Obsession and class collide!

It's so nice when worlds collide.

For example, you know I'm obsessed with Firefly right now, to the point where I'm staying up til 1:30 on a school night (on the weekends I've gone til 3 am - d'oh!) watching Youtube videos about the show and the subsequent movie, Serenity. (Please god, let this obsession burn out soon? I have GOT to get some sleep.) Joss Whedon, who is as intellectually gifted as he is creatively blessed, created an intriguing vision of the future, the faint backdrop of which is a world in which the two superpowers, the U.S. and China, have merged into a mega-power. (Which appears to have started out with good intentions but then turns out to be fascist and sinister and evil and shit. You know the type.)

I'm also taking a class on global governance this term, and had to read what was I found at first to be an extremely dull article on multilateralism. Once I got past some of the jargon, though, it occurred to me that the article -- which is highly academic and soars into the stratosphere of theory at times -- was really about the type of world envisioned in Firefly. "Little islands of alien sovereignty" (the individual nation-states just looking out for themselves, warily watching everyone else around them and jealously protecting their autonomy) have transformed over the past two centuries to bilateral arrangements (cautious and sometime reluctant treaties between 2 nations), and then on to multilateral arrangements (between 3 or more nations), which now feature permanent institutions that are in themselves semi-autonomous and independent actors differentiated from their constituent member states.

Damn. Just one theoretical article and look at the garbage coming out of my mouth. This is why I hate high academic theory -- it's so much more complex than it needs to be. By reading about the development of multilateral frameworks and nation states and all the rest, I was really reading about the world that's the backdrop of Star Trek and Star Wars, Firefly and most other sci fi out there, which is to say: countries merged, got all-powerful, and either became benevolent, cuddly love bunnies like the Federation in Star Trek, or monstrous faceless monoliths set on wiping out all naysayers, like in Star Wars and Firefly.

It was weird -- after I started getting past the 5-syllable words and technobabble, it was actually really interesting to think of this development of multilateralism as a possible precursor to the worlds that the sci fi writers foretell (or forewarn). So yeah -- the UN today, the Empire and its stormtroopers tomorrow? I don't know. But it made the reading for class a hell of a lot more interesting.

AGH. It's 1:45 am. Must. Stop. Being. Obsessed. Go away, Firefly! Go away, enviable brilliance that is Joss Whedon! Go away, hotness that is Nathan Fillion!

And to clear the mind, here is the baby pic of the day:
What he’s really thinking: "Ruggie’s hypothesis that multilateral international institutions such as the United Nations are creating their own, new forms of multilateral arrangements is less inspiring than it is deeply troubling and counter to the ideals of sovereignty and self-governance that democratic nations such as ours -- steeped as it is in a tradition of independent and idiosyncratic frontierism -- value. That is the whole point Joss is trying to make. Obviously. Now excuse me while I address the little island of alien sovereignty in my diaper.”