Why I Hate Star Wars

Source: public domain

One word: Immorality and magical thinking. Ok, that’s four words. But pushing magical thinking, instead of stifling it, is itself a kind of immorality. So one word will do.

Star Wars is the second highest grossing film series ever . . . after the Marvel Cinematic Universe series (which includes The Avengers). And therefore, that it is so immoral and riddled with dangerous assumptions is cause for alarm. Here is a short list of the immorality infesting Star Wars.

1. Star Wars pushes the idea that if you believe something, it is true. (Magical thinking. Very common among humans everywhere. And such thinking is one of the foundations of religion.)

2. Star Wars pushes the idea that if you believe you can do something, you can. And if you fail to do something, it is totally your fault because you didn’t believe hard enough. (Magical thinking.)

3. The whole “trust your feelings” Star Wars meme. Right, don’t trust your rationality, your ability to think, your ability to reason — trust your feelings . . . they are always right. (Magical thinking.)

4. In general, Star Wars is pro-magic and anti-science. Note that the biggest engineering achievement in the first three movies is called the Death Star. This is all pretty darn ironic given that George Lucas made his billions off science and technology, since these latter two allowed him to make the movies in the first place.

5. Obi-Wan, in the prequel movies, sets up Anakin Skywalker to fail horribly, thereby helping to create Darth Vader. That's right, Darth is partly Obi-Want’s fault. (Immorality.)

6. Of course, Obi-Wan excuses himself. (Immorality.)

7. Lando betrays the Rebellion by selling Han Solo and co. to Darth, but later is made a general in the Rebellion. (Immorality: This is moral vapidness of the lowest order.)

8. Now for the biggest immorality: Obi-Wan lies to Luke about Luke’s father. This is a Very Big Lie. (Immorality.)

9. Then that so-called Jedi tries to dig his way out by invoking moral relativism. Moral relativism is the view that morality is only what each person thinks is right. So though many Americans thought the September 11 attacks were immoral, that’s just their personal opinion; the perpetrators had a different and equally valid opinion. (Immorality.) . . . Obi-Wan, it turns out, is quite nasty.

10. In general, Star Wars is anti-morality, and pro-racism (witness the treatment of droids), pro-sexism (obvious), and pro-lying.

What about the psychology? Why would a movie of such evil and turpitude make everyone associated with it millionaires (at the very least)? Because humans the world over are very fond of magical thinking, using it many times a day to cope with a life based in fact on probabilities, and because we all need to lie sometimes, especially about our magical thinking: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus;” ”Yes, the chemo is going to work;” “Yes, the United States is a democracy;” . . . and so on and so forth.

Star Wars works because humans are a species of African ape: our evolution was accomplished by wicked and powerful short-term magical thinking and the general rejection of scientific thinking. It is this former kind of thinking that has allowed us to overrun the planet. That humans do science at all is a Very Great Thing. But basically, it is fluke (technically, it is called an exaptation). Hopefully, science is a fluke that we will eventually capitalize on. But matters look grim: in the U.S., we have an entire political party devoted to science-denial, and in our daily lives, we blind ourselves to science completely.

Instead of a great series of movies extolling the virtues of clear thought and scientific thinking, and, as well, morality and honesty, we have Star Wars.

Star Wars — you’ll never find a more wretched movie of scum and villainy.