The Star Wars Effect

The world is full of complex issues, everything is intertwined with one another. A good example is that a Butterfly which flutters its wings in California can start a hurricane in Japan. This may or not be true however the reality is that everything in the world is connected in some way or another. Nature is complex, but think about how complex human relations are and this is just in our immediate family. We all know that if we say something in a certain way we can make our mom explode with anger or if we dye our hair blue our dad would cry. This is just our immediate family not just the world, where there are 6 billion people each one with different interests and customs. Unfortunately this can sometimes not seem to matter when we deal with others especially when it comes to people who are not of our same culture.
In any discussion of an issue though there seems to be a desire for a simple solution or a one size fits all solution. The reality is that this is rarely the case. There are always multiple facets to any problem. For instance the issue of the debt in the US, we should just spend less. Well that is much easier said then done. It takes legislation, negotiation, votes and time to start cutting the budget of the US government and then in turn start putting money into the debt. But it isn’t just this that would solve it there are many more underlying reasons why we are so heavily in debt. We borrow, we print we tax and lastly we have a mentality that we can spend indefinitely. These are much harder issues to address then just passing a bill to reduce spending there has to be a whole mental change.
The mentality that we can just pass a bill and fix things is what I call the Star Wars syndrome. This is the belief that a man with a light sabre can take on the entire empire by himself and that one lucky shot can take out the Death Star. What George Lucas fails to address in his movies is that there are thousands of rebels sabotaging and fighting the empire, not just one kid with a light saber. However many of us have Star Wars syndrome. We think that a simple solution can solve the problems that face us. A man stops watching tv for a day and goes for a run one time in a month is not going to be healthy. Dropping bombs or killing a person will change the way a group people feel about the US. Passing a bill that requires people to do something won’t change the underlying issue. But we try and try. Sure it is noble, however it is something that fails time and time again because there are so many underlying issues that it takes months and months to fix the issues that surround us.

 Do you think this view is accurate?


2 thoughts on “The Star Wars Effect

  1. I tend to agree that there are no singular heroes and that there is no one-shot solution to or debt problem. I’m more in favor of leading by example in most cases, but on a national level, who really cares if one chick in Florida makes smart money choices? The problem of debt requires an unrelenting torrent of passionate, intelligent, eloquent, and persuasive arguments to sway people’s minds.

  2. Pingback: Megatron is the good guy? | libertarian dad's Blog

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