Last night we were finally going to start the mandalorian and take advantage of our Disney+ subscription, but we realized we hadn’t seen episode 9 yet, so watched that instead.
We’ve been going to bed to Audiobooks of Norse and Greek myths so this fit right in in a Bruno Bettelheim way. I was struck by how heavy handed the good versus evil narrative of the Star Wars universe is. Whereas in mythology the gods are fickle, capricious, deeply flawed self serving agents who live in a world beyond good and evil, in Star Wars, the villains are creatures of pure evil only dwelling in fear, hate, and occasional performative acts of loyalty. Thankfully the “good” in this narrative at least display human flaws (if only to underscore that is an essential part of being “good,”
I find evil villains of this sort perplexing - I mean, say they “win” and have ultimate world/galaxy/universe domination - what do they do in the following day? Have a beer? Hang out with friends? Yell at the neighbor kids? - All things they could do regardless . I suppose one could invoke the will to power as a driving motivation, the desire to dominate, to be alpha prime - but isn’t that another form of inauthentic living? After fighting to have to have power, you then are forced to spend your remaining days being paranoid about loosing it, until one way or another - the heat death of The universe - you ultimately do. I guess you get to make people suffer along the way to force them to acknowledge your power, but isn’t that then a weakness? A strength only possessed when witnessed by all of humanity? I dunno, perhaps Palpatine would have had a more satisfying life experiencing existential dread instead of the force.
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