The ideas expressed as part of this blog are my own and in no way represent the beliefs of Star Wars creator, George Lucas. Any coinciding opinions as to the relationships between Communism, Nazism, and Star Wars are incidental for I do not claim to know Mr. Lucas' thoughts on these matters.
In our last meditation we discussed two supreme examples of the struggle between good and evil, liberty and tyranny, and the darkness they heaped upon the world in the mid part of the 20th Century.
We will now turn attention to the lessons that can be gleaned from the Communist-Nazi advance upon Planet Earth and what and how Star Wars can help us to think about the real world with respect to them.
In many ways, Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, is the sine qua non of our calculus, for it is he who embodied these qualities both separately and all at once. It is not necessary to tell the full tale of Darth Vader's rise, from his miraculous birth on Tatooine to his becoming a young Jedi padawan, forward into maturity, to his ultimate seduction by Palpatine and fall to the Dark Side.What is of note to us is how Anakin/Vader is, once again, used by the cunning Palpatine to accomplish the goals of the Sith. In a brilliant longterm strategy, Lord Sidious targeted a young and vulnerable Anakin, from early childhood through his very turbulent teen years and on into adulthood, for conversion to the Dark Side.
Throughout Episodes 1-3, we are introduced to an extremely powerful Force sensitive who will become known in Force prophecy as "the Chosen One." It is this lofty responsibility that Anakin Skywalker carries upon his shoulders for the rest of his life.
But life circumstances rend a canyon of conflict in the young Anakin - conflict that is seen by Palpatine early on. Unwillingly separated from his mother as boy, Anakin's loyalties and sense of duty are then always divided. Hot-tempered and impulsive, arrogant because of his abilities in the Force, the growing young Skywalker is not yoked in the ways of peace and serenity that so characterise the Jedi. And this is despite all efforts to train and root him in the Order's ancient precepts. It is these traits that Palpatine will use to tempt and then bring about Skywalker's fall as a grown man.
How?
By using a possible vision of the death of Anakin's secret spouse given to both himself and Anakin by the Force - Republic senator Padme Amidala.
Palpatine informs Anakin that only the power of the Dark Side can save Padme's life, that the Jedi are unwilling, and more, incapable of saving her. Only by joining his destiny as the Chosen One with Palpatine's as the master dark lord of the Sith can Anakin hope to preserve Padme from a premature death.
But once Palpatine is exposed to the Jedi as Darth Sidious, once his machinations for the galaxy are revealed, and the Jedi move to stop him, Anakin, in an act both of self-deceived hubris and desperation, protects Palpatine from destruction only to be told by the dark lord that he has no answers as to how to save Padme Amidala's life! This is the ultimate betrayal! for now, not only has Skywalker sworn fealty to Sidious, but he has, in the doing, murdered a Jedi master and become complicit in the destruction of the Jedi Order and the Republic.
In order, then, to seek the power he desires, Skywalker justifies his actions by going deeper into the morass that Palpatine has designed for him. He attacks the Jedi temple, massacring hundreds of Jedi, including children. He personally murders the leaders of the Trade Federation on Sidious' orders, paving the way for Sidious to take over the Republic - converting it into a starspanning Empire under his direct and supreme control. He attacks and fatally injures Padme Amidala, the very woman he loves and seeks to save. And, in the end, Skywalker, battles his former teacher and friend Obi-Wan Kenobi in a lightsaber fight to the death on the lava planet Mustafar.
Skywalker is hideously mutilated and scarred in the battle, defeated by Kenobi, yet left alive to suffer the fate which Skywalker had so haughtily prepared for himself.
Thus Darth Vader is born and slaved, of his own twisted lust for power, to the eternal service of Darth Sidious. And it is only by the struggles of his future son, Luke Skywalker, some thirty years later, that he is finally redeemed from this great fall.
Our Lessons?
What may we learn of the great struggles of history from this calculus within the Star Wars framework, and how may we apply them to the real world?
One lesson is that, as Lord Acton, once cleverly stated: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Another is that power, in order to be as divested of abuse as possible, must be diffuse. That is, it must be divided into as many segments and spheres of authority as will appropriately permit its lawful and efficient performance. As the American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson recognized: "In questions of power let me hear no more of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." To expound upon Jefferson, and to add in Acton then: most power, invested in the personages of a few individuals tends to consolidate corruption. And yet, all power, invested in the person of one individual alone will most certainly bring about despotism and tyranny. To avoid this situation, a people must compose laws consistent with their history, culture, and tradition which limit and bind the ambitious from capturing and holding power with impunity.
Yet a third lesson is that evil, whatever its form, must be vigorously opposed in order for life, and light, to prosper. It must be stood up to with, in the words of the great song, "A British Tar," 'an energetic fist' that is 'ready to resist a dictatorial word.'
And in the case of the Communist-Nazi advance upon Planet Earth, as in the case of the Sith advance upon the Jedi and the Galactic Republic, we have the examples of good vs. evil and liberty vs. tyranny that finally had to be opposed and overthrown so that human dignity and destiny could be realized.
So that truth could be the victor.
There are, of course, more lessons. But I will leave those, dear reader, for you to meditate on, as I have.
As always, we at Epoc Enuma SF test the notions of speculative fiction against the real world in hope of aiding you to see how these "far away" ideas apply to the living, breathing universe we inhabit, and how, in fact, they are not so far away after all.
Until next time...
To the upward reach of man.
In our last meditation we discussed two supreme examples of the struggle between good and evil, liberty and tyranny, and the darkness they heaped upon the world in the mid part of the 20th Century.
We will now turn attention to the lessons that can be gleaned from the Communist-Nazi advance upon Planet Earth and what and how Star Wars can help us to think about the real world with respect to them.
The Calculus of Power: Great Ambition, Great Power, Great Deception, Great Destruction
Great Ambition
The above subtitle's calculus isn't meant for sport, but for analysis. Many times in Star Wars, as in other great morality and human condition tales, those possessed of awesome power, or the potential to gain such, are generally more tempted (not less) by its acquisition. The Jedi and Sith are the most poignant examples in the SW universe. And these examples are culminated in the rise and ultimate tragic fall of Anakin Skywalker, he who was to bring balance to the Force.
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| A villain of history possessed of great ambition |
But we get ahead. Naturally, any amateur student of history recognizes the picture to the right - that of leader of Nazi Germany, the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. I do not exaggerate when I call him a villain of history, for Adolf Hitler's ambition and leadership cast Germany into a living hell of destruction and infamy on the world stage. He brought what was once considered the most civilized and advanced nation on the European continent to devastation and laid it low in reputation and honor.
Why?
The explanation, I believe, begins with the German people's humiliation at the end of WWI, and the consummating promises of the Nazi party once it had risen to power. So, on a greater level, Hitler's rise was facilitated, not by his showmanship or grandiloquent oration alone, but by a fusion of the German people's desperation and fear, and Hitler's own unbridled belief in himself as their savior. This megalomaniacal ambition is the first of our calculus and here deserves the reader's thinking, for the Jainist says that great ambition - unchecked by principle and by truth - leads to a lust for unbridled power. And it is to power that we will turn our attention next.
Great Power
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| A villain of history invested with great power |
I have no doubt that you also recognize the face to our left. Josef Vissarionovich Jugashvili, aka Josef Stalin, was absolute ruler of the former Soviet Union for almost thirty years. His death brought with it an end to decades of Red Terror (at least under his rule), poverty, and uncounted suffering. The power of this man went unchallenged in his time, and was only brought to an end when he died an ignominious death in March 1953. What brought this man to the leadership of the Russian people and its satellites so as to invest both he and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which he cemented together, into being?
A host of factors can be examined - from Stalin's early "tutelage" under Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik "Reds," to his background work in the party then led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, to ultimately his seizure of power at Lenin's death and Trotsky's forced exile and eventual assassination. However, though all of these factors played a role in Stalin's eventual rise to general secretary of the CCCP, what is of interest to us in our examination of the Calculus of Power, is Stalin's use of guile, cunning, deception, and maneuver to capture and remain in supreme power despite more than twenty years of failures as leader of the Russian people and the Soviet Union as a whole. From the Great Famines of 1932-1933 to the Great Purges of 1936-1939, the power of Josef Stalin to command the Soviet people was unparalleled. Using fear, intimidation, and murder, Stalin captured not only the obedience of Soviet citizens, but their hearts as well! This is no more poignantly demonstrated than when millions of Russian and Soviet citizens literally wept bitter tears upon the announcement of his death, an announcement that should have brought with it torrential waves of celebration and shouts of "Hoo-ray!"
Again, we see that it is not merely one man alone who takes his ambition and uses it to sow unto himself power of his own accord, but the social construct of those human beings around him, in both private company and public society, who invest within him their own desires, fears, and needs, then using the persona of his authority to gain for themselves the secret wishes of their hearts. Once this investment is made by such hungry, such needy, such desperate people, and once it is captured by the ambitious "Fuhrer," the ambitious "Leader," no amount of skulduggery, no amount of treachery is too low for such debased peoples to ignore.
Let us now return to our calculus within the fictional realm of Star Wars.
Great Deception
"The goals of the grand plan [of the Sith] were
revenge and the reacquisition of galactic power."
-- from the novel, "Darth Plagueis"
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Count Dooku (Darth Tyranus), greatly deceived
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The Serenno-born noble, Count Dooku, was once a revered knight of the Jedi Order. Strong in the Force, and hailed as one of the brotherhood's most noted lightsaber duelists second only to Yoda and Mace Windu themselves, he succumbed to the Dark Side after several fateful decisions by the Jedi Council left many of his fellow Jedi dead or themselves seduced by the Dark Side during the Clone Wars. Deceived by the influence of the concealed dark lord, Darth Sidious, Dooku left and betrayed the Jedi and the Galactic Republic further into the Clone Wars years through a series of political and military subterfuges designed by Chancellor Palpatine/Sidious to bring about the grand-ultimate plan of the Sith.
What is of interest to our discussion regarding Dooku is how his great affinity in the Force, and his great knowledge of both politics and power, were used by the wily Palpatine to trick him into his own demise and, ultimately, that of the Jedi and the Republic. Dooku's "beef" with the Jedi was the selling point used by Palpatine to lure the once-sterling knight into a web of, first, self-deception and pomposity, and, then, into a trap of mega-proportions which ensnared and then overthrew the Jedi Order and the entire Republic itself. Dooku was deceived, but not simply by Palpatine, but by his own arrogance - an arrogance that led him to believe that he, using the power of the Sith in the person of Palpatine, could transform first the Jedi and then the Republic into his own grand vision of order and justice. It was that arrogance, nurtured by Sidious, which led to the eventual destruction and death of the late Master Dooku.
The lesson to be gleaned from Dooku's fall is that deception - particularly self-deception concerning one's own perceived knowledge and insight - can be one's own worst enemy. The Biblical warning that, "Pride goes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction," may be aptly applied to the late count. Further, we may also state that the idea of the ends justifying the means is a perverse and treacherous slope on which even the most learned and wise navigate at their own peril. Dooku learned this lesson in the most painful of ways.
What is of interest to our discussion regarding Dooku is how his great affinity in the Force, and his great knowledge of both politics and power, were used by the wily Palpatine to trick him into his own demise and, ultimately, that of the Jedi and the Republic. Dooku's "beef" with the Jedi was the selling point used by Palpatine to lure the once-sterling knight into a web of, first, self-deception and pomposity, and, then, into a trap of mega-proportions which ensnared and then overthrew the Jedi Order and the entire Republic itself. Dooku was deceived, but not simply by Palpatine, but by his own arrogance - an arrogance that led him to believe that he, using the power of the Sith in the person of Palpatine, could transform first the Jedi and then the Republic into his own grand vision of order and justice. It was that arrogance, nurtured by Sidious, which led to the eventual destruction and death of the late Master Dooku.
The lesson to be gleaned from Dooku's fall is that deception - particularly self-deception concerning one's own perceived knowledge and insight - can be one's own worst enemy. The Biblical warning that, "Pride goes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction," may be aptly applied to the late count. Further, we may also state that the idea of the ends justifying the means is a perverse and treacherous slope on which even the most learned and wise navigate at their own peril. Dooku learned this lesson in the most painful of ways.
And this leads us to the final variable in our Calculus of Power.
Great Destruction
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| Sith lord Darth Vader, greatly destroyed |
Throughout Episodes 1-3, we are introduced to an extremely powerful Force sensitive who will become known in Force prophecy as "the Chosen One." It is this lofty responsibility that Anakin Skywalker carries upon his shoulders for the rest of his life.
But life circumstances rend a canyon of conflict in the young Anakin - conflict that is seen by Palpatine early on. Unwillingly separated from his mother as boy, Anakin's loyalties and sense of duty are then always divided. Hot-tempered and impulsive, arrogant because of his abilities in the Force, the growing young Skywalker is not yoked in the ways of peace and serenity that so characterise the Jedi. And this is despite all efforts to train and root him in the Order's ancient precepts. It is these traits that Palpatine will use to tempt and then bring about Skywalker's fall as a grown man.
How?
By using a possible vision of the death of Anakin's secret spouse given to both himself and Anakin by the Force - Republic senator Padme Amidala.
Palpatine informs Anakin that only the power of the Dark Side can save Padme's life, that the Jedi are unwilling, and more, incapable of saving her. Only by joining his destiny as the Chosen One with Palpatine's as the master dark lord of the Sith can Anakin hope to preserve Padme from a premature death.
But once Palpatine is exposed to the Jedi as Darth Sidious, once his machinations for the galaxy are revealed, and the Jedi move to stop him, Anakin, in an act both of self-deceived hubris and desperation, protects Palpatine from destruction only to be told by the dark lord that he has no answers as to how to save Padme Amidala's life! This is the ultimate betrayal! for now, not only has Skywalker sworn fealty to Sidious, but he has, in the doing, murdered a Jedi master and become complicit in the destruction of the Jedi Order and the Republic.
In order, then, to seek the power he desires, Skywalker justifies his actions by going deeper into the morass that Palpatine has designed for him. He attacks the Jedi temple, massacring hundreds of Jedi, including children. He personally murders the leaders of the Trade Federation on Sidious' orders, paving the way for Sidious to take over the Republic - converting it into a starspanning Empire under his direct and supreme control. He attacks and fatally injures Padme Amidala, the very woman he loves and seeks to save. And, in the end, Skywalker, battles his former teacher and friend Obi-Wan Kenobi in a lightsaber fight to the death on the lava planet Mustafar.
Skywalker is hideously mutilated and scarred in the battle, defeated by Kenobi, yet left alive to suffer the fate which Skywalker had so haughtily prepared for himself.
Thus Darth Vader is born and slaved, of his own twisted lust for power, to the eternal service of Darth Sidious. And it is only by the struggles of his future son, Luke Skywalker, some thirty years later, that he is finally redeemed from this great fall.
Our Lessons?
What may we learn of the great struggles of history from this calculus within the Star Wars framework, and how may we apply them to the real world?
One lesson is that, as Lord Acton, once cleverly stated: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Another is that power, in order to be as divested of abuse as possible, must be diffuse. That is, it must be divided into as many segments and spheres of authority as will appropriately permit its lawful and efficient performance. As the American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson recognized: "In questions of power let me hear no more of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." To expound upon Jefferson, and to add in Acton then: most power, invested in the personages of a few individuals tends to consolidate corruption. And yet, all power, invested in the person of one individual alone will most certainly bring about despotism and tyranny. To avoid this situation, a people must compose laws consistent with their history, culture, and tradition which limit and bind the ambitious from capturing and holding power with impunity.
Yet a third lesson is that evil, whatever its form, must be vigorously opposed in order for life, and light, to prosper. It must be stood up to with, in the words of the great song, "A British Tar," 'an energetic fist' that is 'ready to resist a dictatorial word.'
And in the case of the Communist-Nazi advance upon Planet Earth, as in the case of the Sith advance upon the Jedi and the Galactic Republic, we have the examples of good vs. evil and liberty vs. tyranny that finally had to be opposed and overthrown so that human dignity and destiny could be realized.
So that truth could be the victor.
There are, of course, more lessons. But I will leave those, dear reader, for you to meditate on, as I have.
As always, we at Epoc Enuma SF test the notions of speculative fiction against the real world in hope of aiding you to see how these "far away" ideas apply to the living, breathing universe we inhabit, and how, in fact, they are not so far away after all.
Until next time...
To the upward reach of man.
