Yoda’s
character of a wise teacher, well versed in the mystery of The Force,
became a firm favourite with cinema goers.
The series
pits galactic empires battling one another. Some of the characters struggle to
stave off falling into The Dark Side, whilst others fully embrace it.
In The
Empire Strikes Back Yoda warns in his unique inverted phrasing that, ‘If
once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny,
consume you it will.’
The Dark
Side and its path may exist within the Star Wars series; does it also
exist within our human character and psyche?1
There are
many that would argue that it does, giving it names such as evil, psychopathy,
narcissism etc, and strongly suggesting that individual people not only display
such characteristics but actually are evil etc.
Evil
people, according to this portrayal are full of malice, greed, selfishness,
cruelty, hate, and are highly likely to undertake acts of aggression and
violence. All, just because they are “evil.”
Yoda’s
warning is worth heeding. A cursory glance into history will remind us of
“leaders” for whom the dark path has dominated (their) destiny. Atrocities
of many forms have been undertaken at the behest of those with dark side traits:
witch hunts, the holocaust, the decimation of those in the Americas by the
colonising powers, genocides, the dropping of the atomic bomb on civilians, pogroms,
raping and pillaging, as well as more domestic terrors of family violence and bullying.
However,
we should remind ourselves that the dark side is not a force as
the Star Wars films depict it. The Star Wars films are stories,
and the dark side and dark paths are stories also. They are
stories we have been telling ourselves for millennia.
The
underlying story we have been telling ourselves is that we are separate from
one another. This story tells us that each of is autonomous, totally
responsible (or irresponsible) for our actions, behaviours, and deeds. This
story of separation has been told over and over within cultures that arose in
Mesopotamia and spread westward into early European societies and eastward into
the Indus Valley and possibly as far as ancient Chinese cultures.
It is not
a story that was told in indigenous peoples of the Americas, Oceania, Africa,
and parts of South-East Asia. The process of European colonisation spread it to
these places, however.
When this
story gets told over and over through generation after generation, as it has
been, then the story imbeds itself into a culture and the collective psyche of people
so that it becomes part of the worldviews, belief systems, and paradigms of those
people.
The story
becomes normalised, it “explains” what and how. The story legitimises the
traits of the dark side: cruelty, narcissism, brutality, selfishness, greed,
and violence. Examples of each of these traits being carried out are easily
dismissed as “that’s human nature isn’t it!”
The story
of separation and the system arising from it will also reward to some extent
the traits of cruelty, narcissism, brutality, selfishness, greed, and violence.
If we critically delve below the surface of many of our institutions we will
see this. Our judicial, economic, political, and educational establishments all
reward these traits to greater or lesser extent.
It is
little wonder then that such a system enables those with dark side
tendencies to rise to the top of these institutions.
Yoda was
correct when he warned that, ‘If once you start down the dark path, forever
will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.’
What Yoda
did not explain however was that the “you” in his warning was a collective
“you,” it was the “you” of an entire culture.
We must
recognise the dark side in our cultural worldview. Only then can we
begin to work, not to eradicate it, but to not reward it.
Notes:
1. Regular
readers of this blog will know that occasionally I have referred to Carl Jung’s
conception of the Shadow. Although linked, the Shadow and the Dark
Side referred to in this blog are not the same thing.
