Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there, welcome back
Speaker 1: as we continue our Star Wars series as we discuss
Speaker 1: a new Hope now unfortunately, only not unfortunately, I mean,
Speaker 1: the good news is that Ian and David were able
Speaker 1: to join us. But the better news is that hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll be able to bring in even more members of
Speaker 1: our fellowship for next time when we get to the
Speaker 1: Empire strikes back. Now, this was I think a useful
Speaker 1: conversation as we deal with a number of a number
Speaker 1: of topics. Sorr we' we don't really have a clear
Speaker 1: agenda going into this other than just to talk about
Speaker 1: new Hope and what it means, what it means to us,
Speaker 1: what we believe it means more more generally speaking, more
Speaker 1: objectively speaking, I think that Star Wars is definitely especially
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the original series, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that can be approached from a number of
Speaker 1: different angles, and I think that I like the way
Speaker 1: that this conversation went. You're going to see that it
Speaker 1: is kind of kind of free flowing kind of I'm
Speaker 1: kind of unstructured, but I think that there's benefit in
Speaker 1: that as well, in taking a generalist kind of approach.
Speaker 1: But I do think that maybe once we finished the
Speaker 1: original series, I might do a solo deep dive into
Speaker 1: kind of what Star Wars. How I would map out
Speaker 1: Star Wars existentially, how I map it out philosophically, especially
Speaker 1: in relation to the work of Joseph Campbell and even
Speaker 1: Carl Jung and even some of the great theologians and philosophers.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot to do there. But
Speaker 1: to do that, I feel like I need to I
Speaker 1: need to ride the rails here on my trains of
Speaker 1: thought and kind of put some more things together. And
Speaker 1: so I'll probably provide something really structured by myself once
Speaker 1: we get through the trilogy, But for now, I think
Speaker 1: that these are very useful and very very just enriching,
Speaker 1: very fun conversations that we have in a less of
Speaker 1: a structured way. And one last comment before we jump
Speaker 1: into this conversation that after this episode, we are going
Speaker 1: to be spinning off a third Mythic Mind podcast. So
Speaker 1: we already have this one, which is really our central hub.
Speaker 1: We recently began the Mythic Mind Games podcast, which focuses
Speaker 1: on video games from a Christian humanities perspective. And now
Speaker 1: we're going to be spinning off the Mythic Mind Movies
Speaker 1: and Shows podcasts, which is where you'll be finding the
Speaker 1: rest of the Star Wars conversations after this, and so
Speaker 1: you can find the Empire Strikes Back on the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Movies and Shows podcast and that is scheduled to
Speaker 1: be available on June thirteenth, and so it's going to
Speaker 1: be alternating every other Friday, alternating with the Mythic Mind
Speaker 1: Games podcast. If we get to the point where I'm
Speaker 1: closer to being fully funded, well maybe we can move
Speaker 1: things around. And eventually I would love to have weekly
Speaker 1: episodes of all these different podcasts playing at once, and
Speaker 1: I'll give you a reminder about that in next week's
Speaker 1: standard Mythic Mind podcast. But for now, it's going to
Speaker 1: get into the conversation that I had with David and
Speaker 1: Ian on a new Hope. All right, welcome back as
Speaker 1: we continue our Star Wars series, smaller group here. We'll
Speaker 1: wrangle up some more next time, but appreciate Ian and
Speaker 1: David joining us again. Seeing Ian for the second time
Speaker 1: today after we talked for the Games podcast this morning
Speaker 1: on the Old Republic game. But today we're here to
Speaker 1: talk about a new hope. You know, we don't have it,
Speaker 1: or at least I don't have a super clear vision
Speaker 1: of kind of where we're going. But really we're just
Speaker 1: delving into you know, what is this movie about, fundamentally
Speaker 1: to us or or more wide reaching. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: this is the story that launched an entire franchise that
Speaker 1: continues today, continues to grow, continues to develop, although if
Speaker 1: Jordan were here, he would certainly say that it does
Speaker 1: not continue to grow and develop. But obviously there was
Speaker 1: something here and that the first movie when it first
Speaker 1: came out is kind of this pulpy sci fi almost
Speaker 1: has like a B movie kind of feel to it initially,
Speaker 1: but then with this this incredible success that it had,
Speaker 1: you know, it just we just kept on going. I mean,
Speaker 1: we get these glorious things like the holiday special that
Speaker 1: you know, continue to keep it. Oh wait, sorry, it
Speaker 1: is kind of funny to be that because of the
Speaker 1: early popularity Star Wars, they had to brush that out
Speaker 1: to you know, trying to you know, keep the momentum going.
Speaker 1: Fortunately Star Wars kept going despite that attempt. But we'll
Speaker 1: we'll cover or at least I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: else will be masochistic enough to join me, but eventually
Speaker 1: we'll cover that in its own right. But back for
Speaker 1: New Hope, I mean, obviously we're doing very significant here.
Speaker 1: Lucas was doing something very significant here, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: get at least the attimpt to figure out what that
Speaker 1: is that he was getting at. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll just start by asking, you know, me and David,
Speaker 1: what is your you know, what is this experience, What
Speaker 1: is your experience with this movie? What in your estimation,
Speaker 1: just broadly speaking, makes this a great movie? A great
Speaker 1: starts with the franchise, and then we can just pay
Speaker 1: the conversation wherever it naturally goes from there. David, you
Speaker 1: want to start us off?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mentioned in our Kohor talk that I was
Speaker 3: three when this movie came out, and I remember with
Speaker 3: the family we we drove to a nearby town that
Speaker 3: was showing it to see it, and and then I
Speaker 3: mainly remember that the Tusken Raiders scared me when they
Speaker 3: popped up in front of Luke and scared him. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm I'm a be a fair judge because I
Speaker 3: have so much nostalgia through my entire life that began
Speaker 3: with this movie. But when you compare this just the
Speaker 3: quality of these movies to other science fiction but more
Speaker 3: more fantasy than science fiction, I would say we could
Speaker 3: talk about that later, but I would I would consider
Speaker 3: this fantasy and not really science fiction. But it just
Speaker 3: was so much better and seriously treated and well made
Speaker 3: than most similar fare from the nineteen seventies and earlier.
Speaker 3: And I think it really caused a huge shift in
Speaker 3: the popular culture and more of a that everybody would
Speaker 3: be interested in it than just you know, like the
Speaker 3: Star Trek fans and things like that. That it gave
Speaker 3: it a broader appeal that allowed for a lot of
Speaker 3: the kind of movies that we saw coming after this.
Speaker 3: But I do think just the sort of Hero's journey
Speaker 3: in it is a great way to begin and draw
Speaker 3: everyone in, and just to put it in such a
Speaker 3: unique and interesting setting.
Speaker 2: I've always loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously that Hero's Journey dynamic because something
Speaker 1: has often comes into Star Wars conversations with you know,
Speaker 1: Lucas himself citing you know, Campbell's Here with a Thousand
Speaker 1: Faces as a major inspiration, which is which very much
Speaker 1: deals with this idea of the hero's journey. In fact,
Speaker 1: I pulled I'm currently reading through the the Here with
Speaker 1: a Thousand Faces, and I pulled a couple of quotes here,
Speaker 1: and at one point he says, actually this was from
Speaker 1: an interview that he did with with Bill Moyers. So
Speaker 1: he said, the adventure of the hero is the adventure
Speaker 1: of being alive, right, So the adventure of the hero
Speaker 1: is the adventure that we all should take, that we
Speaker 1: all have responsibility to take, to let go of where
Speaker 1: you came from in a way of hopefully gaining it
Speaker 1: back in the end, which is a very very Christian
Speaker 1: idea and definitely an idea that you see in Carl Jung,
Speaker 1: you see coming out in Campbell, and definitely idea you
Speaker 1: see coming out in Lucas, that that Luke story is
Speaker 1: supposed to be everybody's story as they continue to put
Speaker 1: their life together, and that spans across the trilogy. So
Speaker 1: I'll try to limit myself to New Hope, but I
Speaker 1: do think that in addition to just the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: emerging sci fi with with fantasy, and I do agree
Speaker 1: it is first and foremost of fantasy, though it has
Speaker 1: the kind of sci fi aesthetics to it, that it's
Speaker 1: really it's that that mix of genre. Most fundamentally, it's
Speaker 1: that it's that existential tale that I think that we
Speaker 1: can all relate to, or at least that we all
Speaker 1: should be able to relate to on some level, which
Speaker 1: gives that that staying power. It's before I go off
Speaker 1: to far here, Ian can tell us something about what
Speaker 1: makes us a good story to you or objectively, however
Speaker 1: you want to handle it.
Speaker 4: Well. I saw this when I was about nine, and
Speaker 4: i'd read the novelization first. I think I mentioned previous podcasts.
Speaker 4: I was very much in the mindset that you should
Speaker 4: read the book before you watch the movie, and I
Speaker 4: didn't really understand what a novelization meant. So I read
Speaker 4: all the novelizations before I saw the movies. And it's
Speaker 4: difficult with these formative movies to see them as movies
Speaker 4: in the same way you see something that you experienced
Speaker 4: and analyzed as an adult. And so for me, I
Speaker 4: rewatched the entire trilogy a couple months ago, and it
Speaker 4: was really interesting applying all the things I've learned in
Speaker 4: English and reading various film reviews and film textbooks, like
Speaker 4: how the film is constructed, the various techniques used to
Speaker 4: create the shots, the writing techniques used to build tension
Speaker 4: and paid off, just the way the film put together.
Speaker 4: And I'm still I'm still wrestling with that because a
Speaker 4: part of me is still that nine year old who
Speaker 4: watched Star Wars and you know, I was Luke. I
Speaker 4: was in the trench with him in the X Wing,
Speaker 4: I was with him in the in the Death Star
Speaker 4: garbage compact. Like there's such a visceral connection you have
Speaker 4: when you see a movie at the right age, and
Speaker 4: you can really just immerse yourself in the world. I
Speaker 4: think if you look at other movies around the same time,
Speaker 4: in the same general genre, you have, of course, The
Speaker 4: Last Starfighter. That one gets cited a lot. I of
Speaker 4: course watched that much much later as an adult, and
Speaker 4: so it is not fair because I can certainly see
Speaker 4: some wish fulfillment and immaturities and storytellings in a New Hope,
Speaker 4: but there's nothing, there's nothing comparable to how weak Last
Speaker 4: Starfighter is in terms of pure wish fulfillment and teen
Speaker 4: boy he plays video game becomes savior of the universe
Speaker 4: because video Game is actually alien plan to train him
Speaker 4: to save the universe. Is Everything is way too convenient
Speaker 4: in Last Starfighter, whereas in Star Wars there's a few
Speaker 4: things that are convenient, But in general, I would say
Speaker 4: it feels like he sets up the rules of the world.
Speaker 4: For Lucas sets up the rules of the world at
Speaker 4: the beginning, and he doesn't create new powers or new
Speaker 4: technologies that solve the problems for our hero as he
Speaker 4: goes along. It's just here's the rules of the technology,
Speaker 4: and our hero has to work within them. And I
Speaker 4: think that's the sign of stronger writing and why a
Speaker 4: new Hope has lasted, where stuff like Lest Starfighter might
Speaker 4: have a lot of nostologic value for people who saw
Speaker 4: it at the right age, but if you watch it
Speaker 4: as an adult, they don't think it holds up anywhere close.
Speaker 1: I think that one thing that Lucas did really well
Speaker 1: here is that, you know, he talked about how he
Speaker 1: wanted the beginning of this story, that the saga to
Speaker 1: not be in the beginning. He wanted it to be
Speaker 1: let's just let's not spend time doing world building. I
Speaker 1: mean at least that will happen naturally, you know, as
Speaker 1: we tell the story. But it's first and foremost it's
Speaker 1: it's a human story. This is why the original trilogy
Speaker 1: is I think so much more compelling than say, the prequels.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this a little bit and in
Speaker 1: some of the other conversations, but that the original trilogy
Speaker 1: is very much a human story centered centered around Luke
Speaker 1: and obviously the characters around him, but especially in Luke
Speaker 1: his journey to reconcile with his the darkness in his
Speaker 1: past that he didn't even know about. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of you have to redeem your father from
Speaker 1: the great from the underworld essentially, you know, from from
Speaker 1: the belly of the Whale to use Pinocchio or I
Speaker 1: guess Jordan Peterson imagery there. But you know, then once
Speaker 1: you get to the prequels, we're dealing a lot more
Speaker 1: with the grand scale political angle. But I think that
Speaker 1: that's just another thing that makes this, I think, such
Speaker 1: a compelling story that it is very much it's a
Speaker 1: human story. I don't know, do you guys have any
Speaker 1: order to shoot off from here?
Speaker 3: Well, I just on the issue of people arguing whether
Speaker 3: it's sci fi or fantasy, you know. Robert Heinlein said
Speaker 3: that he defined sci fi as realistic speculation about future events,
Speaker 3: which is not what Star Wars does at all. And
Speaker 3: I feel like Lucas tried to to stop that up
Speaker 3: front with the whole a long time ago in a
Speaker 3: galaxy far far away, which is how you would start
Speaker 3: a fairy tale.
Speaker 2: And the way that he used, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the circle wipes and some of the interesting transitions
Speaker 3: that he does. I feel like he was trying to
Speaker 3: throw back to like old movie theater serials like Flash Gordon,
Speaker 3: things like that. Like he he loved those kinds of things,
Speaker 3: and he was trying to have fun until that sort
Speaker 3: of a story. He wasn't trying to speculate about how
Speaker 3: humanity would react to.
Speaker 2: You know, AI or the.
Speaker 3: You know, there's just the existence of these robots in
Speaker 3: the Star Wars universe who are essentially slaves, and they
Speaker 3: don't really deal with that at all. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you you know, if you mentally put Star Wars in
Speaker 3: a medieval or a tolkien Esque sort of a setting,
Speaker 3: the droids would have to be slaves. I mean, basically,
Speaker 3: these slave traders come through, they come out and pick
Speaker 3: the ones they want and then they learn more about
Speaker 3: what's going on in the outside world. That's a clever,
Speaker 3: a clever storytelling mechanic and way to bring Luke in.
Speaker 2: I think I.
Speaker 3: Think the opening and focusing on those droids is that
Speaker 3: was something nobody had ever really seen before. Like you
Speaker 3: have a guy wearing a full metal costume and basically
Speaker 3: a trash can doing all the acting for a pretty
Speaker 3: long sequence there until we meet Luke.
Speaker 2: And that was.
Speaker 3: Telling the story from the position of these lowly characters.
Speaker 3: That was something that Lucas took from the character Osawa
Speaker 3: film The Hidden Fortress. You know that he's kind of
Speaker 3: famously admitted that that's where he got some of these
Speaker 3: ideas that you tell it from the perspective of characters
Speaker 3: who aren't really the hero, and I think that really
Speaker 3: made for some interesting storytelling.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think there's also a sense of the spiritual,
Speaker 4: which I think makes it more human. A lot of
Speaker 4: I personally consider Star Wars more science fiction because of
Speaker 4: the aesthetics, but there's definitely a huge element of the fantasy,
Speaker 4: and I think that the force and the way it's
Speaker 4: connected to doing the right thing and fighting against evil
Speaker 4: and connected to a knightly or monastic tradition. I think
Speaker 4: it gives it a more there's more life in it
Speaker 4: than something like Doune. Like Dune is incredibly rich and powerful,
Speaker 4: but it's so cynical and so atheistic. Every piece of
Speaker 4: religion is seen as manipulation and man made, whereas the
Speaker 4: Force is an objective reality. It is a thing that
Speaker 4: does stuff that we can see. You know, You've got
Speaker 4: your Hansul who's like, you know, give me a good
Speaker 4: blaster any day. But you know, obi Wan can teach
Speaker 4: Luke to see without his eyes and block blasser buls,
Speaker 4: and he can you know, use his own lightsaber to
Speaker 4: defend people. Like the Force is real. And I think
Speaker 4: that's more interesting than you know, your voice of command
Speaker 4: caused by genetic manipulation in Dune, which again is not
Speaker 4: to say I think Dune is bad. I just think
Speaker 4: that there's a cynicism to don that's not present in
Speaker 4: the best of Star Wars, even something as you know,
Speaker 4: more gritty like and Or. There's a really great article
Speaker 4: by Hannah Long that just came out about how and
Speaker 4: Or points us back to the centrality of the family.
Speaker 4: The mother, the father, the son and those relationships instead
Speaker 4: of just being real politic and manipulation and murder, there's
Speaker 4: there's love that is at the heart of our struggle
Speaker 4: for justice in a better world. So I think that
Speaker 4: a new Hope lays all those found foundations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to go on the idea of the fact that
Speaker 1: in Star Wars, obviously the Force is something real, whether
Speaker 1: people recognize her and not. And obviously it can be misused,
Speaker 1: or it can be bent by it is, or at
Speaker 1: least maybe maybe can be it can be misrelated to.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's even a better way of saying it than
Speaker 1: saying the Force itself is bent. But people misrelate to
Speaker 1: the Force and in so doing they themselves become bent.
Speaker 1: To use some Lewis language there, but the fact that
Speaker 1: there is this this fundamental reality that everybody by nature
Speaker 1: has some access to. You know, you have your Force
Speaker 1: users who are the wizards of sorts, but everybody, by
Speaker 1: nature of being alive has a connection to this reality.
Speaker 1: Which I think that that is you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of times these conversations I've referenced Augustine. I think that's
Speaker 1: a very Augustine kind of Christian platonic way of seeing
Speaker 1: things that underneath all of existence, underneath all of life
Speaker 1: is this fundamental reality, and that good and evil comes
Speaker 1: down to are you orienting yourself toward that reality or
Speaker 1: away from that reality? And as you relate or as
Speaker 1: you turn away from the reality, you're turning away from yourself, right,
Speaker 1: you lose yourself to the shadow, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: it's at this point where we can very easily shift
Speaker 1: from the Augustinian language to the Jungian language, to the
Speaker 1: Campbell language, to the kind of things that really appealed to,
Speaker 1: to Star Wars, to Lucas as you put Star Wars together,
Speaker 1: and so as we followed that line of thought, I
Speaker 1: think that we are dealing with something real as portrayed
Speaker 1: in a fictional world. Like I think this reality to
Speaker 1: the fiction, that the idea that we are all bound
Speaker 1: together by this reality that we decide how we relate.
Speaker 1: To another quote to pull from from Campbell, when he
Speaker 1: says myths are public, dreams, dreams are private, and myths,
Speaker 1: I think that when we look at and Lewis actually
Speaker 1: says something very similar to this towards the end, until
Speaker 1: we have faces about how something about how the difference
Speaker 1: between dreams and reality is that wanted to experience individually
Speaker 1: once experience corporately, but nonetheless both can be real in
Speaker 1: their own way. I think that Star Wars is that
Speaker 1: kind of public myth in that it's it's so gripping
Speaker 1: because we recognize there is reality to it, even if
Speaker 1: we don't recognize what that reality is. I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that just speaks so deeply to
Speaker 1: the human psyche because even as the force is real,
Speaker 1: it symbolically speaking stands for something real in the primary world.
Speaker 1: So I think it's an interesting point and something makes
Speaker 1: it so compelling and even too yea go ahead, David, Well.
Speaker 3: When we have Han who doesn't believe in it and
Speaker 3: expressly says so, you know, but he he gradually comes
Speaker 3: around to it. I mean eventually it becomes unavoidable with
Speaker 3: some of the things I think he sees. Once you
Speaker 3: can see somebody move things with without touching them, I
Speaker 3: think that will have an effect at some point. And
Speaker 3: like the guy in the meeting with Darth Vader who
Speaker 3: just basically taunts him and had been his sorcerer's ways
Speaker 3: and he just starts choking him from across the room,
Speaker 3: that that should give you pause for how you're talking
Speaker 3: about these forces that you don't understand, which I always
Speaker 3: thought was funny.
Speaker 4: I also think that you have these these familial relationships
Speaker 4: kind of woven throughout. You've got Luke and his aunt
Speaker 4: and uncle explicitly, and then his longing for a father
Speaker 4: and obi Wan's We're not sure how much Luke is
Speaker 4: new at the time, but it's definitely false now a
Speaker 4: story of his father being a pilot and killed by
Speaker 4: Darth Vader and obi Wan kind of taking a father
Speaker 4: or uncle or maybe grandfatherly role to Luke himself. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of human stuff that I think drags you
Speaker 4: into the characters is they're not just kind of atomized
Speaker 4: individuals wandering around. They've got connections to people, and they
Speaker 4: form new connections to people, reformed the connections to them
Speaker 4: as the characters as we're going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's one of the values of telling such
Speaker 1: an archetypically driven story that it is so easy to
Speaker 1: make those relations. And you know, I can say that
Speaker 1: as I've been familiar with these stories as long as
Speaker 1: I can remember, I don't remember seeing a New Hope
Speaker 1: for the first time. I just I've always been familiar
Speaker 1: with it. But as i've gotten older, I relate to
Speaker 1: it in different ways. I mean, and going a little
Speaker 1: bit beyond a new hope. Since becoming a father, I
Speaker 1: relate to that Luke Vader connection or the redemption of
Speaker 1: the father by the son, like I connected that in
Speaker 1: a new way, not that my father is like Darth Vader,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, I just the point is
Speaker 1: that because these things are so real, I feel like
Speaker 1: as you become more real through age and through experience,
Speaker 1: they themselves become more real to you. And I think
Speaker 1: that that family angle is definitely a significant one for me.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you mentioned his first encounters with
Speaker 1: with obi Wan at least as their first encounters in
Speaker 1: the movie, and to put another notion that the fantasy
Speaker 1: tally here, you know, Lucas does readily admit that obi
Speaker 1: Wan is very largely influenced by Gandolf. That that you know,
Speaker 1: of course I know him. He's me like that. That's
Speaker 1: a very Gandolphian way of talking. You consider how he
Speaker 1: talks to Bilbo, so he was just like the way
Speaker 1: that he introduces himself to us, you know, through through Luke.
Speaker 1: It's very much influenced by by Gandolf.
Speaker 3: There and on whether or not Lucas. I feel like
Speaker 3: Lucas definitely was just keeping it under his hat that
Speaker 3: he intended for Vader to be his father, didn't didn't
Speaker 3: you say something, Andrew?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 3: I saw it on Twitter that that Vader actually means father.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's some contention about this in that Lucas
Speaker 1: makes that claim, but apparently linguistically it's a little bit
Speaker 1: dubious at least, but it might go in that direction,
Speaker 1: and Lucas certainly suggests that it does.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I feel like, particularly when Aunt Beru is
Speaker 3: talking to Uncle Owhen after Luke storms off and says,
Speaker 3: you know, he's just got too much of his father
Speaker 3: in him, and then Uncle Owen says, that's what I'm
Speaker 3: afraid of. I mean, he might as well, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: just like wink at the camera at that point, because
Speaker 3: it seems like, once you start putting it all together,
Speaker 3: that that was planned. Now, Lea being his sister not
Speaker 3: the plan, but I don't. I think he was definitely
Speaker 3: into the I think it was during the development of
Speaker 3: Return of the Jedi when he needed something for Vader
Speaker 3: to say to make Luke angry, and that's when he
Speaker 3: came up with that connection, so I think that was
Speaker 3: a late edition. But yeah, as a child, not understanding
Speaker 3: how stories are written and the purpose of why they're made,
Speaker 3: you know, to me, I never thought to critique any
Speaker 3: of this. Is like, this is what the story is,
Speaker 3: and I'm just going to consume it. You know, I
Speaker 3: really spent three years between six and nine wondering if
Speaker 3: Darth Vader was lying to Luke just to mess with him.
Speaker 3: But obviously, as an adult, you watch it and you
Speaker 3: have no question that, oh, what an interesting twist. You
Speaker 3: don't think that the next movie's going to come around
Speaker 3: and like, I was just messing with you. But for
Speaker 3: a kid, that's it is almost unfathomable that this villain
Speaker 3: that I had been so scared of as a child
Speaker 3: he actually be the main character's father.
Speaker 2: But I think.
Speaker 3: That's one of the really valuable points of the story.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to drag the conversations down too much,
Speaker 4: but I have to say the way The Last Jedi
Speaker 4: and then The Rise of Skywalker handled the same revelation
Speaker 4: about Ray, where they explicitly contradict each other for no
Speaker 4: good reason. I'm just even if you like one or
Speaker 4: the other. You can't like both because they contradict each other.
Speaker 4: So there's no there's no upside to the way they
Speaker 4: wrote that revelation. Unfortunately, and I say this as someone
Speaker 4: I like Daisy Ridley. I think Ray has plenty of potential.
Speaker 4: The character has written is weak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they spent the second movie convincing you and
Speaker 3: her that, hey, there's nothing special about you, but that's
Speaker 3: what's special about you. Anybody can do this, and then
Speaker 3: in the third movie it was but actually, no, that
Speaker 3: wasn't right. There really is something very special about Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, obviously Lucas he makes some tweaks along
Speaker 1: the way. I mean, I assume wouldn't have had Luke
Speaker 1: or vice versa, you know, if you knew how things
Speaker 1: going to play out. But obviously once you get to
Speaker 1: the sequel trilogy, they're just completely changing the fundamental message
Speaker 1: of like what they're trying to accomplish from movie to movie.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's absolute mess, right.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I do like to think, I know, I know the
Speaker 1: Luke Laya thing was just Lucas not having his mind,
Speaker 1: not not figuring this out yet that they're related. But
Speaker 1: I do I like to think that this is a
Speaker 1: nod to the Nordic stories of like there there are
Speaker 1: some some Nordic tales of like accidental incessuous relationships between
Speaker 1: a hero and his sister, Like there's some forgetfulness situation
Speaker 1: going on, like some some enchantment, some cover up, some
Speaker 1: disguise where this unwittingly happens, which I mean, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I'm glad that Lucas didn't push that ankle
Speaker 1: too hard. I don't need to see that on the screen.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: that that's some kind of nod to the old great stories.
Speaker 1: But I know that's just my own Headgamon.
Speaker 4: If we ever get Turned turn Bar.
Speaker 1: Adapted exactly, yeah, that Turnturnbar stuff is I mean, that's
Speaker 1: straight Volsung saga topics there.
Speaker 3: Well, h I do I love you know obviously, Luke
Speaker 3: he wants, he wants to join the rebellion, he wants
Speaker 3: to go out and do something and make a difference
Speaker 3: in his family's just trying to keep him close. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people can relate to those kinds
Speaker 3: of things of their parents trying to to have them
Speaker 3: play it safe when they want to do something more adventurous,
Speaker 3: and especially as a little kid, that that appeals to you.
Speaker 2: You know, grown ups don't get it. I want to
Speaker 2: get into this.
Speaker 3: But as he's learning about the Force and his father,
Speaker 3: and obviously the music plays a big part of it.
Speaker 3: But just the way when he's in the trench and
Speaker 3: he hears Obi Wan telling him to just listen to
Speaker 3: the Force and he turns off his equipment. Just that
Speaker 3: the rejection of the technology that is supposed to make
Speaker 3: your job simple, which is clearly failing, and then just
Speaker 3: using the Force and you know, calming his mind I
Speaker 3: always thought was a great moment.
Speaker 4: Interestingly, when I was in high school, I went through
Speaker 4: a curriculum called world Views of the Western World by
Speaker 4: David Quine. And I'll say a lot of good things
Speaker 4: for mister Quinn's selection of literature. He basically had me
Speaker 4: read the entirety of the Western Cannon in a digestible
Speaker 4: way for high schooler. But his take on Star Wars
Speaker 4: was very negative. And he still goes on these long
Speaker 4: rants about how Star Wars versus anti Christian and anti everything,
Speaker 4: and he gets really upset about how Luke constantly rejects
Speaker 4: droids and rationality, and I think that I can definitely
Speaker 4: see how that can go too far. I would say
Speaker 4: that definitely goes too far in in the Disney movies,
Speaker 4: where you do have a lot of plans that literally
Speaker 4: make no sense and only work because the writers force
Speaker 4: them to work, which is lazy writing. But I think that,
Speaker 4: as I said when I was earlier talking about how
Speaker 4: Star Wars are constructed, Lucas sets up the world. He
Speaker 4: doesn't break rules to make it work just for narrative convenience.
Speaker 4: I would say that, you know, as a Christian, there's
Speaker 4: no way we can control all the variables of what
Speaker 4: we're doing because we just have our limited perspective. And
Speaker 4: I think that we can look at him turning off
Speaker 4: his targeting computer as being similar to a Christian having
Speaker 4: to say, I trust in God, who has a plan
Speaker 4: for all of us, and I will do my part.
Speaker 4: You know, Luke Luke isn't closing his eyes. Luke talks
Speaker 4: about how he used to, you know, hit womprats which
Speaker 4: were the same size as the target from his thing,
Speaker 4: so it's not like it's not something he's done before.
Speaker 4: He has skills, but he also knows that there has
Speaker 4: to be an element of faith in the spiritual reality
Speaker 4: of the universe. And I think that's not the same
Speaker 4: as an existential leap of faith. I think it is
Speaker 4: a trusting in a good that has a tangible reality
Speaker 4: that we know about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even that, you know, Kirkgardian leap of faith,
Speaker 1: and you know, the leap of faith idea is quintessentially
Speaker 1: connected with with Kirkeguard. And even for kirke Guard, he's
Speaker 1: not nearly the radical subjectivists people think he is when
Speaker 1: you really get down to it end of the day,
Speaker 1: he actually he himself is very august Indian, He very much.
Speaker 1: And even Augustine recognized that even the faith that we
Speaker 1: have is not built upon our reason, but we actually
Speaker 1: reason out of our faith. You know, that is the
Speaker 1: almost consistently at least out of the major thinkers who's
Speaker 1: to the test of time. That is the pre modern
Speaker 1: Christian way of approaching faith and reason. That reason comes
Speaker 1: out of faith. Faith doesn't come out of reason. Not
Speaker 1: to say that our faith is irrational, but it is
Speaker 1: just that is the grounding for reason, and for that reason,
Speaker 1: it is beyond reason. You know, even Plato moves in
Speaker 1: this direction when he says that, like, if we say
Speaker 1: that reason is good along with justice and you know,
Speaker 1: whatever else we want to throw in there. If we
Speaker 1: say that reason is good, then whatever goodness is is
Speaker 1: this thing that reason participates in. The stands above and
Speaker 1: beyond reason. That's why it is in his allegory of
Speaker 1: the case, the sun is the good, the sun, which
Speaker 1: you don't see by looking at you see as you
Speaker 1: see by the sun. That's how you better understand what
Speaker 1: it is. If you stare the sun, you go blind.
Speaker 1: So why even like the most rationalistic medievals you're Thomas
Speaker 1: Aquinas or whoever, once you get to the endpoint of reason,
Speaker 1: which is another way of saying, once you get to
Speaker 1: the foundation of reasons kind of the same thing the
Speaker 1: top and the bottom, you start to approach something that
Speaker 1: your reason can't handle. And that's actually what gives reason
Speaker 1: a place. And say, within the very traditional orthodox Christian tradition,
Speaker 1: there is this idea that reason is not ultimate, that
Speaker 1: reason stems from and returns back to that which is ultimate.
Speaker 1: And so I would definitely reject the framing that star
Speaker 1: Wars is antithetical to Christianity because it stresses something that
Speaker 1: is real and true beyond reason. Now, obviously when Star Wars,
Speaker 1: especially in the later editions, starts to kind of move
Speaker 1: in the direction of maybe reason itself is something bad, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a problem, but the Christians have no problem saying
Speaker 1: that reason is an ultimate.
Speaker 3: My education is not in philosophy or theology, although I've
Speaker 3: studied a lot of both on my own. I have
Speaker 3: a degree in fine art, and I work as a
Speaker 3: videographer and video producer, so a lot of my insights
Speaker 3: on film and things like that are about, you know,
Speaker 3: the way films are made and the pacing of story
Speaker 3: and things like that, which, by the way, in I
Speaker 3: find it really fascinating that you read the books of
Speaker 3: these films before.
Speaker 2: You saw them.
Speaker 3: That there cannot be but a handful of people that
Speaker 3: could say that in the whole world. That is such
Speaker 3: an interesting way to come at the Star Wars films.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine what it would be like to
Speaker 3: have read the book before seeing these movies.
Speaker 2: That's pretty incredible.
Speaker 4: I'm curious as an editor. There's a lot of controversy
Speaker 4: these days from a feminist perspective because George Lucas's wife
Speaker 4: at the time Marcia Lucas edited the first film, and
Speaker 4: I'm wondering, are there moments that you can point out
Speaker 4: from your own professional and artistic experience that really highlight
Speaker 4: the craft of Marcia Lucas and George collaborating together.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know that about her. That's fascinating. I
Speaker 3: love the pacing of older movies that I think as
Speaker 3: attention spans have shortened, that we've lost. I was talking
Speaker 3: to somebody about that today, you know how like even
Speaker 3: in the nineties, the first Jurassic Park movie, there's no action.
Speaker 3: It's like all talking the entire first half of the movie.
Speaker 3: But that's how you build the tension. You know, you start,
Speaker 3: you may start with some action, and then you step
Speaker 3: back and you slowly build and tell the story as
Speaker 3: you go along, so that we come along with it
Speaker 3: and it's not just a constant bombardment. Like the Marvel
Speaker 3: cinematic universe has become where I think they've been enjoyable movies,
Speaker 3: But I can't really tell you much of anything that
Speaker 3: happened in any of them since the first Avengers film,
Speaker 3: Like it's all a blur from there for me. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I some of the things that I've noticed are that
Speaker 3: things that they added back in that they shouldn't have,
Speaker 3: Like adding job of the Hut back in to the film.
Speaker 3: I think that's a poor choice because it's better for
Speaker 3: him to be a name that we're speculating about until
Speaker 3: that comes to a head in the third movie and
Speaker 3: then we finally meet this villain that we've been hearing
Speaker 3: about that Han has been trying to stay one step
Speaker 3: ahead of through these three films. Also, just from a
Speaker 3: pacing perspective, a lot of the lines are recycled from
Speaker 3: the conversation that Han has with Greeto because they would
Speaker 3: never have put both of those in. They would have
Speaker 3: done one or the other, but because they decided to
Speaker 3: add those in later, then it just it drags the
Speaker 3: plot down for no real reason. So I feel like
Speaker 3: the original edit there especially works a lot better. And
Speaker 3: by the way, I'll say on Jordan's behalf, of course,
Speaker 3: Han shot first, because you're not a bad guy for
Speaker 3: shooting someone who is pointing a gun at you and
Speaker 3: has just told you that they're going to shoot you, right,
Speaker 3: You don't have to let them shoot first and hope
Speaker 3: they miss. That doesn't even make any sense, But anyway, is.
Speaker 1: There anybody who ever argues that Greeto shot first.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will defend the shooting of Greeto because
Speaker 4: I do. I do think it makes it more exciting
Speaker 4: if there's two shots happening.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the special effects that they had him shoot, he's
Speaker 4: like shooting way over here, so it kind of was
Speaker 4: the effect. I don't think it was necessary to change
Speaker 4: it all, but I don't get mad about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've redone it like three times. They keep trying
Speaker 3: to improve it a little bit every time, at.
Speaker 4: Least most recent. What I actually do get mad about
Speaker 4: because they have Grido's say, this really weird alien phrasem clunky.
Speaker 4: It's just so out of place from before. It just
Speaker 4: that what I do think is just why did you
Speaker 4: add that extra sound?
Speaker 2: Oh man?
Speaker 3: Well, and of course in the job of the Hut scene.
Speaker 3: Originally it was just some guy, uh, and then in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven for the theatrical re release, it was
Speaker 3: really bad special effect computer graphic job of the Hut.
Speaker 2: And they keep redoing that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, some of that I think was just so
Speaker 3: they could come up with a reason to have you
Speaker 3: come to the theater again.
Speaker 4: I've heard also there's there was a bitter conflict between
Speaker 4: Lucas and some of the the actors, and he didn't
Speaker 4: he didn't necessarily want to have them be included in
Speaker 4: some of the residuals, just because of how bitter some
Speaker 4: of those conflicts got.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Well, there was one funny edit that I recently learned
Speaker 3: about that I don't think most people have noticed, but
Speaker 3: and I think it's only in the most recent changes
Speaker 3: that they made. But when Grandma of Tarkin is standing
Speaker 3: there waiting for the death Star to explode, he has
Speaker 3: this one long hair sticking off the side of his
Speaker 3: head that is just backlit by by studio lighting, and
Speaker 3: it was always really obvious, and that hair is gone.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I can't believe that they went to the trouble of
Speaker 3: doing that, but they they actually did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't have any great philosophical commentary on that, however,
Speaker 1: it is it is interesting the things that they decided
Speaker 1: to nitpick on for these various edit touched. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what those rooms look like A conversations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course some of the edits were the
Speaker 3: limitations of nineteen seventy seven. I do think changes in
Speaker 3: the in the death start fight and to make most
Speaker 3: size Lee look more heavily populated. That's all fine, and
Speaker 3: that sort of makes sense. I mean, they did the
Speaker 3: same sort of things with later Blade Runner releases. It's
Speaker 3: just we would have done this at the time had
Speaker 3: we had the capabilities.
Speaker 2: Those kinds of edit makes sense.
Speaker 3: But if there was something that cut that they cut
Speaker 3: and it hit the editing room floor, I think they
Speaker 3: should have left it there.
Speaker 4: But I'd come around to agree completely with you on
Speaker 4: the Java seeing, you know, as a little kid seeing
Speaker 4: it in theaters, I was like, Oh, it's Jaba, It's
Speaker 4: so cool. But now I'm just like, kind of they
Speaker 4: cut him out and see stuff on the time, and
Speaker 4: as you say, the dialogue is completely recycled. Every piece
Speaker 4: of information you get there was in the Greed conversation,
Speaker 4: which already had the threat of life and death there.
Speaker 4: So it doesn't increase stakes, it does slow the action down.
Speaker 4: I agree with you on that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In in the nineties, a lot, you know, they were
Speaker 3: trying to make movies to be no longer than two
Speaker 3: hours and five minutes so that you could fit it
Speaker 3: on one VHS tape for the rental, And so during
Speaker 3: those years. Sometimes there would later be like a DVD
Speaker 3: release that had some scenes put back in. They're like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, it's a shame that those had gotten cut.
Speaker 3: But nowadays when you see deleted scenes, it's usually yeah,
Speaker 3: I understand why you cut that, because it just slowed
Speaker 3: the story down. Because we can make movies as long
Speaker 3: as we want at this.
Speaker 4: Point, often to our detriment. I feel like we really
Speaker 4: need to get back to that. Are like sitting three
Speaker 4: hours of the theater. When I recently watched Mission Impossible,
Speaker 4: that's a long time to sit.
Speaker 3: Guys, I heard that was a long one.
Speaker 1: M I don't know. I mean, for me, it depends
Speaker 1: on what I'm watching. If we're dealing with something particularly enchanting,
Speaker 1: then I know I like a long movie. I like
Speaker 1: the kind of movie that I don't want to end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think of the best of Star Wars. I think
Speaker 1: of Lord of the Rings. I mean a lot of times.
Speaker 1: I just recently came across, unfortunately, this Matt Walsh radio
Speaker 1: where he's ranting about the length of the Return of
Speaker 1: the Game, and I just entirely disagree with that that
Speaker 1: you know, I want Jackson to add more endings to
Speaker 1: the game. I argue there's not enough endings there exactly,
Speaker 1: we I mean, include scouring at least, just give us
Speaker 1: a whole movie on the scouring. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: can make three movies out of the Hobbit, give us
Speaker 1: a whole movie on the Scouring. And by the way,
Speaker 1: with the Tolkien connection, you know, to be fair to
Speaker 1: the changes that Lucas made over time, I mean, Tolkien
Speaker 1: made pretty substantial changes to his own books over time.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you can do that literature, then
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's a possibility in movies, even
Speaker 1: if we questioned some of those changes. And I think
Speaker 1: that Lucas has said something to that effect that he
Speaker 1: doesn't consider a movie to be done just because it's
Speaker 1: been released.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: To me, it feels like an artist going into the
Speaker 3: gallery and changing their painting that's been on display for years.
Speaker 3: It just seems a little odd. But yeah, I do
Speaker 3: love the extended Lord of the Rings movies and things
Speaker 3: like that, And to slightly tie Lord of the Rings
Speaker 3: in with a New Hope, you know, the movie Willow
Speaker 3: is really kind of like a an off brand Middle
Speaker 3: Earth with all of the same character types. As a
Speaker 3: New Hope stuck in it in a very similar story.
Speaker 3: I always enjoyed it as a kid, but it's it
Speaker 3: is funny just how much of a kind of a
Speaker 3: derivative mishmash that movie seems. I know we're not here
Speaker 3: to talk about Willow, but we probably will never have
Speaker 3: a show where we talk about Willow. So unless we're
Speaker 3: going to go through all the Lucas movies, we can
Speaker 3: do Howard to Duck after this if we want so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll let you leave that one. Well, we'll see
Speaker 1: see how my schedule pans out. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: any any other thoughts or any any of the questions
Speaker 1: topics you think or worth engaging with here.
Speaker 4: Well, something I am i'm curious about, kind of as
Speaker 4: a last question as we're thinking about it, when Luke
Speaker 4: is looking at the twin suns and you can feel
Speaker 4: his longing to leave, are there any specific Christian thoughts
Speaker 4: you have about the desire of a young man or
Speaker 4: a young woman. But I mean, Luke is obviously a
Speaker 4: young man wanting to leave his place of birth. Like
Speaker 4: that's that's a powerful scene visually and musically, but it
Speaker 4: strikes me, and it is so often repeated and so
Speaker 4: often referred to that there must be some deeper spiritual
Speaker 4: reality being referred to. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's he's longing for, that that movement
Speaker 1: away from adolescence, where there is that movement away from
Speaker 1: your parents, that that movement away from the sense of home,
Speaker 1: so that way you can go off into the unknown
Speaker 1: and in large sense discover who it is that you
Speaker 1: truly are. That you know, you always take some of
Speaker 1: home with you, I mean, for better or worse, depending
Speaker 1: on what that means for you. But it's when you
Speaker 1: are separated from that influence that is upon you an adolescence,
Speaker 1: when you really become yourself, when you become when you
Speaker 1: realize what it is that you've embodied and what new
Speaker 1: things you're going to pick up along the way in
Speaker 1: the wilderness. And so I think it's that long that
Speaker 1: everybody has to discover who they are apart from their parents,
Speaker 1: right apart from their home situation. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is an important part of the hero's journey, that
Speaker 1: we have to go off and to some extent create
Speaker 1: ourselves at the very least discover who it is that
Speaker 1: we actually are. And I think that's the longing that
Speaker 1: we all have. And I think that one problem is
Speaker 1: that in our culture today is that we very much
Speaker 1: have this delayed movement away from adolescents where you know,
Speaker 1: I teach college students and most of them still think
Speaker 1: that they're kids, despite the fact that they're very obviously adults'.
Speaker 1: But that just creates all kinds of I think, psychological problems, anxieties, frustrations,
Speaker 1: lack of responsibility, the kind of responsibility that people yearn
Speaker 1: for once they recognize is theirs to be had, and
Speaker 1: so there's part of us that always yearns to, you know,
Speaker 1: leave tattoo, eat and jump in the spaceship and go
Speaker 1: explore the galaxy. But when that gets thwarted longer than
Speaker 1: it should, it leads to greater frustration and greater anxiety,
Speaker 1: even if you yourself might be the one thwarting it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and safety at the expense.
Speaker 3: Of well, I mean, he realized that he wants to
Speaker 3: fight the empire. He knows that there's an oppressive regime there,
Speaker 3: and whatever his motives are for doing that, our desire
Speaker 3: to protect our kids and shelter them is another thing
Speaker 3: that's kind of depicted there. And you see that some
Speaker 3: more in the also polarizing Obi Wan series, which I
Speaker 3: largely actually enjoyed that myself. But yeah, we we want
Speaker 3: to protect our kids, but they that is what keeps
Speaker 3: them children, you know, like when they once they have
Speaker 3: reached the age where they need to accept the responsibility.
Speaker 2: That that they have as adults. Yeah, but that's.
Speaker 1: As a kid you identify with. Luke, what's your parent
Speaker 1: you identify with it's his uncle an.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, just stay here, I'll poy some blue milk
Speaker 3: and keep you safe well while we harvest moisture from
Speaker 3: the air. Apparently, is that all they do? I don't know.
Speaker 4: The good question of the economy of TA makes no
Speaker 4: sense at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never quite understood what it is that they're barbing.
Speaker 4: I read the whole Kenobi novel, which is set entirely
Speaker 4: on tatooed John Jackson Billity did his darkness to explain
Speaker 4: the economy, and I'm sitting here thinking, can't it is water?
Speaker 4: That was my last question, and I think that both
Speaker 4: you and David really gave it a good whack.
Speaker 3: I'll try to come up with more philosophically leading questions
Speaker 3: in the future, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, or you can, or you can photography.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, well with the Empire strikes Back cinematically in
Speaker 3: every way, I think Empire Strikes Back is a masterpiece.
Speaker 2: So I look forward to talking about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I'll look forward to that as well, and
Speaker 1: we'll make sure we we wrangle in some of the
Speaker 1: others as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Then we'll go ahead and wrap there. Thanks for joining us,
Speaker 1: and next time we'll get into the Empire strikes Back.
Speaker 1: Until then, the forced be with you, all right, Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. And again, if you want to continue with
Speaker 1: us in the Star Wars series, then for one, you
Speaker 1: can go ahead and check out the Mythic Mind Games
Speaker 1: podcast already as we continue some of our Nights of
Speaker 1: the Old Republic conversations, but also we'll be getting to
Speaker 1: the Empire Strikes Back on the Mythic Mind Movies and
Speaker 1: Shows podcast, which will be available on the thirteenth of June,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'll put an intro episode out sooner rather
Speaker 1: than later. And so if you want to keep up
Speaker 1: with that information, make sure you follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Andrew and Snyder or betri Yette. You can join
Speaker 1: our Patreon right go over to patreon dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind and become an insider and get in on
Speaker 1: some of these ground level conversations that are shaping where
Speaker 1: we're going. And we're going in a lot of really
Speaker 1: deep places, and a lot of that is driven by
Speaker 1: that discord conversation with patrons, and so join our conversations,
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Speaker 1: becoming a patron at any level over at patreon dot
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Speaker 1: become an annual Tier three patron, you also get access
Speaker 1: to all of my courses that begin within your term,
Speaker 1: So right now that would include Plato Stows until we
Speaker 1: had Faces, the Elder Scrolls in philosophy, and the Summer Alion,
Speaker 1: which will happened at the beginning of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: But that's it for now and until next time, God's
Speaker 1: feed I have always, at least ever since I can remember,
Speaker 1: had a kind of longing for death. It was when
Speaker 1: I was happiest that I longed most. It was on
Speaker 1: happy days when we were up in the hills, the
Speaker 1: three of us, with the wind and the sunshine, where
Speaker 1: you couldn't see Gloam or the palace do you remember
Speaker 1: the color and the smell, and looking across at the
Speaker 1: gray mountain in the distance, And because it was so beautiful,
Speaker 1: it set me longing, always longing somewhere else there must
Speaker 1: be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't come, and I didn't know where I
Speaker 1: was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt
Speaker 1: like a bird in a cage when the other birds
Speaker 1: of its kind are flying home. And now I will
Speaker 1: make answer to you, oh my judges, and show that
Speaker 1: he who has lived as a true philosopher has reason
Speaker 1: to be of good cheer when he is about to die,
Speaker 1: that after death he may hope to receive the greatest
Speaker 1: good in the other world. For I deem that the
Speaker 1: true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by
Speaker 1: other men. They do not perceive that he is ever
Speaker 1: pursuing death and dying. And if this is true, why,
Speaker 1: having had the desire of death all his life long,
Speaker 1: should he regret the arrival of that which he has
Speaker 1: always been pursuing and desiring. The longing of Plato and
Speaker 1: the control of the Stoics pervades Louis's retelling of the
Speaker 1: Cupid and psyche myth until we have Faces With this
Speaker 1: incredible novel, which he believed to be his best, Lewis
Speaker 1: demonstrates the tensions and in an ancient thought, and even
Speaker 1: more significantly, the limits of rational philosophy, which can only
Speaker 1: go as deep as the foxes can dig. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: under that and providing the life of that thought, we
Speaker 1: find the dark and holy places that blind our faculties
Speaker 1: of reason. What then, shall we do? This is a
Speaker 1: topic that we will explore after first surveying some important
Speaker 1: philosophical contributions in the ancient world that have had some
Speaker 1: significant bearing on Lewis's great novel. To this end, we
Speaker 1: will begin with Plato's Phato, which discusses the immortality of
Speaker 1: the soul and what those who love wisdom might expect
Speaker 1: in the life to come. And then we'll spend four
Speaker 1: weeks with some of the great stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor, Marcus, Aurelius,
Speaker 1: and Seneca. Finally, we will turn our attention to till
Speaker 1: we have Faces for the final two weeks with original content,
Speaker 1: and so this will not be the same as what
Speaker 1: you may have seen in the fiction and philosophy of C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis course. Each week of this eight week study will
Speaker 1: include readings from primary sources that will be provided as PDFs.
Speaker 1: Although these are all texts that belong in your personal library.
Speaker 1: You'll be provided with recommendations for secondary readings. You'll have
Speaker 1: recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing
Speaker 1: discord chats, and weekly live meetings to discuss the readings
Speaker 1: enrolled today by going to patreon dot com slash Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind and checking out the job. Or you can gain
Speaker 1: access to all courses, past, present, and future this year
Speaker 1: by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. I hope to
Speaker 1: see you there.