midbattle in heaven. However, when Cass assimilates the Leviathan, taking the place of God, he does experience shame. To win an impasse with his rival for the control of Heaven, Archangel Rafael, Cass opens the door to purgatory. Such plane is home to the Leviathans, primordial creatures of extreme power. Creatures so dangerous that God himself had to combat them and bind them in Purgatory. When assimilating all the souls in purgatory to increase his power, Cass also (unknowingly) assimilates the Leviathan. He grows in power exponentially and annihilates Rafael. However, the Leviathan inside him corrupted his character. He becomes arrogant and goes on a crusade to fix things as the new God. He becomes so overwhelmed that he slaughters several humans in his seeking of righteousness. This brings Cass great shame.

 

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that is brought upon by failure to fulfil personally important rules and goals. It happens in a context of extreme personal importance. Shame makes one believe that one is totally flowed and unworthy of redemption. As an angel, Cass was created to protect souls. He was charged by God himself to keep guard of humans, all humans, even the bad ones. Cass betrays his personal standard of being a guardian angel: the most intrinsic definition of his self-image. Cass….The one who previously challenged the archangel Michael to prevent the Apocalypse; the one who cared about the life of every single human such that he was not willing to sacrifice any in the final battle (even if it would bring Paradise to earth in the end); the one who opened the door to purgatory (something unimaginable, even to Michael) to win a war that would prevent Rafael from reinstating the Apocalypse. The one who killed the humans he was supposed to protect, the reason why he opened the door in first place. Cass was a total failure. Inherently.

 

The appraisal that brought up shame was that this failure was against the very core of his self-image and purpose as angel. He was not guilty. Guilt comes from a failure with appraisal focus on behavior. While his behavior of slaughtering humas is quite reprimandable, his main appraisal lies in what he has become, rather than what he has done. In fact, he confides in Dean: “[He] can't believe what [he] [has] become;” rather than “I can't believe what I have done.” This shame is completely crimpling. Cass just becomes so depressed, his shame-withdraw is so great, he literally lays down and dies after Dean performs the ritual to expel the Leviathan from him. If one is familiar with Cass and the series, one can see how abnormal this is. Cass experienced guilt when he fell from heaven, as he questioned his choice of disobeying. But he never lost his resolve.  It is shocking to see the Champion of Heaven helpless.

 

 

Week 4: Understanding Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET)

 

Cognitive Evaluation Theory

 

 

    CET is one of the two paradigms contained in Self-Determination Theory, a model that explains internal motivation and its moderating factors. It discusses how eternal events can affect internal intrinsic motivation. CET focuses on relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Autonomy relates to the feeling that choices are made due to one’s own will and desires. Competence means one has the ability to accomplish a difficult goal. Finally, relatedness means one has people that support one’s endeavors and self. Having all three factors would lead to intrinsic motivation. On other hand, any negative effects on those three will lead to degeneration of motivation. For example, events that promote greater perceived competence will increase internal motivations; getting good grades in a challenging test will increase the motivation to take other tests. On other hand, getting a bad grade will do the opposite. The informational aspect of this theory is key, as it ascribes or dissociates internal causality and control to events.

 

Castiel and CET

 

    Cass has his goals influenced by CET. In a paradigm of intrinsic motivation, the behavior being performed is its own reward. This can be seen through the entire arc of Castiel. At first, the reward he receives is the reinforcement of his self-image as the vessel of heaven. His identity's integrity is the intrinsic motivation for all his actions. Later, the intrinsic motivation becomes the very opposite: he makes choices just because he can. Now, as the fallen angel, as the guardian angel of Team Free Will, every choice he makes is a testament to the reality of his position (challenging the determinism of Heaven); every choice he makes proves that he is right, just because he made it.

    Notably, Cass persists in maintaining his resolve of exercising his independence, despite all other angels accusing him of being insane, of being a fallen one, like Lucifer. To show the tremendous quintessence of this, Cass maintains his independent position even when his friend, Uriel, exercises his own perverted version of free will and murders angels. Instead of practicing free will for a noble and empowering cause, instead of continuing to serve others as a proper angel should, Uriel tries to amass his own army. He kills those that do not bow to him. Cass confronts him; not to protect Dean (this time), not to advance his own agenda, but because the sanctity of Free Will must be respected.

 

Detractions

    Even the champion of team Free Will can falter at times. Cass experiences lack of intrinsic motivation when he lacks relatedness, competence, and autonomy.

    Cass severs his relatedness with Dean when he becomes a demon. Dean takes in the Mark of Cain. The mark gives him tremendous power, more than enough to destroy the principal knight of hell, Abaddon. Gradually, the mark takes over Dean’s psyche and he develops an implacable blood lust. He starts with getting into a lot of fights, then he murders enemies that wanted to kill him. Finally, he just indiscriminately seeks out and murders his enemies. This blood lust changes Dean and costs him his friendship with Cass. More than that, he becomes a literal Demon. This arc culminates with a fight between Demon Dean and Cass. Dean is so roided out on the Mark that he is able to beat Cass, an archangel. Cass looks broken, withing as much as without, and he tells Dean to kill him. He rather die than be stuck in eternity watching his best friend be a demon and be corrupted by the mark. Seeing Cass at this point is the perfect illustration for lack of intrinsic motivation, for the lack of all motivation.

 

    Cass is very powerful, but when he loses his powers, he becomes so unmotivated that he turns into a hippie. In an alternative timeline, Cass is not able to prevent the Apocalypse. Due to his failure, Satan rules the world and Heaven is dead. Because his power comes from Heaven, Cass loses the bulk of his power. Distraught and without any motivation, he hides in a hippie colony of survivors. He uses his limited powers to become a sort of spiritual leader and guru to the few humans left. This is not a continuation of his mission. He is actually using his wisdom to get followers to have orgies with him…..and he is high on so many drugs all day. The perfect picture of an unhinged archangel who lacks motivation due to his failures.

    Ironically, even the angel of autonomy can find himself bound. When he assimilates the souls of purgatory in order to grow in power, Cass also incorporates the Leviathans into himself. They are so formidably powerful that they overcome Castiel’s will and begin to control him. They influence his personality at first and make him a megalomaniac. But later, they physically and mentally control him, to the point of possession by Leviathan. He is so broken, he loses all motivation and his friends have to come to his rescue (they open the door to purgatory and expel Leviathan from him). This is a major contrast as it is a role reversal: Cass is the one who helps and solves problems, he is not the one who gets helped.

 The Angel of Free Will is also the angel of intrinsic motivation. Cass draws his power from Heaven, but mostly from his idea of Heaven. He draws his power from his relatedness with his friends and his sense of autonomy. 

 

  

              Week 8: Cognitive Attributions 

                   We were supposed to be their shepherds. 

                                                Cass being under the power of Heaven

When morphing from the Champion of Heaven to the Guardian Angel of Team Fee Will, Cass changes his attribution from external to internal. In fact, this change is what determines his fall from heaven. While as part of the garrison, he would assign the reason for things that happened (attribution) externally because he assumed that God, not him, controlled the causes of creation. He therefore had an attribution paradigm that caused him to believe that all was uncontrollable because the will of God is absolute. Finally, he was convinced that all controllability has high stability because causes are decrees from God. He saw himself as trapped and doomed. On other hand, after falling, he developed an internal locus of control with high controllability of events and quite low expected stability of scenarios. This is because he now attributed causes to his own free will, causing him to understand that stability is low (as it all depends on his effort and capability). Therefore, these psychological paradigms had divergent implications in Cass’s motivations, emotions, and behaviors.

 

When in bondage by the plans of the Archangels, Cass had very little agency. All causes are the will of God and are external to a created being such as himself. Moreover, he had low controllability, the capability of controlling the outcome of events. He was charged with being a vessel for the workings of heaven and could not decide what his life, and that of humans, would be; he is continuously compelled by Naomi (one of the leaders of Heaven) to stand against Dean, to his great distress. Finally, Cass has high stability for his attribution of causability; he interprets the cause of events to the immutable will of God. In this case, stability is absolute because it is the ability of God that drives destiny, not mutable luck, or effort.

 

Interestingly, Cass experiences a major vicissitude after he falls. Now, his locus of control is internal. As a paragon of Free Will, he believes that he is in charge of his own destiny. Moreover, he now develops high controllability because he believes that the outcome of events are solely due to his effort. Finally, he develops low stability as he realizes that life, not God, has a way of surprising him because of the interactions of the Free Will of others.

 

These ideas give precious insight into Cass’s personality. When individuals credit their success to ability (internal locus of control, highly stable, uncontrollable), they feel pride. Cass is extremely humble about all he has accomplished. At one point, he takes on the role of the king of heaven, after defeating the Archangel Rafael; yet, he never becomes boastful, he simply focuses on the next challenge. For the same reason, he is extremely shameful of his failure to protect the souls in purgatory (he instead uses them to power himself to the level of a god). On the same stroke, however, because his paradigm of attribution (effort) is internal, controllable, and unstable (after the fall), he develops extreme motivation. Ironically, the cause of his shame. He is motivated enough to betray his most sacred duty as an angel, guarding souls, and instead uses them for his own benefit (winning the heavenly war).

 

Castiel is a perfect example of the perils and joys of freedom.

                                          Cass being controlled by Heaven but breaking free.