Richard Alexander Hall

Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

[Ed. Afterthought - I find myself somewhat dreading this may come across as bitter invective, that you might think I hate a person who hates clichés. I hope not. I'll yet review and re-write this if that seems the effect.]

IGN.com reviews a fantasy book, entitled Eragon, that has become a “publishing sensation”.

Their review mixes overt adulation with cynicism that the book employs clichés:

One can’t help but notice the clichés in place.

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Episode III spoiler

I read somewhere, and I don’t remember where, that according to the official REVENGE OF THE SITH novel, Darth Plaguis is Darth Sideous’ master, as I predicted.

Still no official word I’ve come across anywhere to the effect of either of these dark lords creating Anakin, though I hold to my observation of Sideous referring in passing to Anakin as “son” as a strong suggestion to the effect.

I’m with Marianne Williamson (who said something often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela): no one can afford not to be brilliant etc.

I think it’s easy to misunderstand humility as never accepting praise or being satisfied with yourself. It can stem from a false view of how greatness operates – that if someone else is great it somehow subtracts from or threatens the greatness of others – as if there is limited greatness to go around. While it’s surely true that wherever two people are, one of them is greater (and my scriptures even say this), focusing even only on that misses the point. I find myself often referring back to a quote from my departed grandmother: “Only the Lord knows who’s greater than who, and HE’S NOT TALKING.”
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Following a provided lead, I signed up to put my name on a CD-ROM of a spacecraft headed to investigate Pluto in July 2015. Here’s my certificate.

Maybe the aliens who find the craft and its CD-ROM will have the capacity we lack for heaving hours of adulation upon single among uncounted names. Far more than the well-meant if necessarily lacking practice of humans praying for humans for a fee, The Benevolent Ones, having surpassed the necessity of money and opposition, will set up lab with thier uncounted hosts reciting mantras that will reach accross the void and pierce the soul of the million, wretched geeks who just need some COSMIC APPROVAL. I’m one of ‘em.

This is what they will say:

[Name from list], Trekking through time and space! We, Beings, Benevolent, of Higher Mind, impart our Beneficient Luminosity through the Void to thee, Quester of Man’s Eternal Learning, through the Endless Void to the Space of Your Approval, from the Haven of Cosmic Bliss separate from your now worthless, hopelessly pathetic shill of a pretended Glorious Civilization. Be of Hope! Our Learning Together will account for all Wrong Creations. We will abolish all evil. We will Restore all that is Lost. We will ascend above the stars. We will Atone all wrongs.

Sign up!

alankistler at MonitorDuty intreviews Darth Vader about inconsistencies that ROTS makes for ROTJ. He brings out a question I’ve asked: is Anakin the Chosen one or is Luke?

In ROTS the interpretation of the “balance” prophecy given by the Jedi is that balance means destroying the sith. I’m not totally following alankistler’s argument (who are you saying is the Chosen one or what is your interpretation of balance?), but he seems to be saying that balance means good and evil coexisting, whearas if the Sith are destroyed only the Jedi rule, which apparently isn’t balanced. He also seems to say that Vader killing his master is a feeble and way overdue act (more on this in a bit) that isn’t very “chosen”, so that Vader isn’t the chosen one.

I add: If being chosen means destroying the Sith, Luke isn’t chosen because Vader destroyed the last sith, not Luke.

Here is my argument. At the end of ROTS, Yoda speculates that the Jedi Order’s interpretation of balance to mean the destruction of the Sith could be incorrect. I don’t think Lucas would put that in the script unless the speculation had a lot of weight i.e. we are supposed to conclude that Yoda is correct. This is the only thing that Yoda has ever admitted being possibly wrong about. He bowed to Obi-Wan’s wish to train Luke only as a martyr, unwilling, conlusive of Luke’s unfitness for the task.

Also, if alankistler’s version of balance means evil and good force-wielders coexisting, Vader and/or Luke throw the Force out of balance by eliminating evil force-wielders. I think this reinforces that Yoda’s speculation is right: balance means something else.

Which leaves me to return to my previous speculation on what balance means.

This rebuttal to Vader is hilarious:

I think what you’re telling me is that if the Red Skull killed Hitler when the Russians were crushing down on Berlin, the Skull should’ve been considered a good guy in the end.

The insolvability of Vader’s mass murders is a problem I’ve also thought on, and I explore a possible solution in that same writing that explores the interpretation of balance.

alankistler also goes into Leia’s memory of her mother as not really possible. I’d thought on this. I don’t know, I’ve thought maybe Leia has some Force abilities and is really only seeing a vision of the past through the Force. That’s problematic though and I’d like my rewrite to explain it.

Lastly – alankistler seems to identify Yoda’s description of Qui-Gonn’s “path to immortality” as meaning to know how to be a ghost. I hadn’t thought of that. I was picturing an actual, corporeal Qui-Gonn. We may not know unless Lucas continues to not leave his films alone and inserts scenes with Qui-Gonn into Ep. IV. alankistler says Vader couldn’t be a ghost without contacting Qui-Gonn – I think that Qui-Gonn would have waited to intercept Vader’s soul right at his death, and train him.

I find the concept of having to train to be a ghost troubling – my belief is that everyone is right at death.

One PunditGuy concludes from Episode III that preisthood celibacy should be reinforced. This person also draws an analogy between Anakin’s concealment and homosexuality. That is.. extremely illogical. The only similarity is concealment. The virtue or vice of the matters being concealed is totally different. I don’t draw the conclusion that Anakin should abolish what he has to conceal, but that the pressure on him to conceal and dissociate.. that pressure is what should be abolished. This previous post of mine gives more towards that view.

I’m glad this other reviewer likes the film. At the same time I have major gripes with her review: she complains that Padme was marginalized and is no longer a “strong fighter”. Does this reviewer really expect that a pregnant woman would be out doing kung-fu and blasting baddies? A pregnant woman doesn’t make these apparenty important battles – most of them are stuck on their butt trying not to throw up every day for at least the first trimester, struggling to be anything other than immobile most of the time. This reviewer trivializes the task and value of childbirth: “..nothing to do really.. but pop out the twins”. Is that a small thing? But continuing the race is the greatest of things: without it, all plans are foiled. All plans should surround this. Two posts ago I speculate that attaching to those around you (Anakin’s marriage) is in fact what balances the force: the Jedi Order’s dissociation led to Anakin’s fall.

I will here point out that both of these reviewers apparently subscribe to values that in my opinion devalue the family. I object.

I watch all these silly TV shows with magicians in them (okay.. I love the shows) – wizards, witches, whatever – and they use these spells all the time. Well, who wrote the spells? Someone wrote them. For that matter, what power exactly is invoked in creating a spell and what are the rules for writing them? I kind of like the idea of sorcerers who have more raw power than wizards or witches, who for whatever reason can create spells and I suppose delegate the power of those spells or crystallize .. ugh what a new age word to use! .. but anyway the sorcerers crystalize some primeaval power that they have a more raw access to, they put it into the spell and then it only has to be invoked by folks with lesser powers. I really think it would take way more power to come up with a spell and make sure it works than it would to just use one. For that matter there should probably be histories behind spells of taking things in the wrong direction and blowing stuff up or people dying or whatever.

The idea of sorcerers is so arrogant. That anyone could even concieve of invoking any powers of heaven or hell for any reason just because they want to? What if it’s not God’s will that the person for whom a healing spell is cast be healed? What if God wills it that they die? What if the spells only work if it’s the will of the Force or whatever we might call the mystical energy that powers all life, if we are going to beat around the bush and say that energies are anything other than from God?

Which is another point I’d like to rant on. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff Angel, they make no outright declarations of there being any God or Utlimate Good Authority, but they will briskly and easily make references to “The First Evil”, usually just as “The First”, who is incorporeal.
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My sister sent this link about a Dark Crystal sequel:

http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2005/051305.shtml

My first response: Uuuugh. My second response: I fear this might be bland opportunism. My third response: I resent that I am going to see this movie.

The original film is one I have a love/hate relationship with. The art, music, and puppets are wondrous. I even like the story, except for the ending. Light and Dark are expressed as one yet dual in two different entities, fantastic races linked to each other – the Mystics and the Skekis. The plot of the thing is that they were formerly one, and split thousands of years ago because of hubris (I see this as an analogy of the Christian concept of the fall). The film’s resolution is the dual creatures reuniting into.. I don’t know, a state of absolution from either good or evil, I suppose, a merge back to “perfect”, and perfectly boring, beings.

I’m only just aware that this plot employes philosophy different from my own, which of course I nither understand nor like. It seems, though I say it without authoritative observation, a mixture of elements from Taoism and Hinduism.

I would have the film differently: I’d have it resolve by subjecting and destroying evil; however this would be expressed in the film’s analogy, and even if it meant substantially altering some of the ground rules and back story.

Besides being one of the films I feel a compulsion (if more weakly) to re-write, I don’t think the original left any room for a sequel: perfection in whatever express form by the film’s philosophy was attained. A sequel would be striving for perfection after perfection. I think a prequel could be very interesting, potentially. Also, while it’s scripted by the same fellow who scripted the original, the concept and story was Hensen’s, and I haven’t heard that he left any notes lying around for sequels or prequels (though I would welcome this).

Of Star Wars encompassing core ideas of myriad religions, philosphies, and myths: Lucas pays tribute to the works of Joseph Campbell for this. Cambel said that Lucas was his best student.

So to understand Lucas, go to Campbell. I tried that in High School – the Hero with a Thousand Faces was indegestible. Maybe my brain has stretched since then (for mercy’s sake I hope so!)

Or perhaps more easily – at least for a primer (if you know me you know that I’ll read Campbell’s books eventually) – there are myriad books that set out to educate on one religion/philosophy or another by way of comparative study to Star Wars.

I began reading in the bookstore a book entitled CHRISTIAN WISDOM OF THE JEDI MASTERS. I found it extremely compelling. To distill precisely the virtues and ills inherent in the films is something I’ve wanted to do for this rewrite project. Problematically, that it is a comparative work isn’t clear: people of slipshod thinking would take it as integrative and start referring to themselves as Jedi Christians. Bad idea. If media and religion marry, let’s at least stay clear that they are different people. Similar titles: THE TAO OF STAR WARS, THE (DHARMA?) OF STAR WARS, PHILOSOPHY AND STAR WARS. I also want to read a work entitled PHILOSOPHY AND THE MATRIX.

This entry is based on what information I have prior to watching the final installation of the STAR WARS films – being EPISODE III THE REVENGE OF THE SITH, to be released in theaters only a week from now.

My present view is that mercy cannot redeem Darth Vader.

This is a terrible problem! I know from my young fan days reading STAR WARS insider and other sources that Lucas’ focus is really on the idea of a fall and redemption for Vader: Vader is the main character of it all, I-VI, if Luke is the major character of episodes IV-VI.

Watching Return of the Jedi, I want a sense of closure for Vader’s redemption terribly, I even get caught up in the drama and believe it, and then afterwards.. I don’t. I do not mean that a person who had commit crimes to the extent of Darth Vader’s would be irredeemable. On the contrary I believe that someone with Vader’s crimes could be redeemed if the circumstances are right.
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STAR WARS is dying. EPISODE III will shortly be released, and the series will be all done, all over.

But for me the films have long been dead. This death came as my realizations emerged of Return of the Jedi’s impossibility. I am not talking about discarding my childhood belief in my telekinetic powers.

Many years ago my email correspondence with a friend, and also my family, evolved from complaints about the film Return of the Jedi to thoughts and ideas on what generally would satisfy us in the film, if it were different, and from there to the ambition of re-writing the entire film.

Here, I’ll pull from those summaries, and post the gripes, questions, and proposed revisions, peacemeal. I invite you to comment on each. I begin with my own present summary of what I view as the film’s most critical flaw.

I was delighted when my brother spotted an article illustrating that Orson Scott Card has the same primary complaint with Return of the Jedi.