This Wretched Star Wars Meme:

The meme does us the service of bringing what would otherwise have been a subconscious (and potent) mythological truth to conscious light. Yet it does so in such a way that, simply owing to its memetic nature, trivializes what the Unconscious Subject would have venerated: The Truth of Obi-Wan’s position.

Obi-Wan DOES possess the Higher Ground over Anakin. He IS wiser, more disciplined, in many ways more clever, judicious, and poised than his Pupil. He has not suffered GREATER tragedy but has had to LIVE with tragedy much longer, as well as with responsibility. In every way he has all this time been Anakin’s Superior and has maintained both the Moral and the Intellectual High Ground. An accomplished agent of the Force and a diligent and loyal student of the Jedi tradition, his SUPERIOR posture as Sensei is at that moment both physical and spiritual, and the former represents allegorically the latter.

Anakin’s Tragedy is that he is Icarean in his ambitions. His passions are depraving; he is blinded by his emotions, which have not yet been made PURE by the Force nor CULTIVATED by the Jedi Order. So it follows that when he tries to OVERCOME his teacher by Force (no pun intended), he LOSES HIS LEGS, a representation of his agency and his fighting stance. He goes from a simply PRECARIOUS posture, floating over the lava, but still offered a chance at reprieve, to a total posture of DESCENT INTO and ABSORPTION WITHIN the lava: the passions that drive him to the Dark Side.

Carl Jung says that this is one of the most tangible evils of the neurotic state: that the neurotic “rejects the Force of tradition that would hold him to well-trodden ways”. Joseph Campbell read Jung and drew inspiration from Jung’s wisdom, and he went on to mentor George Lucas.

The myth represents the hubris of the young in defying the wisdom of the Old. Of course, in turn Luke has later to fight his father for the same reason: that the Jedi Way has fallen and faded and the force of Tradition has become an oppressive State, so that that state’s most dangerous henchman is “all that remains of their religion”. In THAT sense, Luke represents a sort of PURE, SELFLESS rebellion against Age, but WITHIN an Age that is deformed and misguided, having parted with the Spirit (Force).

In ANAKIN’S case, there is no excuse to defy Obi-Wan. In fact, it is BECAUSE of Obi-Wan’s enduring influence that Luke wins the fight against evil and restores Balance to the Force. And it is nothing save Anakin’s own hubris and willingness to silence his old mentor’s voice forever that ensures that that same Voice would spell Darth Vader’s ultimate defeat. And in that case so much as in THIS one, that voice of Reason and Wisdom imparts fair warning upon the pupil moments before the pupil seals his own fate by taking it into his own cyborg hands.

So think on THAT when you call Obi-Wan Kenobi “condescending” with a condescension that you, unlike him, are not entitled to.

Dm.A.A.