Star Wars…in our own galaxy!

A few days ago as I was browsing through someone’s shared folder on the Local Network, I realized that I have never seen any Star Wars movies. The 6-movie series that in itself defines a genre in the world of cinema had been left untouched by me and, as I came to know later, by most of my friends. So I decided to give it a shot; to try to watch and understand what Star Wars is all about.

But this post is not about why I started watching Star Wars, but that once I started, what I thought about it. Getting down straight to the point, there’s a Jedi counsel in the movie whose primary motive is to restore peace and security in that ‘galaxy far far away’. But what struck me was that they had just become machines, working day in and day out to protect the so-called good people from the bad guys; much like our own United Nations that claims to be the good side and having prosperity of the human race, their chief objective. But the way the Jedi counsel was being shown dealing with problems all the time, it was clear that they were having a busy time; hence depicting the extent of turmoil in the ‘Republic’. 

I was wondering what kind of a world (not in the right sense of the word) was that which had unrest all over, exploiting the limited resources all the time of a force so strong, to keep things under control? Me as an outsider was astonished at the level of grief and distress in that world and had a strong repulsive feeling about it. But suddenly I realized that it was just a reflection of our own world. Our world, this earth, has become (or for that matter, has been) the home of such unrests and wars and pain and misery that Star Wars is just a metaphor of our own world. If someday, an actual alien ship arrives at our doors he would feel the same repulsive feeling towards earth as I had towards the Star Wars galaxy. What image would he take of us humans: a living race that knows nothing better than inflicting pain to its own kind and always in the hunt of innovating easier manifestation of death?

I was discussing all this with one of my friends and he had a strong opinion about all this. His argument was that if there is no bad, the good can not be recognized. So within our world, if we need to understand the beauty of a bright spring morning, we have to go through the cold winter. If not for the wars, we would never cherish peace as much as we do. But does it always have to be the extremes? Why for every plus, there has to be a minus? Can’t there be a neutral zero denomination so that even if we do not enjoy as much, someone else is saved from suffering. 

Take an example of our bathroom showers. We can very well afford to buy a bucket and use it for bathing so that we don’t leave water running all through while we are bathing. But just for a bit of a convenience, we would stand under a shower wasting gallons of water in a day here in Singapore while people in Africa and some other water-deficit regions, die because there is no clean water for even drinking purposes. 

Is this the positive and negative of life we are talking about? Are these the 2 sides of this f**ked up coin called life? Is this the true nature of life where for a part of the human race to move forward, the rest of it has to live in such adverse conditions or worse, die? As for me, it only appears that the human race, in its bid to be ahead in the race – a race with itself – has to compromise its own beings to the hands of death. As one part of us speeds towards the peak, the other part falls further down in the dungeon of poverty, misery and chaos. Unless we find a solution to this inequality, unless the human race can realize the need to stand hand in hand working towards the betterment of the entire race as a whole, this unrest and turmoil will find no end. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the sufferers of this ordeal.