The Quest
Journey. Power. Hope. Revenge. And the Quest.
After re-reading into the franchise and the brain of George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, these were some key words that stood out.
Modern myths that carry a generation forth. Stars Wars. Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter. Here are some of the worlds, that spoke the fears and dreams of the young men and women of an age. Although created in different backdrops, all of them seem to come back to what Joseph Campbell, author of Hero of A Thousand Faces, believed of the human mythology and the protagonist’s journey:
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life”
It is a battle with yourself, your fears and dark-side. Your search, your doubts and your pursuit, not to “get there”, but for the sake of “living.”
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Lucas, while onstage with Charlie Rose, said that the industrial revolution destroyed our notion of learning. Quite contrary to the modern beliefs.
While the latest literature and “advancements” focus on the sciences, the “how”, what is missing, more and more, is the “why.” This is not ever, given to you, whether from the days of Socrates to today’s intricately broken down functions that gear the well-oiled machinery of modernity. No, the physicist, computer scientist or the technologist does not tell us “why.”
We have to find out ourselves.
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Star Wars arguably was a double-taker of a story that was founded on the common ethos of the Cold War and Vietnam, of fear, power and dominion, married to technological advances that pushes film-making from analogue to digital.
Darth Vader, and a young, “new hope” of Luke, symbolizes so much of the zeitgeist. The Berlin Wall, the Communist dictators, and the ever looming shadow of the nuclear button. Lucas said that his mission was after the modern myth of the Western, he was to take the “learnings and values” of a generation and pass them on.
Thus he created a small hero, who has the heart to face overwhelming odds.
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One can even extrapolate to why we are here. In America. It is not for democracy, freedom or protection from tyranny. All those sound like ideals, and comparative truths, which may be different from regime to regime (perhaps France is more liberal and less censor-heavy on the speech especially given the American taboos such as race and gender), and are never absolute, but always shades of historical motifs.
We are not here for ideals, whether for the individual or the system. Lest we be like the gold-diggers, whereas the fortune smiles upon a few, zooming out we are all bound to fail. (Indeed Lucas’ mentality into Star Wars, was that he will persevere and make three failures of films. Thus he went to extraordinary lengths in pushing the boundaries of technology, i.e. Yoda.)
No we are here for a quest. And perhaps the system here, mighty and impenetrable it may be, is the only one in the world that gives room, and sometimes gives way, to the adamant quest seeker.
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Perhaps Lucas is scratching the surface, of what we are all experiencing, of life and its mysteries themselves.
We can add many things to describe “our quest”. As our goal-strapped minds are wont to — of life, of its meaning, of fortune, or of the true self. But the point is not what we seek, which may be all different.
The commonality is the journey. That we are all seeking.
