On Star Wars and History Part 1

I'm going to try something new. My other posts have mostly been about presenting and interacting with facts and, while I've been researching many interesting topics over the past year, none have quite invigorated me to post (that being said, if you have not heard of Ambrosius Aurelianus, I would strongly recommend looking him up). As such, I'm going to try something new where I use a bit of modern media to help show how we as a culture look at history. Also, all pictures come from creative commons.

I recently saw the newly released, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," and a single line has been rolling around in my head. It's simple, it's towards the end, and it's meant to be a revelation.

Spoiler Alert!!!

You have been warned.

Read no further, ye who wish to learn this knowledge on your own.

Because creative commons doesn't have a spoiler banner...

It is a time of (fast forwarding)...

 

In what should be the last act of the movie, protagonist Rey and Vader-wannabe Kylo Ren are set to have a climactic duel. They stare each other down, both believing that they can turn the other to their cause.

"I know who your parents are," Ren shouts in a paraphrased fashion, "and I know that you do too." Rey gasps, tears come to her eyes. "You've always known, haven't you, deep down inside." Rey nods. "Say it!"

"They're nobody," she gasps. Ren nods.

"Just pitiful scavengers." 

That's right, Rey's parents are nobody. Not Han Solo, not Dancer #3, but nobody. They don't even get a mention in the credits. For all intents and purposes, they don't exist. Rey could have popped out of the ether, for all of the difference that would make.

What a disappointing revelation.

Even the emoji doesn't like it.

The problem is that it gives the wrong message. Rey should be able to stand on her own two feet. It shouldn't matter who her biological (more on that in a second too much of a tangent, so please see part 2) parents are, because she is awesome without them. She can be a someone or a no one, and it's her choice. Instead, the message is that the act of being a no one is something that must be escaped. Her strength comes not from choosing her own circumstances, but in escaping from them. Anything after that--joining Ren or leaving him--is merely the way that she achieves her goal.

So, what does this scenario have to do with history? Well, when I flip through a history book I find that it is filled with names. Some, like King Henry VIII and Cleopatra, were born great. Others, like John D. Rockefeller and Neil Armstrong, achieved greatness. Still more, like Elizabeth II and--I would argue, due to his reforms--Diocletian, have greatness thrust upon them. But, if history is the story of humanity, then the lesson is clear: either die great, or you might never have lived at all.

This moral, of course, is absolute trash. For one, it follows a very specific world view that prioritizes the power of the individual over the many--Rome would not have fallen with stronger emperors, rather than a myriad of societal problems--and for another, regardless of their impact, people lived. 

From reading history, a pattern emerges of good times and bad. Sometimes, life is good here because we are making it bad over there--a la the Belgian Congo or other forms of slavery--while other times it is bad overall in one area but relatively good in another--such as the century of plague in Europe that didn't have quite the same impact in America--and, quite frankly, I'm amazed that there hasn't been more study of the affect on Asia. 

Kind of like a heartbeat, except then overlayed by millions of other heartbeats until the whole thing just looks like one gigantic line.

Yet, despite everything, a complete recorded genocide is relatively rare. Attempted ones do crop up from time to time--the Holocaust is a prime example, but colonization and expansion tended to have similar effects on a smaller scale--but for the most part, the nameless lived. The ancestors of every single living person survived at least long enough to reproduce, and many went on for many more years.

For me, the hope of history is not that people were able to pull themselves into greatness but that despite the bad times, we as a species still managed to survive and find new ways to thrive. True, we as a species might be predisposed to look for the negative (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3) but if we can just embrace the fact that it's OK to be nobody, that nobodies still make a difference even if they don't get in history books, and that the rise and fall of nations and states have less to do with who is in charge and more with how life is being lived, I think (to bring this piece full circle and quite operational) we'll all find a bit more of the strength that Rey actually has, rather than the quality the movie wants us to see.