When I first saw 'Star Wars', I wasn't impressed: weak story lines, bad acting, loose ends, not funny nor a thriller. The worst aspect, in my view, was the binary world of good (the Jedis) and bad (the Siths). Granted, Anakin turned into Darth Vader, but ultimately, it was a simple world.
I have to come back from this initial point of view. There is something very appealing in the seeming opposition, which moral philosophers or psychologists like Jonathan Haidt refer to: both sides believe they do it for the better. The Siths believe in manipulation and force, so they assume the people are inherently bad and the world is naturally in a state of chaos, the Jedi's believe in freedom and order, assuming the people are inherently good and the world is naturally in a state of balance. But in the end, both strive for order, and both find personal pride and joy in their powers. In that sense, they are both morally good, and are we ready to say the Siths' world view is wrong?
I learned about the Dark Side of international politics from close enough, and it took me a full day to remember an analysis I made earlier to understand the dynamics in society today. Importantly, the dynamics play out at two levels, the societal level and the personal level, and the issue is that they get mixed up.
Humans have a tendency to look for conflict. We like to quarrel, gossip, envy, defy. Of all animals, we are the species that undertakes challenges that are larger than life. It requires us to collaborate at an abstract level beyond the group, i.e. we create culture. This is supported by art and religion, and it ensured that despite the natural 'bad' state, we are a very successful breed.
Now at some point, we become 'higher level individuals', meaning our personal pitfalls - which lead to culture - will attack culture when aggregated. Direct democracy, populist parties, social media, propaganda and sensationalism try to exploit this human psychological shortcut. Instead of enlarging the cultural sphere, we look for oppositions and there is a clash of civilisations within and between cultures.
We may instead call for peace, but that idea is not attractive to our conflict-oriented minds. It goes even deeper than opinion making. Secret services use sex to blackmail people they need to control or seduce people they need to engage. Through sex (and similarly through alcohol or other drugs), they also exploit the shortcut of levelling up primitive, personal behaviour, to the political level. It tends to involve power and even force, which is animalistic and certainly not erased from mankind. The result of fear (e.g. by the black race or muslims) or seduction, is that cultural solutions (e.g. a call for respect, integrity, formal rules) will be rejected instinctively. To cope with this paradox, we should be able to separate mind and body, and to accept beastiality when lowering down to the level where culture does not reach. This is a lesser contradiction compared to the right wing rhetoric that norms and decency are absolute and that the foreign barbarians are unable to respect them, as if the same reasoning is not made by them. The trick is to compare strangers at their worst or most primitive with ourselves at our best or most civilized. It happens all the time and it is turning our free, western society into a tribal world where abuse and collective egoism is institutionalised.
