the last jedi

It's been a while since I watched The Last Jedi, but in the aftermath I was surprised by the starkly different takes people had on it.  I didn't hear too many people say they thought it was so-so.  I either heard people defend it as a great movie or point out that it was too far a departure from previous movies.

I recall hearing about online activity in reaction against the movie, but that's somewhat expected.  A lot of people treat the Star Wars universe as holy and untouchable, and so if a movie departs from what some fans would want to see some will react online.  Apparently, at least some of that online reaction was from Russian trolls, however.  So, this makes me wonder if the movie was actually more well-liked than I perceived before.

For my own part, I enjoyed almost everything about the movie that people complained about.

[Spoiler Alert!]

• Rey turns out not to have important parents?  Neither did Anakin, and that just reinforces that the hero can come from anywhere.  This is one I expect to be reversed in future movies, anyway.
• The diversion to the casino planet was a dead end?  We need some of those in our stories to increase the value of the strategies that aren't dead ends.
• Luke projecting himself across the universe feels like a bit too much?  There are probably twenty other force-related scenes in the other movies that one could make that argument against.
• Major characters are killed off too quickly?  Probably so, but it was gutsy to do that as well.
• Luke is a different type of character in this movie than how he ended Return of the Jedi?  I think his arc between the movies is fascinating because idealism to cynicism to realism to redemption is a compelling and realistic path.

I certainly expect that the director of this movie will not be doing another Star Wars movie because he painted future directors into too many corners with this one, but that's Disney's problem rather than mine.  I also think there were some scenes that were just weird (like Luke milking that animal), but overall that movie was potentially my favorite Star Wars movie thus far.

I fully respect that a lot of people aren't fond of this addition to the franchise.  It does make sense to feel this way because the movie goes in a different direction from previous Star Wars movies.  It could feel like the film is disloyal to the franchise in a way.  I just enjoyed the movie enough not to see it as doing some sort of damage to the universe of the prior films.

right vs left

My biggest complaint about political coverage in the media doesn't have much to do with a right or a left slant.  Instead, it's about nomenclature.  I believe that American political journalism has done its audience a great disservice in throwing around phrases like, "far-right", "far-left", "moderate", "conservative", "liberal", etc.  This bothers me, not because labels are somehow wrong, but rather because it implies a continuum that I believe to be entirely contrived.

If you ask the average Joe (or Jane) on the street about politics in the United States they would probably describe a continuum going from very conservative on one side to very liberal on the other.  In the last presidential election a lot of people saw the last four major party political candidates in the following way.

[Most Liberal]
Sanders
Clinton
Trump
Cruz
[Most Conservative]

If someone considered themselves conservative they'd probably consider Trump the moderate and Clinton and Sanders extremists.  If they considered themselves liberal (or progressive) they' probably consider Cruz and Trump extremists and Clinton as a moderate (or a sell-out if they were pro-Sanders).  Regardless, their view would be focused on where the politician fell on the spectrum, and subsequently who is the closest on the spectrum to them personally.* Thing is, none of this is really the best way to understand political viewpoints, and my personal observation is that it leads to bad things.

American politics, and politics in general, is really just a collection of buckets of special interests.  The phrase "special interests" is often used disparagingly, and sometimes with good reason, but there is nothing inherently evil with a special interest.  Ask that same general person on the street what their views are on various political issues and they're probably going to care deeply about a small number of them and more or less toe the party line on the rest.  If the party line changes on these periphery issues their position will change as well.  They may not even realize it.

So, I would assume that a typical person possibly has two or three issues that they care deeply about, and those issues place them in a special interest bucket (or possibly a small number of buckets).  Over time a feedback loop is formed where more people from one side of the supposed continuum end up in a specific bucket, or some high profile voice for the bucket happens to advocate for one side of the continuum over the other, and this causes people in the bucket to identify with that side of the completely contrived continuum.  It could be either end of the continuum or somewhere in the middle.  Someone who would otherwise have opinions for different issues all over the continuum decides that, since I'm a [Conservative/Progressive/Moderate/Etc] I should take this view on this issue because that's the view of my people.

I see some negative consequences to this.  They include the following.

1. Many people of all political persuasions don't look at any issues objectively, and even issues that they don't otherwise care much about.  They investigate an issue from the perspective of where they are on the continuum.  I've seen it and I've done it.
2. Many people believe they have to agree with people near them on the continuum on all issues.  That's just silly.  For one, there shouldn't be any shame in taking the position that I won't hold a position on an issue until I've had the opportunity to gather enough facts about it.  I've certainly held political opinions before I had enough facts to understand whether they were wise opinions.
3. Many people are skeptical of news sources that are from a different place on the continuum but are overly credulous of news sources in the same location on the continuum.  While it runs counter to human nature, the time we should be the most skeptical is when we agree with everything we're hearing.  I know very much the urge to tune into people who I know will tell me what I want to hear.
4. When many people identify people who are near them on the spectrum they overlook flaws in their logic and flaws in their character because they're on the same team.  I've made excuses for scoundrels on many occasions because I agreed with them, and that's a behavior I see across the board.  This year is like most, where there are multiple people from both parties who will win their elections even in the middle of ridiculous legal and ethical scandals.
5. Most importantly, when many people claim territory on the political spectrum they frequently declare themselves enemies of people who are elsewhere on the spectrum.  Everyone who isn't near me on the political spectrum must be intellectually or morally deficient.  I've been there for sure.

For my part, my motivation for this post is that over time I have realized that I don't belong anywhere on a political continuum.  I believed I did for a long time, and maybe I did in some contrived way.  I don't now, though.

Pick a politician and I almost certainly agree with them on at least one issue and disagree with them on at least one issue.  Maybe the issues I agree with them on are inconsequential enough that I'm not in their bucket, but I can still find an area of agreement.  The buckets you could place me in are all over the place.  Furthermore, like most politicians, my positions on some major issues have shifted over time as well in various directions, and some will continue to shift.  Most people would call this being a Moderate, but I don't hold a lot of the positions that I would expect a true Moderate to hold, so that leaves me believing the concept of a political continuum is woefully inadequate.

It may sound like I am saying that people should be like me, but that would be reading my intentions in reverse.  I believe that, deep down, the majority of people actually are like me.  They may claim a specific political identity, but that's just for maybe two or three issues that place them in a bucket rather than on a continuum.

I believe that if you forced people to explain their political beliefs on a variety of issues without resorting to platitudes and talking points, and forced them to acknowledge the issues they don't really hold a firm position on, you'd find a majority of people who don't fit comfortably on the continuum.  You'd find that everyone is all over the map on the various issues that they actually hold informed opinions on, and you'd also find that people don't care about a lot of issues they claim to that identifies them on one side or the other.  I believe that most Americans are more alike politically than they are different, but most just don't realize it.  We're not all that different, you, I, and most everyone else in this country.

* I'll add that if the person you were asking was a Libertarian they might describe a quadrant instead of a continuum, but the concept is still the same--just with an extra dimension. 

defensiveness and boundaries

One of my biggest weaknesses that I'm aware of is that I get defensive quickly and easily.  I think that most people have a threshold at which they get defensive, but mine is more sensitive than most others.  I've been working to correct this for years, but it has been slow going.

I think a big reason I get defensive is that I envision being held accountable for things beyond the bounds of what I should be held accountable for, and probably beyond the bounds of what I will be held accountable for.  Someone expresses displeasure in some way, and my gut reaction is to make that a problem I'm responsible for.  Sometimes it's not actually a problem that needs to be solved.  Sometimes it's a problem, but it's not my problem.  Sometimes the issue is less severe than my gut wants to make it.  In most cases, defensiveness is not called for, and I'm getting better at it--but slowly!

Part of what is hard about correcting defensiveness is knowing what the proper bounds of accountability are.  If the lines are blurry for what I'm responsible for, I'll assume that I'm responsible for everything in that grey area.  A lot of the time when I go above and beyond the call of duty or when I over-prepare for things it's because I'm not sure where that line is, and it's far safer, though more exhausting, to take more responsibility than not enough.

This is something that I don't think gets addressed enough.  People will frequently talk about the importance of setting boundaries, but many times those same people talk about how important it is to chip in and do your part.  Implicit in those statements is that the audience will understand where the boundaries are for what is my responsibility and what is not.  It's not a question of being unwilling to set boundaries, but rather a question of understanding where those boundaries should really be.

I hear a lot of people talk about the 80/20 rule (I've done it myself).  Maybe a better way of looking at the 80/20 rule is that the people in those two groups have different standards for where their boundaries should be, and perhaps both groups aren't entirely right.

confederate flags

Every once in a while I'll start to type a blog post and not really feel right about publishing it.  Ten or so years ago one of those posts related to a semi truck pulling a trailer I saw on the highway.  On the back it sported a Confederate flag and a verse from Psalms.  At the time, my irritation was in the fact that the love for these things could be conflated.  In my life, experience, and reading of Scripture, they are incompatible with each other.  That is still something that irritates me, but I never felt like my thoughts were developed well enough to post on it.

I've had another observation lately.  I don't live in the deep South, but I've still seen more Confederate flags around than I remember seeing before.  I don't know if this is just a situation of me noticing them more than before or there actually being more than before.  Maybe it's a bit of both.

I know there's been a debate for years around whether the flag is important for honoring past generations or if it's just racist, but I'll be honest that I don't understand how it isn't just racist.  If honoring the past requires pretending that the sins of the past weren't sins, or requires venerating the symbols of those sins, perhaps it is better not to honor that aspect of the past.

I do say a lot of political things here, but this is the one I'm the most concerned will cause problems for me.  Most people don't care about the Confederate flag, but those who do really do.  I'm not attempting to attack a region or cultural identity, but there's no way to discuss this without sounding like I am to a certain group of people.  Nikki Haley made it a bit easier to broadcast that view a few years back, but I could see this getting push-back in some quarters.

This brings me to a final observation that is difficult for me.  For a stretch of time when I was a kid "The Dukes of Hazard" was my favorite show.  As a six-year-old I couldn't go over a hill in the car without yelling "Yeeeee-haw!" like the hero Duke boys jumping over some obstacle in their Dodge Charger, the--uh--General Lee.  Which had a Confederate flag on the top.  And whose car horn played Dixie.  The 80s certainly was a far different time!