Faith, Myth and Star Wars

Monomaniacal

The newest George Lucas production, Red Tails, forces a Star Wars nerd to come to terms with a troubling philosophy

From faith stems nuance. From myth, generalities. And, sadly for us, the spirit of myth is winning: We revere Star Wars because to our minds—modern machines that equate religion with superstition and are willing to disregard imperfections in science but never in dogma—the movies represent transcendentalist humanism at its best, a perfect manifestation of that noxious label, “spiritual,” that people use to describe themselves when they’re too dull to believe in religion and too dim to understand science. This is why the Force has become the organizing metaphor of our time; there’s no better one for those who believe that if we only open our hearts and understand people are all the same and all good we’d be enlightened enough to lift rocks with a tilt of our heads.

Just how idiotic is this logic will become evident when we examine the controversy known in geekdom as the “Han Shot First” incident….

(My emphasis)

By way of the Episcopal Cafe.

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