OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Thoughts on the Spiritual Condition of America's Leftward Half

Just a few that come to mind mind: FERN GULLY, THE DARK CRYSTAL, STAR WARS. The list could easily be expanded.

To watch these films with an open mind and heart is to get fed at a deeper level --particularly concerning the sancticty of life in a broad sense, and concerning the possibility of a deep grounding of goodness in the incredible interconnectedness of living systems-- than is much to be found in the films of the present day.

In THE DARK CRYSTAL, the tyrannical overlords of that dying world --the Skekses-- survive by draining the living essence of other creatures and absorbing that essence into their own petty and putrid selves.

Something of that sort seems to have happened to the deeper values that were emerging into our society back a generation ago: the husk of those values remains, but much of their living essence --their connection with a sense of the sacred (the "so deeply meaningful")-- has been drained away.

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If I had to choose one emblem of this drainage of the spirit over the past generation in would be the transformation of the STAR WARS saga, and of its principle creator George Lucas.

I am not going to claim that the original STAR WARS movies were works of art that belong with HAMLET or THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. But there is a good reason why those films became important parts of the American culture of their era. They are not only good clean "space cowboy" fun. They also resonate at a spiritual level.

I used them as sources of spiritual teaching in my bringing up the two children of mine born in the late 1970s. For me, they continue to work on the mytho-poetic dimension. Deeply embedded in the action are many of the best elements of the cultural and spiritual ferment of America during that time of turmoil.

When I heard that Lucas was going to be making a new batch of STAR WARS movies, I was excited by the possibilities I could envision.

ere's a guy who had overseen the creation of what I thought to be important cultural messages before, and who is now going to invest in the fulfillment of his own most important creation. He has had decades to think through how best to build on his previous achievement. And he has all the money he could need to translate his vision to the screen.

And what's more, because of the global reputation of the earlier works, he has a whole new generation ready to receive his message.

I envied his opportunity to speak deeply to an audience that might be numbered in the hundreds of millions!

But oh, how Lucas squandered that opportunity.

The technical parts of film-making have progressed impressively in the new parts of the Saga. But in terms of the spirit-- forget it! It is flat. Sterile. Utterly without the vision, without the aspiration, without the sense of the sacred, that can be found in the early trilogy.

I could hardly believe it.

Inferring that the spiritual drainage visible between the two sets of films must reflect the course that Lucas's own spiritual path must have taken, I concluded that Lucas must have lost even the awareness of what his first STAR WARS movies had contained.

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