Was it really worth it?

Well the Broncos won the Super Bowl...but at the end of the day was the terrible price to high? For no matter what, we will never be able to unsee puppy-monkey-baby.

Reactionary Weekly endorses Ted Cruz for US Presedint!

Well, what did you expect?

So what do we know so far about Ep 8?

Things we know for certain

Well, all we know for sure is that at some point in the move someone is going to have a bad feeling about something.

things that are more than likely 

 

At some point there will be an asteroid field chase sequence.

Also the heroes will be split into two main groups for a substantial part of the movie.  At this point group one looks like it will be made up of Luke, Rey, R2 and Chewy with the Falcon as they explore that ancient Jedi temple where they will probably be joined by the old wise woman. Leaving Leia, Finn, Poe and co. to handle the first order and what not.

Probably at some point someone will get their hand cut off – hopefully not the lovely Rey – and of course C-3PO will lose his head.

Intriguing Possibilities 

Blue ghosts made their first appearance in Ep. V in the person of Obi Won Kenobi so it would be somewhat in keeping with the Lukosian theory of poetry for there to be a blue ghost in Ep. VIII, with the primest candidate being, of course, Yoda. After all Obi Won did say “Yoda will always be with you” and certainly some of his sage words would be meat for dark times such as these. Also, last I checked Frank Oz is still alive and since blue ghosts don’t have to engage in ridiculously over the top light saber duels they could actually use the original puppet…that’d be nice.

Another good possibility would be Rey’s mother, that way she could fill us in on some of Rey’s back story. Of course this is assuming she is dead, but I think that that is a pretty safe assumption since if she were still alive she would have retrieved Rey from Jakku long ago.

I suppose there is also Anakin but what would he have to say and to whom? I just do not see him adding anything at this point.

What about Obi Won? Played by Ewing McGregor? Well, I think he made the best of it in the prequels, but still his Obi Won does not belong on the same screen as Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker.

Han Solo? I don’t think so.

Or, there is “thinking outside the box”, how about a red ghost? Maybe Darth Vader? Hay, it would give John Williams one more hack at the imperial march – but spooky this time. It would show once and for all that Anakin and Vader are different persons occupying different regions of the nether world of the Force…yah, maybe not.

It would be nice.

Moving right along, what about Lando? It would make sense but I am afraid that if Billy D. Williams was on the cast list we would know it by now.

Oh, I hope not.

Boba Fett was in Ep.s II and V so I guess…but really the last time we saw him he was heading down a sarlak so we should not have to worry about him. I know he was wearing a jet pack and probably a few literal tricks up his sleeves but still the last thing we need at this point is an octogenarian bucket head mucking things up. RIP Boba

Well that’s pretty much what we know so far…and a good deal less, perhaps I will do an update in a year or so.

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

Oh, I guess I am supposed to say “spoilers” Star Wars Episode, bla bla whatever…

Ok, so who is this girl who has waltzed into that galaxy far far away, and stole our hearts and our childhood?  

Well the logical thing to do is list all reasonable possibilities and then examine the pros and cons. So let’s do that.

1.        1. She is Luke’s daughter

2.       2. She is Han and Leia’s daughter

3.       3. She is the daughter of some other person who happens to be strong in the force, perhaps a Jedi perhaps not.

4.       4. She is the product of one of those sith black magic – life from raw force power- experiments.

Let’s start with number four. Some have floated the Idea that she may be a clone of Anakin, I would consider this to be basically the same as the “Force-life” experiment but less plausible. Although it is possible to get a female clone from a male specimen it is still trickier, and why bother – what would be the advantage of having a female? On the other hand, a female result from the Force-life experiment is much more likely, indeed it is still a mystery where Anakin’s y cromazone came from.  I guess the pros would be that she has an uncanny knack for fixing things rather like Anakin which Luke and Lea did not seem to develop, but then that could certainly skip a generation. The cons would be, it was really lame the first time and would be lame to the Nth to the googol to the Nth to do it again.

What about her being the descendent of some random person who just happened to be strong in the Force? Well the pros would be, that has many possibilities – hay, there is a whole galaxy out there.  The cons would be, having a main protagonist that has no connection to the existing story would turn the previous six movies into prequels about where Rey’s antagonist came from. Think about it, the only character of the new generation that is unambiguously connected to the existing story is the villain…that’s not the way to revive a franchise. She could be from one of the previous Jedi, perhaps; Quigon, Obi Wan, Mace or Dukoo. This would connect her to the existing story but requires a lot of backtracking. First, none of the candidates had a known mate, but more important, would not Obi Wan and Yoda have nurtured such a line, if it existed, as much as they did the Skywalkers? The idea that such a line could be what Yoda was referring to when he said “no, there is another” is beyond intriguing, but I just do not see how you get there.

So how about Han and Leia? They are thoroughly entrenched in the existing story and are a known couple. Certainly I must confess that when Rey started flying the Falcon and then crawling all over the luvial dampers to fix the reverse power flux coupler I said to myself “she has got to be Han’s daughter” or, we are meant to think she is. However, Ben’s “father you never had” taunt was a bit much. The real  con though is Leia; although being her daughter would explain her string in the Force it is actually that strength that would seem to betray her. I think we can all agree that Lea would know it if she had a daughter. So if said daughter went missing say fifteen- twenty years ago, why have they not been scouring the galaxy looking for her? Maybe they thought she was dead. But Leia knew Luke was alive after the deathstar exploded, surely her bond with a child she bore would be at least as great, and would she not have recognized her Force signature when she saw her face to face? or at the very least be suspicious enough to search her feelings and grab a stray hair. But perhaps she knew and just did not tell her? But if not now, when? How could she send her long lost daughter on some damn fool idealistic quest to take an old fossil his light saber…Chewbacca could do it! Granted this is treating her more as a real person in a real world not an iconic character in a mythic saga, but still, how could she not know and knowing how could she not tell her?

So that brings us to Luke. Let’s start with the “like father like daughter” motifs; Luke has a model T-16/Rey has a pilot doll then there is the helmet – powerful, then of course there is Han Solo challenging her ability as pilot, being schooled in the Force by Han Solo, being schooled in the dangers of hyperspace travel by Han Solo, being offered a job by Han Solo and of course Rey can take care of herself wile Luke is “ready for anything”, etc. These motifs may merely be meant to connect protagonist to protagonist and not necessarily parent to progeny, but this is just the beginning.

Through the Force things you will see…

It seems pretty clear that it was the Force that led Rey to Luke’s light saber, but then it had belonged to Anakin as well so that in and of itself is not that significant. But the vision she has when she touches it is decidedly Luke-centric. Lea is not featured and Anakin is present only by an implied Darth Vader as a distant Luke screams NO! next we see a shot of Luke grieving, possibly over Rey’s mother possibly over Ben, possibly the two are connected. The shot of Ren and his goons is just to vague to be of much use one way or the other – sibling, cousin, either one works. then there is the shot of Rey being abandoned on Jakku.  Insignificant in itself, but her crying bookending the vision with Luke’s “NO!” is very evocative. The shot of Ren coming after her is future and does not belong with the rest of the vision, though it feels eerily similar to Luke’s encounter with Vader in the cave, but with a different result.

Your father wanted you to have this…

When Finn falls to Ren after their rather uninspiring duel, he drops the light saber, which lands pommel up in a snow bank (not one but two King Arthur references in one shot, good one JJ). Ren having evoked a blood clam to it – “that light saber belongs to me” – reaches out to Force pull it into his hand. But low, it flies into Rey’s instead. You could take the view that it was just a Force tug of war and she won. Um, her first attempt at the Jedi mind trick did not work and that was on a storm trooper, yet with her first attempt at telekinesis she beats a guy who habitually stops laser blasts? He may have been somewhat fatigued but it is not like she was as fresh as a daisy (no pun intended of course).  But if instead the Force is acting as arbiter of a blood claim there are two ways she could win. she could be his older sibling. however, she looks younger than him. Ok, perhaps she took really good care of herself on Jakku, where water is scarce and both sun and wind pound day after day…well maybe. But birth order would not matter if she was from the more primal blood line – that is Luke’s.  Yes, I know this all sound more like something from Dune than Star Wars, but if you are going to open your movie with Dr. Kynes and call it The Sleeper Aw…I mean The Force Awakens…just say’n.

Why wish you become Jedi?

What little identity Rey had was contained in that long series of marks on that wall on Jakku, but after her encounter with the old wise woman even that is gone. She is now on a no holes barred identity quest. Of course she took a brief hiatus from it to do the whole save the galaxy thing, but after handing that off to the legendary Luke Skywalker, she can fallow her own path on her quest for her identity…that is unless the two paths are intertwined.

Your focus determines your reality. 

After leaving the only two members of the quest who actually knew what Luke Skywalker looked like behind with the Falcon (perhaps to finish their long adjourned chess game) Rey climbs the mountain alone – because that is the way she must do it – to find a clocked figure gazing out over the ocean.  As she extends to him his long lost light saber he turns and looks toward her with an enigmatic gaze. Is he looking at the light saber and thinking “its time, I need to get back in the fight”, or is he looking at Rey and thinking “she sure looks like her mother”? we then get a camera angle from Luke’s perspective, the light saber is unrecognizably out of focus, Rey’s face is perfectly in focus…I believe our question has been answered.

Protocol? Why its my primary function…

If so obvious it is, why just tell us do they not? Well, for one thing coming out with a Rey Skywalker action figure before the character herself knows her identity would be somewhat, well, rude. Also, once it is unambiguously stated that Luke is her father then there is the whole can of mynocks about what happened to her mother and how she ended up on Jakku to deal with. These things certainly seem to me to be legitimate suspense for the next movies.

Always in motion is the future. 

 But what if they are planning some cheesy nonsense just to “surprise” us? Although one can never rule out such a possibility – Attack of the Clones – I think this time it is unlikely. Star Wars’ blue milk and full portions is repeat viewings, and a surprise works exactly once. We do not watch A New Hope 173 times because we think on the hundred and seventy third Luke might miss and everybody on Yavin dies…give us what we know is coming and do it well and we will return again and again, give us stupid tricks and nonsense and well…

But there is a force in Hollywood, and last I checked Disney is still a few billion dollars in the hole for this franchise, so this time I think the Force is with us. 

Through the Gates

Time, they say, changes everything. As Heraclitus of Ephesus put it, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” But time, it seems, often has a good deal of help from humans.
It was a nice spring afternoon in the Rockies, the sun had just set and many of the evening preparations had already begun when we arrived at the Denver Municipal Park. The ducks and other fowl (no doubt gorged on bits of potato chips and hot dog buns) were mostly settling down to their secluded roosts, just a few strays here and there looking for one last morsel. The fountain lights, some of them colored, had been turned on and gave an eerie glow in the foaming water. It was the time of day we usually would have been wrapping up and heading for home, but this was a night excursion.
We walked leisurely through the park, looking at the sculptures that were scattered here and there around the central lake. The natural sounds of night were only occasionally disrupted by a city noise strong enough to penetrate the trees and sound of falling water uniting with its source. There was one sculpture that I found particularly striking. It was of a girl, a boy and a young maiden gazing into a pool. They seemed unusually life like. It almost seemed as though their smooth flesh would be warm and supple to the touch, even though I knew it was made of marble. You could also feel the merriment in their eyes as the green and purple light, reflected from the rippling water, dappled their ivory figures. It reminded me of something out of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia, or one of George McDonald’s stories, or perhaps some more wonderful story yet to be discovered. If it ever is I would like to read it.
As we came to the end of the lake the lingering twilight revealed a magnificent edifice, the Denver Museum of Natural History. I do not recall exactly how old I was but I could not have been more then ten. As we made our way to the great granite steps, my mother pointed out to me where the amphitheater had been where she had watch performances as a young girl. This gave me a strange feeling of heritage. I belonged here. Beyond the heavy glass doors at the top of the steps was what you might call the museum lobby, complete with a dinosaur skeleton looming over you. But it was noble architecture surrounding it that gave the experience its sublimity. Johannes Kepler* is supposed to have said that science is “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” The temple like ambiance of the museum seemed to be saying something similar to me. After all, is not the second commandment to “rule creation”? (Gen 1:28) How can you rule something you do not understand? Science to me became something holy – an act of worship.
We were guided by thick velvety ropes of deep crimson, punctuated by heavy brass stands, to a special part of the museum…the Gates Planetarium. It was not yet time to go into the planetarium itself. But outside was an enormous pendulum clock. I don’t mean a sort of wooden box that might be in a hallway or corner. This was a giant pendulum suspended from a ball joint in the ceiling. As it swung its ponderous weight back and fourth across the floor it slowly worked its way up or down. Ever now and then (judging from the succession of standing and fallen chits) it knocked over a domino like chit. I gripped the cool steel rail, which quarantined the area of the floor where the pendulum swung, and peered in. It was almost to the next chit, how long before it got there? It swung, and it swung and then down went the chit with a click, and it was time to go into the planetarium.
Inside it looked somewhat like a movie theater, but with all the seats in a circle around the middle and tilted back about sixty degrees. It was also pristine; there was no lingering smell of greasy popcorn. I sat down in one of the deep blue chairs and leaned back. I was immediately surrounded by the screen; it seemed to be every direction but strait down. It was dark, even with the house lights on, so there was nothing to do but wait for the presentation to begin. At first it got even darker, then galaxies, nebulae and quasars began to drift pass. Floating in space, as it seemed, it was a marvelous journey. I think I was most impressed by the Tunguska event. They were playing with a sort of pseudo theory that the event was actually a mini black hole that hit the earth. It sounds rather silly now, but in a dark room surrounded by devastation it seemed plausible enough to be somewhat disturbing.
Once the presentation was over we solemnly filed out to where the giant pendulum was tracking the seconds as earth moved slowly beneath it. I was only slightly dizzy to once again be upright. Presently my father took us to the gift shop to get a souvenir. It took us a while to decide. These things were not the usual assortments of useless junk but had actual scientific meaning. In the end my brother chose a stainless steel gyroscope and I chose a small globe of the moon. It was just scale to a standard globe of the earth.
We went outside and saw the real stars shining above us. I had not yet seen Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, or read Roy A. Gallant’s Our Universe and it would be years before my first official astronomy class, but the heavens were open to me. And they are open to me still, even though the Denver Museum of Natural History is no more.



* There is some dispute as to whether Kepler is actually the source of this statement, but my research has found no credible alternative candidate.

Critique of the Social Contract

What justifies the state? For some philosophers it is the “social contract”, or contract theory. But what is a contract? Is it not an agreement? But what is to say that the contract is binding? It would seem that the contract requires something external to it self to give it meaning. Indeed the very notion of “justifying the state” indicates that there is a principal of justice external to the state to which it must answer. It would then seem to be the nature of this external principal that should be the focus of our study if we are to truly justify the state.
Unfortunately, Thomas Hobbes did not seem to grasp this. He supposed that we all start out as a bunch of troglodytes hitting each other (free for all) over the head with clubs, until some of the troglodytes get together and form a state by agreeing to accept its authority. But what validates this agreement? It cannot be the state, for the agreement must be valid in order for the state (or any principle there of) to be formed. So for the state to validate the agreement it would have to be and not be in the same time and in the same relationship, which is a rational absurdity.
John Locke proposed a means around this problem with the concept of natural moral laws. These laws being external to the state can thus be used to determine if the state is legitimate. The state is then just if it upholds and adheres to the natural law, and unjust if it does otherwise. So far so good. But then Locke had to go and drag democracy into the matter. You see according to Locke it is the majority that ratifies the interpretation of natural law. But this is leading us right back to the problem with Hobbes. If the majority is a product of the state, how can it validate that which is prior to the state? Or another way of looking at it could be through physical law. The speed of light is 300,000km/s if 99.999% of the population said it was 25km/h it would not change the speed of light 1m/s (although I suppose you could say it would etymologically change the meaning of kilometer and hours).
Jean Jacques Rousseau had a somewhat different approach. To him “man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”. How can this be? In a rather interesting philosophical maneuver Rousseau proposed that man actually freely submitted to the chains to increase his freedom. This is done through a sort of collective enterprise. Take a man living alone on a desert island. He may be totally free in a certain sense, that is he does not have to trouble about other humans. But he is not free to travel to the moon, or go to a ballet. For these he must surrender some of his freedom to a collective that then will have the freedom each individual lacks. Rousseau viewed society as operating under a similar principle. The individual gives up some freedom so that the whole can enjoy a greater overall freedom. Still it is relying on something external to itself to make it valid. It presumes that the freedom of the individual is theirs to give to the collective for its greater overall freedom. This may be but it is not demonstrated by the theory itself.
In the end all contract theories have the same problems, they assume contracts should be kept and that man has the initial moral capital to enter such contracts. Neither proposition is proved by the contract itself and thus requires something else to do so. It would then be that something else that would then be ultimate grounds of legitimacy for the state.

Are we alone?

SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is searching for something for which there is (as yet) no material evidence and in fact may not exist. They are searching for creatures fundamentally like humans, who happen to be from other star systems. Their instrument of choice is the radio telescope. But there is another search for extra terrestrial intelligence, it has been going on longer and makes only passing use of the radio telescope. Its object is not merely extra terrestrial, but extra cosmic, and it is not a creature but Creator. This Being is commonly referred to as God.
For philosophers the instrument of choice for seeking God is the mind. The Philosopher St. Anselm demonstrated this with his ontological argument. It states “God is that which no greater can be conceived”. Thus one cannot conceive of God as not being, for then one could conceive one that is greater, the God that Is. Is this evidence for God’s being? Well I for one cannot conceive of Being as not being, but then my powers of conception may be limited. Indeed is not Anselm limiting God by our powers of conception? At any rate this is not material evidence, for that we must turn to St. Thomas Aquinas’ cosmological argument. According to it God put the cause in cosmos. That is every thing in the cosmos has a cause and those causes have causes etc. Going back to the cosmos itself which itself must have a cause, God being the “first cause”. The cosmos itself thus becomes evidence for God’s existence. Is this true? It avoids an infinite regress of finite causes, by giving us finite regress to an infinite One. But important, is this One necessarily a theistic God, that is, is It a conscious, intelligent, being? To answer this question it looks like we must turn elsewhere.
The teleological argument (as the name suggests) seeks to verify that the cause of the cosmos (God) is purposeful and intelligent by pointing out characteristics that show evidence of design. William Paley made the comparison of the cosmos (particularly biological entities) and a pocket watch. But can we compare the design done by humans in a certain paradigm with creating the cosmos out of nothing? God did not merely have to design the eye, He had to design light. Paley’s watch may keep time, God had to create time. So can we glean anything of the mind of God from his creation? There one thing at least. All these fundamental characteristics do seem to be “finely tuned”. That is if they were but slightly different this cosmos would not be accommodating to life and intelligence, as we know it. So this could be seen as evidence for some One that is a purposeful Intelligence at the helm in the initial creation.
But if God tuned the cosmos this precisely, could He have not done even better? If the cosmos has a purposeful, intelligent, Creator, why is there evil? St. Augustine tried to answer this by pointing out that the creation is necessarily inferior to the Creator and thus lacks pure goodness. It is this necessary lack of pure goodness that leads to evil, or as Leibnitz put it “we are living in the best of all possible worlds.” But is this not rather unsatisfying? How can we be living in the best of all possible worlds if we can imagine a better one? Or can we? John Hick suggested we really try to imagine this world and follow it to its logical conclusions. Suppose my neighbor and I had identical houses, identical cars, identical possessions, even identical wives (not just looks but disposition etc) would there be any meaning in the proposition “I”? Furthermore suppose we could not be hurt either by each other or anything else, so that our actions became meaningless. Would this really be an improvement? And what of our thoughts in such a world, would they still be free? Could hate my neighbor (though there would be no cause) divorced from any consequences? Would this be good?
Man has been striving for such a world little be little since the industrial revolution, yet even as early as the nineteenth century the existentialist Søren Kierkegaard was wishing to return to the “Old Testament” when being a human meant something. And the existential leap of faith had more immediate consequences.
Similar to the existential “leap of faith” is William James’ “will to believe”, where he postulates that when we are faced with a living, forced, momentous choice, for which reason gives us no conclusive guidance, then we must choose based on our non rational of “passional” assets. Indeed one could say that the choice to use reason is such a choice.
One such extra-rational asset may be the mystical or numinous experience. The numinous experience is not irrational but it cannot be communicated through normal rational means because of the lack of a common reference point. It is as if the released prisoner returning to Plato’s cave tried to explain color to those who had seen only gray scale shadows. He simply would not have the tools to do so. Even if they wanted to understand what he meant, his words would be gibberish to them, or convey no real understanding. You have to experience it for yourself. But is even the numinous experience a direct experience of God? Perhaps it is just a slightly higher floor in an infinitely tall building.
Or perhaps we are looking at wrong as Paul Tillich suggests. Perhaps God is not at the top of the building but is its foundation, even the building itself. God is not a Being, according to Tillich, but the ground of being. So we cannot have a direct experience of God because God is the ground of experience. Or does this mean that every experience is a direct experience of God? Is the ground of inelegance Itself intelligent? What does it mean to be the ground of being? Getting back to Anselm, if God is that which no greater can be conceived, then I am clearly not God for I can conceive of greater, and that greater, being greater than me can conceive of one still greater. Is God then the ultimate conceiver? Would this be what Tillich means by the ground of conception? Or are we just making monkey noises about what for use is ultimately inconceivable?