Authentic Awakening Force

The theme for this year’s brilliant new We’Moon is quantum leaping from struggle into creation, just the kind of leap not taken by the new Star Wars film. In We’Moon 2016, Rhea Wolf speaks of spells that are ready to be broken, and Musawa tells us that Humpty Dumpty is a parable foretelling patriarchy’s fall. Their rich images resonate with what is actually occurring in this time of the Great Turning, in contrast to the Star Wars film’s flimsy nostalgia for what is now passing away.

The film, whose series has become a twisted institution, passes the baton of conflict and antagonism from one generation of action figures to the next. As I sat through it, I felt its laborious (and to many of us, boring) last ditch attempt to charge the waning patriarchal batteries of one more generation of viewers. Although it’s true that characters Rey and Maz Kanata excite girrl viewers with the first Star Wars  examples of fierce female authority without apologies, the tired storyline sadly forbids these characters from traveling any new path.

Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. The Force Awakens gives lip service to the idea of something fresh, but portrays only more of the same unawakened, shoot’em-up tropes. Human consciousness is awakening, but you wouldn’t know it from this gasping cultural icon that tries so desperately to keep us viewing the Force as—you’ve got to be kidding— a weapon.

Joanna Macy reminds us that the shift to a new “force” is under way, a reality that is gaining momentum around the world. After watching this latest Star Wars film, I needed to clear away the media-induced fog, so I returned to Macy’s words: “To see the Great Turning as the larger context of our lives clears our vision— and summons our courage!”

Let us summon our courage to see beyond the blitz of publicity, to view the Star Wars brand of the Force as the naked Emperor it really is, still asleep in the old ways. Let us, in our own lives, make the quantum leap into creating a new world based on values of nonviolence and intergalactic compassion.