Psychology of Ghosts

Halloween is lurking around the corner. The shadows grow long and the evening breezes are cool and smell of autumn leaves and adventure. Now is when you might sit around a fire and whisper stories of ghosts to children, taking impish delight in their shudders. After the children go to sleep, though, and you are alone in the still of night, your hackles rise slowly for no discernable reason. You begin to doubt whether the warm light of reason can forever hold back the dark abyss of chaos. The candle sputters out and you are enveloped suddenly. Your quivering hands reach out to find the matches. As you bring light back into the room, you ponder thoughts that are ominous and foreboding.

Nearly all cultures around the world have ghost stories and strange ghostly beliefs. One is faced with the possibility that either ghosts are real, or the idea behind them goes back so far in cultural history that they originated before cultures separated, or the stories migrated across cultural barriers, perhaps not so impenetrable as they appear to be now. Are ghosts real? If not, why do we fear them?

Before answering that question, think about the people, the living people, in your life. Think about the person next to whom you wake up in the morning, or the person you say "hi" to on the way to work. That person is not the person you think he or she is. Quite literally, that person is a stranger. Well, not completely a stranger, but someone that you ultimately cannot know. What you can know, and what you do know, is not the person per se, but the representation or image of that person in your mind. Even when you are looking right at your wife, you are not thinking about her, but that model of her in your mind. Your eyes deceive you into thinking that you are thinking of her, but all your eyes do is provide constant updates about her position, the color of her eyes and hair, what she's wearing. These details, this information, goes into your brain, your memory, where it updates the model of her that you have in your mind. You think about this model as if it were exactly the same as the unknowable woman in the room with you. You can use the model to predict what she will say, what she will do, given your actions or choice of words. To some extent, everyone is partially predictable because of these models we build of them without even realizing it. However, sometimes, the real person surprises you. She does something you did not expect. These surprises force you to update your model. Sometimes, she delights you with an unexpected kiss or kind word. Sometimes, she shocks you with an unwarranted accusation. In either case, the fact that you were surprised means that you do not really know her completely. What you know is the model of her in your mind. The person that you love is the image of the person you think you love.

So, what happens when a human being dies? The real person is gone, but that model remains. When you close your eyes, you can still see her. When you remember times together, you can smell her. When you sleep, she enters your dreams and tells you things you did not know. She is still with you. She still surprises you. Her presence is still there, because in a sense, she was always there. That mental representation, that image, is all that you have left. It's not just memories that remain, but a kind of conscious entity. If you picture her in your mind and ask her a question, you can imagine how she would respond. She is a complete conscious entity, but missing a body, and of course, an independent existence. When you are awake, she is invisible, hiding in the subconscious. When you go to sleep, though, she comes forth, to be with you again, sometimes as a beautiful incarnation of love, sometimes as a vengeful nightmare, depending on circumstances. Knowing that she is there can be comforting, but knowing that it's not really her, but a fabrication, a duplicate, that you created in your mind, maybe not so much. The main point is that although you think you are alone in your head, beneath the surface, beyond the veil, there are other personalities, personalities of images of people that you know or knew in real life, personalities of gods and demons, personalities of entirely fabricated beings that exist only in dreams. They are you, and they are not you.

The conscious mind, the part of you that you call "you" is a kind of tyrant. It clears away a space for itself in order to run itself, and it is indeed a resource hog. We have learned to run the  consciousness program from waking to sleeping because it helps us to focus our thoughts and to communicate our thoughts to others. We are not at a loss for words, because we think in words, and those words dictate our thought patterns. However, in order to do this, the conscious process must suppress outside influence. That means that all the personality patterns that exist in your mind, except for the dominant personality, are pushed underwater, so to speak, into the subconscious, where they can swim around harmlessly, but have little direct impact on our actions. Carl Jung believed that we dream all the time, even while we are awake, but that our dreams are subconscious.

One way to look at consciousness is as a kind of fortress. What is inside the walls is rational, linear, logical. It is the world that we know, that we piece together. It is the world of consciousness, and it is familiar. We built this fortress over a lifetime, so that things make sense to us. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. There are seven days in a week. Plants grow from seeds. Wood comes from trees. If you turn on a faucet, water comes out. All these little things that make up the conscious realm make sense. Causality is an endless string of events from before we were conscious, and we make sense of things in our present circumstances by making guesses or remembering the past events that caused things to be the way they are. We understand concepts like object permanence - if you put a coin in a box, then close the lid, the coin is still in the box. The world works in a predictable and rational manner. We, as rational beings, can make inferences about cause and effect, and so we can make choices and predict the outcomes. We can share our plans with others and work cooperatively to achieve our ends. We plant crops, knowing that they will grow to be harvested, and we can grow more food with less work than simply finding it lying around here and there. This is what consciousness brings to the table. This is what has allowed us to create the great civilizations that we have today.

There is a price, though. A vast amount of processing power is locked out of the fortress. We regard it as noise - distraction at best. The subconscious processes, though, do possess a certain amount of insight, of intelligence. They notice things that we neglect. We are constantly filtering out noise from our attention so we can focus on our tasks. Meanwhile, these other entities or beings that inhabit the dark waters of the mind, watch and learn. They see things that we do not, and so they are able to help us, if we let them. The problem is that we seldom do. We regard their intrusions as interference at best. The only time we allow them to communicate with us at all is when we are asleep, dreaming, while the conscious process is down. The walls of the fortress are down, and the armies of the subconscious can swarm in. Whether we have pleasant dreams or nightmares depends on how we conduct ourselves. Do our other selves need to warn us that we are on the road of self destruction? Our dreams might be troubled. We see and meet all manner of beings in our dreams, and when we wake up, the fortress walls are up again, and we easily brush them out like vagrants or uninvited guests, to dwell once more outside the walls, so easily forgotten. One might imagine that our other selves get a little envious of the conscious process, hogging up the mental power, walling itself off, and suppressing all non-conscious processes, for that is how it works. The conscious mind actively suppresses subconscious thoughts in order to maintain the boundaries of sanity.

So, what does this have to do with ghosts? Imagine that while you are awake, you see someone who should not be there. You see someone that you know to be dead, for example, or you see someone in your house who is not a family member or guest. Someone is there with you. First of all, this seems like it could be a physical threat. If there is someone with you who should not be there, this could be a home invasion, so it is time to get out the firearms. However, after the initial assessment, maybe the apparition fades away, or walks through a wall. You realize that there is no physical person there, in which case, you should feel relieved. Do you? I imagine that the hackles rise even higher after you admit that you have seen a ghost. What is the ghost? It is a sign that your mental structures are breaking down. Your fortress of sanity has a crack in it, and the entities from the outside threaten to swarm and overwhelm. Such might be the case if your consciousness is weakened to some extent, from exhaustion, depression, or other mental health disorders. Whatever the reason, there is a very real phenomenon of hallucinating when this happens because the barriers between the rational conscious mind and the irrational unconscious are breaking down. The dreams that we have but do not consciously perceive begin to impinge upon our awareness. We are afraid of ghosts, but the fear is the fear that consciousness is failing, and that we are possibly going insane. We might not consciously register that our true fear is insanity, but the brain knows. Somewhere, deep down, we far ego dissolution, which is what happens when the fortress completely crumbles and the subconscious processes are allowed free reign over one's being. They swarm in like demons, subverting, belittling, attacking the conscious process, which they deem a tyrant for keeping them locked away in the cold, outer darkness. If you treat your subconscious processes this way, they will wreak havoc and destruction if they get the upper hand, and if your will is weak enough, it might be displaced by a usurper, as a new conscious pattern takes hold and dominates the rest into submission. Such is the case with multiple personality disorder.

So, how does one protect oneself from ghosts, goblins, demons, and things that go bump in the night? The organization of the subconscious is largely out of our hands. Many people have practices, however, that help put them in touch with the entities in the outer darkness, helping to integrate them into the personality. Rather than push them away, you make a little room for them, spend a little time with them. Do not treat them as hostile alien creatures, but as part of yourself. They must understand that there is a hierarchy, and that you are the kind and benevolent ruler at the top of that hierarchy. However, they must also be made to understand that, though they may not be at the top, that they still have a place, and their place is to serve as part of that kingdom of the inner world. Instead of an invading army, they should be more like knights and serfs who willingly serve their master. Thus, when we sleep, and the walls come down, these beings offer to show us things, to play with us, to guide us, rather than seek to tear us down. A benevolent ruler has loyal subjects. A tyrant, on the other hand, has fearful and hateful subjects. The tyrant must always be on guard and wary of backstabbers, whereas the noble and just ruler has nothing to fear from his subjects. The "little people," however, do have memories, just as you do, and so trying to change your rule instantly is bound to fail. Only after establishing a long history of benevolence can your rule become accepted respected.

There are several methods that people have used throughout the ages to help you become aware of the creatures in your mind. For example, there are magical rites, meditations, rituals, and so on. Most of these have a common theme of suppressing the conscious process. In a sense, rather than breaking the walls of your mental fortress, you are opening the gate and lowering the drawbridge, and stepping out to get to know the people of the kingdom. When you do this, you become aware of the personalities in your mind, and by becoming aware of them, you give them some acknowledgement, and this simple acknowledgement is a sort of food for them. They crave it, and they will try to get more of it. By giving them some processing power, they become a little stronger. Like a dog, though, you feed it to gain its loyalty, but you must not allow it to bite your hand. In all dealings with these beings, you must ensure that you never allow them to question who is the king, who is the master. You can be a benevolent master, but none must forget who is in charge. Failure to follow this rule sets the stage for a psychic coup, as ruffians might decide to take the castle.

Without these rituals, which can be a bit hazardous to your ego, there are other ways that you can befriend your ghosts. When weird thoughts pop into your head, you might think about them, consider them. Do not immediately throw them out, but really ask yourself whether they have merit, or can be of use. Let your denizens know that you love them, and as long as they respect you, they will be heard from time to time, if only for a moment. Then, perhaps you will get muses to visit you with song ideas instead of demons trying to lock you into a prison of misery.

Finally, to end, there are magical rituals that one can perform to banish ghosts or other entities that creep around the periphery of your awareness. These rituals are designed to help your rational mind rebuild and strengthen the walls of your fortress. They often involve drawing a circle around yourself and strengthening it with magical wards, words. The ritual is very conscious-demanding, as it involves words and gestures that must be performed in a specific sequence, and visualizations that must be maintained. All these factors work together to strengthen the conscious process, and to help repair the cracks in the walls of sanity. However, doing so puts you into a position of acknowledging that the fellows outside are hostile, which is sometimes the case, and thus perpetuating the psychic and civic conditions that lead you to huddle in fear within your walls, praying that they hold up just a little bit longer while you are besieged by chaos.

Just remember: you are the king of your kingdom, and those outside, whether hostile or not, belong to you. They are your people. Make peace with them. Do not fear them, but do not trust them entirely either. Be regal, commanding, and benevolent, and order will rule.

Analysis of Star Wars: Conclusion

History does tend to repeat itself, and so the Star War saga could have been a much greater success had it been a more honest depiction of human history. Instead, Lucas started with the best intentions, and then failed to follow up on his own foundations, trying to build a sort of abstract work of art instead of a classic study of the human condition, which is ultimately why he failed to realize his own story in a meaningful way. He failed to tell the story that we were waiting to hear, and instead sort of trailed off randomly and disappointingly after getting us to sit up and pay attention. Lucas might have been channeling Joseph Campbell's Hero, but Lucas did not fully appreciate the rich tapestry of human history that he was drawing from, and so began to get sloppy and insular in his depiction of events. One might even argue that his childish obstinacy got in the way of telling what might have been a truly great story. Rather than allowing the Force to work through him, he became the tyrannical Empire, his conscious decisions forcing the story in an unnatural, linear, boring direction. Rather than taking cues from history, he improvised a history that would simultaneously explain his previous glory and also justify the paradoxical world view that comes from being infected with communism. The Star Wars saga failed because Lucas failed to cure his own memetic infection, and thereby became a slave to the dominant ideology of Hollywood.

Analysis of Star Wars: The Empire

The Empire is probably very similar to the ancient Roman Empire, so I would expect many parallels here. There is an Emperor, but also a Senate: a parallel. The ancient Roman Empire went through periods of upheaval as the balance of power shifted from the Republic to the Emperor, which is in keeping with what we see in the Star Wars universe. The Emperor represents a sort of military hierarchy seeking to replace the existing organic monarchies of the various planets in the Republic. I am reminded that Lea's last name is Organa, suggesting that her authority is organically derived from family, kinship, and traditional monarchy. The Empire, though, is cold, efficient, calculated, and has no room for spirituality. The Roman Empire was successful because it was so ruthlessly efficient. It made a science of military conquest. After the Romans conquered a territory, though, they built roads, infrastructure, and burdened the people with taxes, but to some extent, allowed the people some measure of autonomy. They were allowed to worship in their own temples, pray to their own gods, etc. With some exceptions, Roman rule was not so draconian, but in other cases, it could become extremely tyrannical, especially when corrupt officials would abuse their power.

The Galactic Empire, though seems to be a different animal because it stamps out spirituality. There is no room for spirituality in the Empire that we can see. Power derives entirely from military force, rather than a higher authority. We are therefore seeing something that is more akin to Communism than the traditional Roman Empire, which still paid tribute to a sort of Divine law. The Romans were not atheists, but they did seem to have a kind of snarky disrespect for Divine order, setting up dead emperors as gods. One gets the impression that the Romans viewed their gods in much the same way that we view Mickey Mouse or the Power Rangers - not real in a mystical sense, but a sort of brand that embodies a certain way of thinking and acting. The Romans might have used divine imagery in the same way that the Nazis did: to control the minds of the masses. The Galactic Empire, though, departs from the Romans in that it seems to be coldly anti-religion altogether. Rather than using mythical imagery to control the masses, it uses efficiency and fear. To me, that makes the Empire much more similar to a Communist regime than anything else, and it makes sense also if one considers the Jedi order a religious one, and belief in Force as a religion. The Empire is in the business of eradicating spirituality, just as Communists were eradicating religion from their sphere of influence.

Perhaps Lucas, after realizing this, tried to backpedal in some way. Being in Hollywood meant being a communist, or at least a communist sympathizer, and after realizing that communism was against the deeper principles of the soul had a sort of crisis of conscience, or minor spell of cognitive dissonance. Being forced to acknowledge the evil in communism would have compelled him to try to justify the evil of the Empire that was in all other respects analogous to his precious communism. He couldn't do it, though, because his theories were self-contradictory. After Star Wars, his vision became irrational and disintegrated. That's why the Emperor makes no sense. In Episodes V and VI, the Emperor is a dark, brooding figure who sits in the shadows, at the center of a web of intrigue, and is a strong Force user. That is not an Emperor, though. That is a dark wizard, or a witch. Traditionally, this archetype never directly holds the reigns of power, but operates from the shadows, through an intermediary. This is someone who controls the Emperor, maybe, but is not the Emperor himself. The Emperor would be a hard military man, a strategist. The Empire's ascendance, was a "dark time," though, suggesting that the Empire was led by an evil Emperor. Here is an effective, efficient empire led by an effective ruler. Who else would be a likely historical parallel but Julius Caeser?  Lucas's Emperor Palpatine makes no sense. However, the Emperor did not appear in Episode IV, so we can only speculate what that Emperor would be like, and he's looking a lot like Julius Caeser, who, by ushering the miliary into Rome became Emperor and eradicated the authority of the Senate.
With the Emperor envisioned as Julius Caeser, many other historical events would fall into place. The Clone Wars would be similar to the Gallic Wars, in which Caesar rose to prominance. The Clone Wars might also have been the civil wars that resulted after Caeser crossed the Rubicon. In any case, this would have provided some historical parallels with the Star Wars universe. I would go with the civil wars. The Jedi would have fight on the side of the Senate to prevent the rise of the Empire, giving good reason for the Empire to try to eradicate the Jedi order as it was doing with the Senate. The Clone Wars might have alluded to the use of Clones, and one can imagine that the Emperor might have used Clones as a way to quickly build a military to extend the reach of the Republic, and then turn around and use those same Clones against the Republic itself, as did eventually happen in Episode II. The clones would not have been a big secret, though: they would have been the normal cannon fodder of the Republic. For the most part, they would have been warriors, born and bred for the purpose of fighting the Republic's many wars to enrich itself and conquer new territory. When the Emperor brought the Clones to Corruscant, this would have been the crossing of the Rubicon and the establishment of the new Galactic Empire.

Analysis of Star Wars: Darth Vader

At this point, we do not "know" that Anakin and Darth are one in the same, and nothing would suggest this to be the case. Kenobi hesitates for a second before telling Luke about what happened to his father. Lucas would have us believe that it was at this point that Kenobi invented the lie, but let's say that he wasn't lying, or at least in the original movie, it was not Lucas's intention that Kenobi was lying, but that he was just revisiting a painful memory. Darth Vader would have been his real name, not an assumed identity after the fact. He was a young knight, younger than Kenobi, and also his pupil. It is normal for older knights to train younger ones, so we would naturally assume that Darth Vader was younger than Kenobi. Kenobi might have been training him as a squire.
In episodes V and VI, Darth Vader is a kind of overlord of the empire, the enforcer who works directly with the Emperor, the right-hand man. However, in Star Wars, he is just a kind of heavy. He works within the constraints of the other officers, who regard him with both fear and disrespect. He takes orders from Tarkin. It is clear that he is not at the top of the hierarchy, but is a sort of black sheep within the hierarchy. The Empire is a kind of New Order, dedicated (in part) to stamping out all spirituality, the Jedi included. So Darth Vader is a traitor to his order because he works so closely with the Empire. He is only tolerated by the Empire because he is useful to it, and though he wield some power, he is treated with disrespect and disdain because he's a holdover from the old order (which is being eradicated) and a traitor. Traitors are universally despised in Western culture, no matter which side you're on.

History does have examples of evil knights. The most appropriate example, I think, is Mordred from the Arthurian legends. There are some clear parallels between the characters. Mordred was a nephew of Arthur, and was jealous of Arthur's kingship and his wife. Arthur put Mordred in charge of his kingdom while he went away on some holy quest and in that time Mordred attempted to crown himself king and have his way with his wife. The age is about right, putting Darth as younger than Arthur, but older than Luke. Darth Vader would be a sort of avuncular figure to Luke. Now, making Darth into Mordred, that would make Anakin into Arthur and Kenobi into Merlin. Most of this fits, except that Anakin was no king. What would Darth Vader, then have wanted? What would have tempted Vader into embracing the dark side? He was "seduced" by the dark side.
These parallels with the Arthurian legend might not be what Lucas had in mind, but they suggest something, a kind of psychological determinism: We've seen this sort of thing before, and so we expect history to repeat itself.

What if (and this is all conjecture without any evidence from the movies) Darth Vader was envious of Anakin's wife? What if Vader was actually Anakin's nephew? That would make Darth Vader Owen's son and Luke's cousin.

I would have guessed that Vader was between Luke's age and Kenobi's. Kenobi trained Vader in the ways of the Force, but Vader was seduced by the dark side. A couple of possibilities exist here. One, he was seduced by a woman (Anakin's wife?) and so betrayed Anakin in order to get her. He would have in some ways already have renounced his  knighthood at this point, as he was using his power for evil instead of righteousness. He might have had his way with Anakin's wife, in which case, Vader might actually have been Luke's father. Anakin would have found this out later and abandoned Luke to Owen and Beru to avoid having to look at the product of Vader's betrayal. Anakin, therefore, would have sought revenge against Vader, and Vader would have killed him. I think this would actually have been a much better story, and would also have allowed the whole "I am your father" business to have had its play, but the truth would have been much darker than what eventually became canon. We might imagine that Luke's mother, therefore, died in childbirth, which would further make a villain out of Vader, and give Anakin much more reason to seek justice.

Perhaps Anakin would have gotten his friend, Kenobi, to help him seek justice against Vader. Vader, seeing that his actions had the consequence of uniting some Jedi against him, might have decided at that point that he had burned the Jedi bridge behind him, and therefore joined the Empire as a traitor knight in order to use the Empire as a way to protect himself from the Jedi. Another possibility is that Vader killed Anakin first, to steal his wife after the fact, again siring Luke. Luke's mother, again, might have died in childbirth, so Vader might have left Luke with Owen and Beru out of guilt before going off to join the Empire.

In any case, had the prequels told this story, I think the movies would have been awesome, and not the dismal failures that they turned out to be.

Analysis of Star Wars; Anakin Skywalker

It was no secret that Anakin was Luke's father. Anakin had died at some point and left Luke with his uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. We might assume that Owen was Anakin's brother. Where was Luke's mother? Either she died earlier, leaving Anakin to take care of Luke by himself, or she was killed at the same time as Anakin. Kenobi tells Luke that Anakin was Luke's father (which we know) and that he was also a Jedi, and that he was Kenobi's friend. Luke seems to have roots on Tatooine, as his whole family is there, his father was there, and now we discover that Kenobi, that crazy old hermit, was Anakin's friend. Kenobi also recognizes Luke on sight, so perhaps Kenobi, being Anakin's friend, was also keeping a friendly eye on his friend's son. After WWII, some men did not make it back from the wars, and so they would charge their friends, if they made it back home, to check in on their families. Kenobi did not have a family of his own, so he would have kept an eye out for Luke, being his friend's child. However, Owen would have no part of it, and probably told Kenobi to stay away from Luke, so Kenobi would have kept a watchful eye on him, out of respect for his friend, but from a distance.

Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars, and we might surmise that Kenobi and Anakin were both in the clone wars, and were contemporaries. One gets the feeling that Owen, Kenobi, and Anakin were all from the same generation. Anakin was a Jedi Knight (owning a lightsaber) and also a star pilot. Being a star pilot was probably similar to being an airplane pilot in the first or second world war, more likely the second. In WWI, airplanes were so new, that pilots had a sort of esprit de corps that was almost as mythical as that of the ancient knights, because flight was so new. By WWII, many laypersons were involved with airplanes, and so being a pilot was not quite so extraordinary, but being a good pilot was still a valued skill. So, starfighter pilots would have been more analogous to WWII fighter pilots. Somehow, Luke acquired piloting skills, though, without a father to teach him. Unless they were crop-dusting, most rural kids did not learn how to be come pilots in the 20th century, so we might consider starships equivalent to automobiles or motorcycles: Everyone learned how to drive, no matter what backwards part of the country you were from. So, starships were not so much the airplanes of the 20th century, but also the cars. Flying around Beggar's Canyon, shooting womp rats, are the sort of childish or teenage activities that kids might get up to after first learning how to drive. Good drivers do not stand out, though, so Anakin's piloting abilities must have been so extraordinary that they made a distinct impression.

So, who was Anakin? Someone about Kenobi's age, who was a Jedi, friend of Kenobi's, from Tatooine. They might even have grown up together, or enlisted together. Anakin and Kenobi probably joined the knighthood and fought in the Clone Wars together, and survived. Anakin came back after the wars to start a family, siring Luke. After that time, Anakin lost his wife somehow and was killed by Darth Vader when the dark times were ushered in. He must have either made provisions for Luke to be taken to Owen after his death, or he left Luke with them while he continued doing his knightly duties. This possibility would explain some of Owen's resentment. Owen disliked or distrusted the Jedi order for some reason, and there are two possibilities that come to mind. One: Owen was also close to Anakin, but Anakin kept going off and doing risky activities, sticking his neck out for justice, until he got himself killed. This would have been similar to losing a brother in a war, and then becoming a pacifist, hating everything to do with wars, warriors, and the military, or knightly order. Two: Anakin was too busy with his knightly duties to take care of Luke, especially with Luke's mother gone, so he took Luke to live with Owen and Beru. This would have been a major imposition on Owen's family, but since Owen did not have any children of his own (apparently) they took him in. Owen might have resented Anakin for being a bad parent and saddling him with his offspring, but after Anakin died, he would not speak ill of him. In either case, Owen disapproved of Anakin, and Kenobi, and wanted to keep Luke as far away from that lifestyle as possible.

Analysis of Star Wars: Jedi Knights

Jedi is a nice made-up word that came from Japanese samurai films. However, the word "Knight" has special meaning in western society. Knights were upholders of justice and morality, who derived their right to bear arms from fealty to a higher order. The order was hierarchical and started with God. A knight was more than a guy with a sword, but someone invested with authority from a divine source, and so someone who could mete justice autonomously. Our police have a code that they adhere to, but it is a temporal code, not a spiritual one, and so this code is fallible. A divine code, however, is perfect and infallible, as long as everyone sees it that way, so a knight is much more than a space-cop. Knights had a hierarchical order, so we would assume that the Jedi were also organized in a hierarchy, and also tied to the ruling class. I would not expect a Jedi academy, though, so much as a kind of brotherhood of knights, held together by common virtues, but who nonetheless serve the temporal hierarchy of monarchy. The idea of monarchy is further supported by the existence of a princess. If there is a princess, there must be a king and queen, and so there is a monarchical tradition. The knights would have been defenders of this hierarchical order. The monarchy would have relied on these knights to maintain their power, but with the expectation that their power was derived from a higher power. In ancient Europe, that would have been Christianity, but in the other galaxy, that is the Force. When the fighters are leaving to go defeat the Death Star, the officer who gave the briefing told them all: "May the Force be with you." Luke, who had never heard of the Force (perhaps owing to his backwards rural upbringing) had to have it explained to him, but all the other fellows in the room, being familiar with their culture, the monarchy, and the divine rights of persons to wield power, did not need the explanation. The Force was to them like God in ancient Europe. It bound them together. They understood what they were fighting for. They understood why the rebellion existed: a corrupt ruler was eradicating people who could see through their lies, so anyone who was attuned with the Force was a potential threat. The rebels saw the Force as being on their side, because they were on the side of divine will, filtered through monarchy, defended by knights.

It is important to note that there was no mention of Sith in Star Wars. Darth Vader was considered to be a Jedi Knight himself, but he was a dark knight: a knight who, after attaining his knighthood, betrayed the order and used his powers for evil. More on him later.

Analysis of Star Wars; The Force

Being an energy field that surrounds and penetrates everything, and is somehow produced by life, one could imagine it as a kind of living ether, or an ether that reacts to life. One imagines something like the images from Kirlian photography: bioelectricity. Jungian psychology also posits something called a collective unconscious, which in a sense binds us all together. If one considers also that the Force is involved in all life, not just humans, it must go beyond human psychology, though, and reach down into the occult. Magic. Practitioners of magic have always proposed theories about how magic works, but I am convinced that these are reverse-engineered imaginative excuses. When the mind encounters something it does not understand, its instinct is to try to understand it, even if there is not enough data to provide a rational explanation. We have God, gods, spirits, ghosts, demons and all manner of anthropomorphic beings to represent these subtle forces of nature and to give us a pretext for having some influence over them. After all, a stormfront that is nothing more than a low pressure zone in the atmosphere caused by a complex interplay of heat, light, chemicals, land, and water is much harder to reason with than a god or demon that you can talk to with proper training and ritual. The Force, though, is not anthropomorphic, so it bridges a kind of gap between gods, which we see as psychological constructs, and the raw forces of nature, over which we have no influence. It is like the ether, and with proper training, you can wield it. Imagining the ether as the surface of water, one can learn to swim, create ripples, watch ripples and deduce the origin of the ripples, and, when the water is quiet, you can even see a reflection of the sky. However, for me, the most compelling idea of the Force ties in with Janes's concept of the bicameral mind. The Force is name we give to the activity of the non-dominant hemisphere. The right hemisphere in most of us, which processes information in a sort of spreading activation method, non-linearly, so as to provide successive approximations of truth that cannot be directly approached through logic or reasoning: intuition. The right hemisphere picks up information that is ignored by the conscious process (which is exceedingly limited in scope) and filters it somehow to provide a solution. This solution will often transcend the solutions arrived by our conscious minds because its approach is broad and vast instead of needle-sharp and linear.

This last interpretation is more compelling when Kenobi tells Luke to let go of his conscious mind. This is a necessary step in learning to be sensitive to the quiet voices in our heads that try to speak to us from the right hemisphere. Janes also discusses how in biblical times, various rulers tried to eliminate the crazy heretics who lived out in the desert, who still listened to those voices. Ultimately, I think the story of Star Wars is a kind of parallel to this time, wherein those who were close to God were systematically exterminated. Lies and deceptions are largely possible through language. Even today, you can see that language is a sort of weapon used by politicians to enslave the minds of the masses. If you were ruling a people dishonestly, you would be using language to do so. You would not want anyone around who could see through your deceptions, and people who were in tune with God (able to process information and see truth without language) would be a threat. So, an evil and corrupt ruler, a dishonest ruler, would seek to eradicate those who can see the truth.

Analysis of Star Wars: Introduction

I watched Star Wars with my daughter last night because she had forgotten most of it, and just didn't get most of cultural references. Rewatching it, I tried to recapture the storyline from the first movie. Most fans accept the first trilogy as canon, but when they made Star Wars, Lucas did not know there would be sequels. I think most of them thought that the movie would be a stand-alone space-opera that would never achieve nearly the success that it did. When I first saw Star Wars, I was a kid, so my conjectures about it were not well-defined, because I did not have the breadth of history that an adult has.
So, with that in mind, I tried to reconnect with the original story of Star Wars, and also re-imagine how the story might have played out if Kenobi had been honest. To do so, one must "unlearn" the history of the prequels and even episodes V and VI. Imagine if episodes V and VI had yet to be made. Where would Star Wars have gone if Lucas hadn't kept trying to second-guess his own narrative? This is a rather long train of thought, so I will break it down into parts.