By Jared Feuer
Like an idiot fanboy, which I wasn’t, I bought a lightsaber from a street vendor outside the movie theater. It was 1999 and George Lucas had finally delivered what fans and civilians alike had wanted for fifteen years - a new Star Wars film. The demand was so high that people were lined down the street, but eventually we took our seats. The John Williams score started up, the familiar logo flashed across the screen, and people cheered. And then the movie began… with a trade dispute. Soon after, the audience was introduced to Jar Jar Binks, quite possibly the worst character in the history of cinema, and maybe all of arts and culture. It got worse. Apparently you could do a blood test for The Force. Everyone seemed to be a racial stereotype. The movie centered around a Ben Hur-style chariot race that was clearly intended to sell video games. It didn’t matter to me. At first. I walked out of the theater raving; this movie was amazing! It had a dual-blade lightsaber! There was a disquieting voice in the back of my head, but it couldn’t fight through the morass of my initial high expectations. Yet when I tried to explain to others and to myself about why the movie was so great, I failed. Gradually, like almost everyone, I came to realize: the movie sucked.
Two even worse movies followed and the question was unavoidable: How could Lucas, with quite possibly the easiest layup ever, miss the shot? The answer can be found in the fact that he didn’t think he screwed up - not at first. He thought he nailed it! Because there was no one to tell him that a Rastafarian sidekick was a bad idea. He had absolute power: the producing studio - his; the intellectual property - his; the screenplay, cast, final cut - all his. He had fallen ill with the disease which has since been named for him: George Lucas Disease (GLD). (There are actually two forms of GLD - one involves overuse of special effects and the other is myopic hubris. This essay is about the latter). As is almost always the case with GLD, the virus would go on to kill the host; Lucas eventually conceded defeat, sold his IP to Disney and scuttled off, his legacy forever ruined. (Disney has happily continued the de-sanctification, squeezing every dollar they can out of what was once culturally sacred).
GLD has a simple cause - an absence of other perspectives. The symptoms are incredibly stupid decision-making that eventually undermines the position of power that begat the infection. Because GLD is self-immolating, prophylactics have been used throughout history. Roman commanders had slaves telling them, "Memento Mori" ("remember you are mortal"). Monarchs retained fools whose performed idiocy gave license to confront the ruler. Presidents have Congresses, Prime Ministers have Parliaments, CEO’s have Boards of Directors, writers have editors, and so forth. But when the system breaks down and the figure loses the constraints and ability to see their own work with humility and objectivity, their human discomfort with cognitive dissonance takes hold. If possible, those who confront and disagree are removed while sycophants take orbit. Truth becomes what the patient wishes, the horizon disappears, and decision making gets worse and worse until Jar Jar Binks is created. Or Ukraine is invaded.
We can go past the Romans to the ancient Greeks to find knowledge of GLD in the concept of an Achilles heel - a vulnerability within a perceived invulnerability. The human instinct nonetheless rails against the truth that every person, ideology, and structure is flawed. What gives strength also contains the seed of its destruction and must be contained by counter-pressures. It is a hard truth to learn. The world is harsh and we’re mortal. When we find a means to give order to the strains of existence, we place all our chips on it. For example, we may discover that people accept our leadership, our religious or racial identity creates belonging, we have a craft or talent, our beauty creates admirers, we produce goods that others desire. When our respective means of creating existential order bears fruit, we buy in more and more. Our self-conception becomes increasingly fixed and we begin to see our subjective perspective as objective. We are reinforced when others share our view of how the world operates that just so happens to overlay with how we wish to exist. If they disagree, it cuts to the quick and we feel the unnerving presence of our vulnerability. At this point, if we have the power, we force compliance. A husband demands his wife agree with his decisions, a boss threatens to fire his subordinates, an artist gets a critic fired, a student petitions to cancel a speaker, a party member censors a delegate, a politician dissolves their cabinet, a dictator launches a war.
The truth is that everything has an Achilles heel. What works for us day after day will eventually encounter its vulnerability and fail. This does not mean that we throw up our hands and say, everything is subjective, there is no meaning, it’s all just power, and existence is nihilistic. If the majority of the time, our strengths, understandings, ideologies, patterns, constructs, talents, skills, and other means of interacting with the world generate positive results, we should use them frequently. We need not go through life afraid that our conceptual tools will fail us; in fact, if we spend our days insecure that our foundation will crumble, we will either collapse into helplessness or force others to provide unending reassurance. Instead we should invest in what usually works, maintain an awareness of other perspectives, and be prepared to identify and adjust when our meaning-making fails.
Society is unfortunately trending in the opposite direction from such a balanced approach. In fact, we are now facing the worst of all worlds with the emergence of an even more horrible strain of GLD: hypocritical hubris. One parent of this mutation is the heat-seeking missile of postmodern subjectivity that seeks to undermine any beauty or truth that gives existence form. Sex doesn’t exist, 2+2=5, Trump was re-elected, and on and on. The second parent is dogma, a refusal to accept divergence and instead presenting a subjective fallacy as objective truth. This behavior often involves gaslighting - convincing someone that their eyes are lying. Other times it involves bullying - forcing people to accept a perception through social and professional pressure. As Micah wrote, MAGA and Wokistan mirror each other in purging those who disagree. Go to a Trump rally and mention that while you support Trump, he lost in 2020. Or write an op-ed in the Oberlin College newspaper that while everyone is entitled to their gender identity, the women’s team should only be natal females for competitive purposes. See what happens!!
Perhaps this unholy hybrid of intolerant-subjectivity can best be represented in the sick candidacy of Robert Kennedy, Jr. He’s running as a Democrat but if you listen to the words coming out of mouth, it’s impossible to place them as left or right. They instead speak to a world where power forces its will and everything we know is a lie - and yet he puts forth his conspiracies as 100% truth. GLD has mutated. While society would previously call Lucas to task for his movies sucking, there is no solid ground to take down a Trump or Kennedy or Kendi or Carlson. These postmodern figures claim the objective reasoning argued against them is flawed because of the subjectivity (usually the identity) of the person making the critique. Then they go further and demand that the critic abandon their argument and perspective to accept a clearly false truth. This is the new terrifying strain of GLD that society is facing as postmodern subjectivity is paired with messianic dogma.
In our own lives, we can prevent GLD from taking hold and treat it when it has caused an infection by recognizing and taking joy in our beliefs and skills - the patterns we follow in understanding and living in the world. At the same time, we should endeavor to find and keep people around who live and perceive differently from ourselves. Pride and humility is not contradictory. We can confidently exercise, and even advocate for, our perspective while recognizing that it can and will take us down the wrong path if we follow it blindly.