ENDING THE COSMIC WAR

MY INTERVIEW WITH LUKE SKYSQUAWKER, A CHICKEN. REALLY A CHICKEN

First off, I don’t want to get into trouble for using a name that might be copyrighted. Fortunately, I can get around this easily, because a while ago I house sat for two chickens. Their names were Princess Layer and Luke Skysquawker. So, this interview is with a chicken, ok? A chicken. A. Chicken.

And, if you want to know why, please read the first post, the Very Brief Introduction to Ending the Cosmic War will give you all the context you need as to why I am interviewing a chicken.

Kia Ora Tatou and welcome to Ending the Cosmic War, with me, Karen Effie. And a very warm welcome to the archetypal hero, and thoroughly nice guy, back from a tiny rock in the middle of a raging ocean, and thanks to Rey who I am half in love with, we have the awesome Luke Skysquawker!

Me: Welcome, Luke, I am delighted to have you here, because I think you are the best example, I might even say the archetypal example, of one of the most important characters in the Story of the Cosmic War, the Saviour Hero. (Bonnie Tyler “Holding Out for a Hero” plays in the background - and then fades, thank god.)

Luke: Well, thank you, Karen you are welcome, but you misunderstand. I didn’t set out to do anything like that, I just sort of worked on instinct and luck, really. I was the right person at the right time. I didn’t get to save anybody. Come to think of it, I was the one who was saved. I went from being a reckless idiot to – well – to having the best people around me, the best advice and coaching – it wasn’t just me you know. From being a reckless idiot with a chip on my shoulder to really growing up in a hurry and doing what I had to do. That’s all.

Me: Sure, and that is what heroes always say, have you noticed? That is part of the Story of the Saviour Hero, humble beginnings, being a bit of a jerk to start with, being uncertain of their gifts, some kind of personal trigger that sets it all off. Did you think you were ordinary, at the start? Or did you suspect that things were not as they seemed, that your discontent was based on something, maybe you were special?

Luke: If I thought that, I was no different from many other very young and very naïve men.

Me: Oh my goodness yes, I mean when I was about eleven I definitely thought I just had to be adopted. How else could I explain being born into such an embarrassing family! So maybe we all think we are the hero; it is part of our individuation to be a bit grandiose when we are young. The difference with you is though, it was all true! You had the mysterious origin, the extraordinary family history, the early trauma, the raw talent in bucketloads, the chutzpah.

Luke: You know, I feel uncomfortable when you put it that way. Because it was a whole lot messier. It broke me in the end, you know. I went and hid on a rock and got old. I needed to. It was the right thing to do. I am pretty deep, for a fictional character.

Me: Yes, that is true, after a while the viewer can see the wear and tear on you. And, while it was family tragedy that made you, it was family tragedy that broke you.

Luke: The bigger, more impersonal fights are easier to handle.

Me: The heroes that brought me to the idea of the Saviour Hero were actually more shallow creatures: Bruce Willis in “Die Hard”, Chuck Norris, Denzel Washington, and that completely forgettable guy in “Avatar”. They are male, violence comes easy to them, they are totally focused, they are not afraid to go against orders, and they lead with their gut. They don’t think, they act. They just do what needs to be done. All those guys from the 1980s who start off avenging one death and end up saving America or whatever.

Luke: Well, America needs a lot of saving. But probably not by the likes of Chuck Norris. They are a different breed. They begin as flawed and emotionally stunted men, and they end the franchise as……

Me: Flawed and emotionally stunted men with a higher kill ratio?

Luke: They save the world by accident. “I only meant to avenge the death of my wife and now god dammit I saved the world”.

Me: Except that is not the point. The point is destiny. In the end, the Force works within these heroic individuals, and also in the world, to point them in the right direction. It is no wonder people believe in the Force. It has the right mix of the worldly and the spiritual. Like the Cosmic War takes place in the metaphysical realm, the war in heaven, but also in the physical world, in history. Your war with the Empire was a great expression of the Cosmic War. As viewers, we all knew that. It’s in the deep structure of our culture.

Luke: Can I ask you a question? When you were watching, did you always know we were going to win?

Me: Yes, I think I did, because if you hadn’t, it would have been such a different story. You had right on your side. It was a very clear moral tale. I don’t know why people dress up as Stormtroopers for children, because, like, hello, they were the bad guys! They were just bad guy cannon fodder. The story was always very clear that this was about good and evil. Your hearts were pure, like in the Grail myths, even if your personalities were at odds sometimes. Your side made had people making great personal sacrifices, willingly, showing their moral fortitude. You also had the small virtuous band of rebels, and when we see a story from the Cosmic War, we know that these are the ones we identify with; we want to be them, even as we know we probably can’t be you, or Princess Layer.

Luke: You’d make a great Ewok.

Me: I was the Ewok shaman!

Luke: Getting your head out of the eighties, I wonder about saviour heroes from outside of fiction.

Me: Maybe whistleblowers, like Chelsea Manning? Climate activists and environmentalists like Chico Mendes? Climate activists get killed all the time.

Luke: No, you need to think bigger. Donald Trump.

Me: Bigger than the climate catastrophe? Bigger than uncovering the truth? Besides, I’ve heard he is Antichrist! I have heard he is the precursor to Armageddon.

Luke: I keep up with the times even if I live on a tiny rock in a freezing ocean. On your particular tiny rock, you have weird ideas about religion. The Force is not a metaphor for God. The Force is The Force, it is within everything. We don’t believe in Armageddon. But there are a lot of right-wing Christians who think Trump is a Jehu, or a Cyrus. Those guys are heroic figures from the Bible. Cyrus was a non-Jewish emperor who freed the Jews from Babylon.

Me: Cyrus was a good guy, overall, and he was probably a Zoroastrian although it is not mentioned anywhere.

Luke: The thing is, Trump is not necessarily a good or moral person, but he is chosen by God to bring on the conditions for Armageddon. I don’t know why anyone would want to bring on Armageddon, but they do. Trump is a saviour despite himself, and you can see how that tracks in a lot of action movies.

Me: They do want to bring on Armageddon. They want to bring on the end of the world so Christ will return and they will have been proved right all along. So maybe they see Trump as a saviour figure, because Trump is a kind of cypher for whatever the QAnon people and the January 6 crowd want him to be. But he is not a hero. He’s not brave or virile or psychologically driven to do the good thing. He comes off like a bumbling fool half the time.

Luke: I think there are also people who think they are heroes, even when much of the world disagrees. They are like the scientists in the disaster movies who can see the disaster coming and no one believes them. They suffer persecution and ridicule for telling the truth, for standing up for free speech. They get demonetized. They can even lost their jobs. They also have their followers, their loyal band of virtuous rebels, I guess. Because it is an appealing origin story, the journalist or academic who starts off fairly ordinary (yet also stunningly intelligent and talented somehow in comparison with everyone around them), who innocently speaks the truth and gets hammered for it. You want to support a guy like that. They don’t disappear, they can get a heap of clicks for their opinions, they get sponsorship, and they can make good livings selling supplements and online courses, and so on, but because they run contrary to the liberal establishment, it still feels like they are whistling in the dark.

Me: So are we talking about people like the Dark Web intellectuals of the late teens? Or fictional scientists in disaster movies? Or both? Or the guy with the wild stare and the cork board and the bits of string?

Luke: I am thinking of a kind of distortion of the hero myth. It is a distortion that keeps the person who thinks they are the hero at odds with the society around them. I was a surly kid, for sure. I knew I could do something with my life, but it seemed no one would let me. Only, I didn’t stay like that. After I found my mentor, and did all those things, I kind of came back to society. I cared about the people around me and I wanted a peaceful and orderly world. I learned to be happy. I wanted others to be happy as well. It’s not complicated. I think these people who think they are heroes don’t get past the teenager with the chip on the shoulder. They get stuck feeling resentful. So they continue to look down on others and they puff themselves up. They also get stuck on the being misunderstood or persecuted thing. They can make whole careers out of being persecuted. The whole point of being a hero is to do what you do, even if no one else understands it, even if you have to do it alone, and then you come back into society a better person.

Me: There is the classic hero myth that Joseph Campbell described, and he was a fan of yours, by the way. The hero comes from obscure or humble beginnings. They may be unaware of their true lineage. They have special latent talents. They grow into strength with the help of special others, and they go off and do the great deed because it is their destiny. Only they can do it. King Arthur. Harry Potter. Sigurd. Herakles. You. So, Luke, what does a hero want, when they are on their quest or mission?

Luke: Well, dry feet and a hot meal would be nice. But what a hero needs, and what they want, are different things. A hero needs a bard or a minstrel. Or a mythmaker. Or influencers or pundits, and only the Force knows whatever they are. Donald Trump has many people who will do that for him. He says he will fight the deep state and they believe him. No matter how he behaves, only he can do it, be a truth teller, keep the evil out, build the wall, own the libs, save the children. He says what he says, and preachers and prophets and pastors amplify it and turn it into something biblical.

Me: Preachers and prophets and pastors, oh my!

Luke: For sure. You remember all those brave people who worked with me and the others to blow up the death star? Pilots and scouts and technicians, and allies in all sorts of places I never expected. Trump’s people are like that. They are just as morally certain that they are in a battle between good and evil. They are just as committed. They feel just as persecuted. They are just as convinced they will win, even as they call for the end of the world.

Me: These are the virtuous rebels I talk about. In our society who are the rebels, though? Climate activists call themselves rebels, as in Extinction Rebellion. They do rebellious things. QAnon believers and those who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 also consider themselves to be rebels. They did a rebellious thing, even if it cost them more than they thought it would. Extreme far right groups like the Proud Boys see themselves as rebels, that being conservative they are the real rebels against liberalism and wokeness. Who is the rebel?

Luke: There is the aesthetics of rebellion. Rebellion as a brand. We all like a bit of rebel. Ever since rock and roll. Ever since Luther smashed out a bit of Protestantism.

Me: I used to think a lot about what I called the problem of special knowledge. I have kicked around a lot of different groups in my time, and often they had special knowledge. They knew the truth when nobody else did. It was more than just a true thing or a strong opinion or a coherent world view that guides and defines people; it was a special truth that they kind of owned, like it was unique to them and the people they shared it with, and it might be esoteric, and it might be hard for others to believe. It took some faith. Some commitment. It might be a conspiracy, or a particular sect of Christianity, or a cult, or a movement. I was involved with Occupy Wall Street and a few of the people I was with had special knowledge. Here in Aotearoa, a mixed group of anti vaxxers, conspirituality believers, spiritual community people, and actual fascists, camped on the grounds of parliament for months in protest against mandatory vaccination, and other wider issues like government overreach and individual sovereignty. A lot of them had special knowledge. These folks have very clear ingroup outgroup boundaries. They know where they stand.

The problem of special knowledge is twofold. One problem is what to do with other people, with everybody else, the sheeple or herd or clay or infidels or sinners or whatever. Do you despise them, ignore them, try to convert them, pity them, or try to help them? All of the above? It is doubly difficult when you depend on those same sheeple for employment or goods and services, or they are family. Which brings me to the second problem with special knowledge. Special knowledge is hard. It is a burden. I think about my father. My father was an intelligent man with no formal education. He was conservative by nature. He adopted a far-right stance on many issues, and he also believed in a racist conspiracy theory. He tried to get that theory out there as much as he could. He was a frequent writer of vitriolic letters to the local newspaper. He had an email group of similar older white men who were equally aggrieved. He felt persecuted for his beliefs and for being old and white, and he was fearful of the future. He foresaw only decline and degeneracy, with women in charge of everything and dogs and cats living together etc. My point is that this special knowledge, this conspiracy theory, did not make him happy. It isolated him, when he was an introvert anyway. It frightened and saddened him. When he died, he was delirious. He believed he was not in hospital but had been kidnapped by the enemy and was being experimented on in a laboratory, and powerful people knew about this but were refusing to help. His burden of special knowledge was with him until the end. Even now when I think of it, it makes me sad.

Luke: I am sorry to hear that. One lesson is that heroes need to consider the people around them. If they don’t, they are maybe not so heroic. Heroism should not make you an asshole. Your quest, whatever it is, should make you better. The members of the band of virtuous rebels should also find that their own quests make them better. Knowledge should free us and make us better and happier. We also need to think about who our enemy truly is. It’s not those who disagree with us or who we dislike. When you are fighting alongside someone, those things seem like nothing at all. I guess we were lucky, our enemy was so obvious. I know you have your doubts about casting anyone as truly evil, because that perpetuates the Cosmic War. But the Emperor was. Truly irredeemable. That really was a true Cosmic War.

Me: Sometimes people who do major evil can be redeemed at the end though.

Luke: True. You need not remind me. That is a thing of true joy! As for “the end”, one of the differences between my Cosmic War and yours, is that we were not wanting the end of the world. The opposite. We wanted to avoid destruction. We had much smaller goals, such as justice and freedom. I don’t understand this headlong dash to destruction you guys have. It’s just morbid.

Me: Here is a post of Donald Trump’s from Truth Social, after he had been arraigned for the criminal offences he’s now been convicted of: “NOW THAT THE ‘SEAL’ IS BROKEN…I WILL APPOINT A REAL SPECIAL ‘PROSECUTOR’ TO GO AFTER THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, JOE BIDEN, THE ENTIRE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY, & ALL OTHERS INVOLVED WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR ELECTIONS, BORDERS & COUNTRY ITSELF!”

That won’t mean much to you. To us, it is a reference to the Book of Revelation; it is a reference to the destruction of God’s enemies and the end of this world. Trump’s persecutions seem to merge with the persecutions of his followers. Christians have felt persecuted since the beginning, far more than is evidenced by the amount of persecution they actually experienced. Persecution, and the end of the world, are baked into Christian thinking. It is a bad combination.

Luke: And I came here to be inspirational.

Me: You are! True heroes are all of us on that mythic journey. We all have murky origins. We all could use the occasional slap-down. We all need to learn to wax on and wax off before we can fight the bullies. We all need help from those wiser than ourselves. We all need allies. We all have a thing that only we can do. We all come back from the struggle sadder and wiser and hopefully able to pass something on.

Luke: Thank you. I agree completely, which is just as well since you called me out of your imagination just for this interview. Go well, and may the Force be with you.

Me: Thank you, Luke, and to my readers, and may the Force be with you as well. Ma te wa.

(Luke nods and smiles, and waves as he fades away. Tina Turner “We don’t need another Hero” plays in the background.)

Further exploration:

Jeff Sharlett “Scenes from a Slow Civil War” about Trump’s campaign trail is a well written and disturbing read.

Religion Dispatches has many articles on Donald Trump and Apocalypticism by sensible authors.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-apocalypse/ is one of many articles on this topic.

Joseph Campbell’s work on the hero myth has not dated well. However, I found “The Power of Myth”, an illustrated version of his conversations with Bill Moyers, in a secondhand bookshop, and it is nice to dip into. These conversations are most people’s introduction to Campbell. You can also watch them on YouTube.