Who are we in the Star Wars universe?
What role in the Star Wars universe best describes you, your nation, or your culture? I think most people would like to think of themselves as Luke, Leia, or someone in the rebellion against the empire. Or someone outside that conflict, maybe just living on their own.
Let’s see.
Context: A culture living unsustainably means it will run out of at least one necessary resource. If it can trade for its depleting resources with another culture mutually voluntarily so neither runs out, I would call them both sustainable.
An unsustainable culture running out of any necessary resource that can’t trade for them mutually voluntarily can
- Return to sustainability and not run out
- Collapse
- Take the resource from another culture
Humans lived sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years until about 10,000 years ago. Today nearly no one lives sustainably. We nearly all use resources unsustainably. Any use of plastic or fossil fuels means you’re polluting other people’s lives and stuff. Ocean plastic that washes up on other people’s beaches or ends up in their food supply isn’t mutually voluntary. It’s effectively an act of imperialism. Most cash crops use up resources.
I don’t think anyone sees themselves as Darth Vader. I don’t see any of us as Darth Vader either. He’s the bad guy, but he’s not acting alone. He is the front man for the Empire. He gains power from profits from imperial trade.
People living unsustainably are driving the Empire to expand. We are paying Darth Vader’s salary.
In the Star Wars universe, we who live unsustainably are the citizens of the Empire buying the goods: are we not driving the market compelling the Empire’s imperialism? Are we not funding the Emperor and Darth Vader?
They don’t show up in the movies (at least the five or six I’ve seen; I don’t know how many they’ve made by now), but citizens of the Empire are critical to the story. They are driving the Empire. Their unsustainability is driving the whole movie. Without them, no one would have to rebel.
Our roles in other works about empire
In Heart of Darkness, are we not the home market—that is, Belgians and Europeans—funding Colonel Kurtz?
In The Matrix, are we not the people in the Matrix who keep it running?
In The Act of Killing, are we not funding the killing regime? Actually, Americans nearly literally are, since the CIA backed them and our taxes pay for the CIA.
In the Atlantic Slave Trade, are we not the Europeans buying sugar and other slave-produced goods?
We can change our role
We don’t have to keep funding imperial conquest and its cruel results. We can return to living sustainably. It’s not returning to the Stone Age. It’s returning to humanity.
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