Thursday, November 29, 2018

My Life In Fandom: Using Star Wars To Talk Civics

This was unexpected: remedial civic in a Star Wars lore video. Good on Eckhart's Ladder for trying.

Nevermind that this avoids several realities behind why constitutional republics fail, such as needing a high trust and low time preference national culture lest the corruption that comes of low trust and high time preference hollow out your republic like a ravenous maggot, or that some nations simply cannot reach the level of trust and time preference required for a republic to function as intended.

I'm giving credit to Eck here simply for broaching the subject at all. Sure, he'll be rebutted good and hard in the comments by plenty of people, and some of those rebuttals will actually be worth a damn, but this sort of world-building talk doesn't happen outside of Sperglandia often enough and I think a little more like this would be useful.

Why?

For the same reason zombies facilitate talking about disaster preparation. The use of a popular fiction to facilitate talking about something that is both real and important is a good idea; it dilutes or negates the resistance to useful talk that otherwise exists, which is important in getting people to engage in the subject at hand. Yes, even if that involves pointing out that a given environment is unlikely to produce the proposed system. (e.g. any government in Star Wars where Force users aren't the shot-callers, defacto or dejure)

There's a limit, of course, but Eck's not hit that yet with this sort of video. He's not sperging out; this is just useful civics discussion, for now.

3 comments:

  1. Bradford,

    Ironic to use Canada because it's a constitutional confederal monoarchy.
    I myself prefer federal monarchies to republics but recognize the latter's legitimacy as a form of govt
    The feds DO interfere in education: ie.e university research funding which causes Quebec to complain.

    As for Star wars the Jedi are a problem because they're the Republican enforcers and easily manipulated by Palpitine due to their hubris.
    The problem was that they started as a neutral arbitrar but eventually over the millenia became captured by Republic.
    The result was that the Jedi became haught and scolertic.
    I wonder if order 66 was 'popular' to the ordinary citizens?
    xavier

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Take that feedback and apply it to Eck's video. He needs to see it, not me.

      Delete

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