Lessons from a Galaxy Far, Far Away
ON STAR WARS, BIDEN, AND FALLIBILISM
On International Star Wars Day, I’m glad to see that President Biden seems to have taken to heart some words of wisdom that Yoda imparted to Luke Skywalker. No, not “Do or do not. There is no try” — words from the second film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), that have often been taken out of context, their meaning distorted in the transformation into a maxim.
I’m thinking instead of what Yoda tells Luke in the eighth film in the Skywalker saga, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi (2017): ““Heeded my words not did you. ‘Pass on what you have learned.’ Wisdom, yes. But folly also. Strength in mastery, hmm. But weakness and failure, yes. Failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is.”
Biden gained the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on 2020 on his fourth try. He’d actually gotten one vote at the national convention in 1984; formally sought the nomination in 1987, dropping out after only three and a half months on the campaign trail; and in 2008, he withdrew after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses. In 1987, a week before he ended his candidacy, Biden said, “I’ve done some dumb things. And I’ll do dumb things again.”
Commentators marveled during Biden’s 2020 campaign that he’d seemed to have learned from his past mistakes. He reined in his garrulous, gaffe-prone verbal style, aided both by reduced expectations for public appearances because of the pandemic and also by the fact that his opponent, Donald Trump, seemed to have a pathological need for attention, rambling on and on in his pandemic “briefings,” which inevitably provided fodder for Biden and the other Democrats. Why make arguments against your opponent, when he saying things like “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning”?
Perhaps even more pathological than his need for attention was Trump’s inability to admit that he ever made mistakes, that he was ever wrong about anything. Imagine Trump saying, “I’ve done some dumb things. And I’ll do dumb things again.” Impossible, right?
When Yoda tells a young Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back to “do or do not,” the context is very specific: he’s trying to cure Luke of his defeatist attitude. Asked to use his Force powers to raise his starship out of the swamp into which it has crashed, Luke says, “Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.” When Yoda insists that the difference is only in his student’s mind, Luke replies, “All right. I’ll give it a try.” And he fails, insisting that the starship is “too big.” Offering a rejoinder that has become equally famous — “Size matters not” — Yoda does what Luke couldn’t. “I can’t believe it,” Luke says. To which Yoda replies: “That is why you fail.”
Self-belief: Yoda had it. So do Trump and Biden. But where Trump differs is in his inability to admit self-doubt and then use that doubt productively.
Imagine Trump saying, “I’ve done some dumb things. And I’ll do dumb things again.” Impossible, right?
The position that Yoda takes in the later film, when offering advice to a much older — and much more disillusioned — Luke Skywalker is what philosophers call fallibilism, “the sense,” as Kwame Anthony Appiah puts it in his book on cosmopolitanism, “that our knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence.” Cosmopolitans, in Appiah’s account, embrace the idea of fallibilism, because they believe that human beings can learn from the moments in which they are shown to be wrong and can increase the limits of their knowledge through the exchange of ideas with others. Indeed, trying, failing, correcting errors, and trying again becomes a crucial part of the learning process.
Those Star Wars fans who prefer the seemingly infallible, aphoristic Yoda of the earlier film and accuse director Rian Johnson of “retconning” the character in The Last Jedi would do well to remember not only the context in which Yoda instructs Luke, but also what Luke points out when he initially refuses to mentor Rey, the primary protagonist of the sequel trilogy. “If you strip away the myth and look at their deeds,” Luke tells her, “the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris.” He points out that “at the height of their powers,” the Jedi — including Yoda — “allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out,” adding, “It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.” After he loses his lightsaber duel with the newly crowned Emperor in the sixth film, Revenge of the Sith, Yoda himself says, “Into exile I must go. Failed, I have.”
Theorists of cosmopolitanism like Appiah believe that embracing the idea of fallibilism requires us constantly to test our ideas and beliefs by engaging in conversations across with those who disagree with us. We need to go into these conversations with an open mind, willing to put cherished beliefs to the test and to recognize a better idea when we encounter it. That’s an insight that Star Wars films frequently dramatize: think about how many difficult conversations in the films turn out to be key turning points, in which characters decide on a course of action only after testing their ideas against opposition. Luke himself gains the confidence during his initial training with Yoda to defy his master and face Darth Vader in an attempt to save his friends. That decision ultimately leads to the defeat of the Empire and the redemption of Vader.
After the imperial presidency of Trump, it’s good to see a US leader who has learned to admit his fallibility, to revise his policies on the basis of new evidence, to listen to advice from experts who aren’t afraid to disagree with him, and to disregard how the media might portray his decision-making. After all, when politicians reconsider and revise their policies, pundits often describe them as “walking back” a previous decision, as if that were necessarily a bad thing.
Informing the nation of his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan before the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks later this year, President Biden noted that he had “consult[ed] closely with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with [Afghan president] Ghani and many others around the world,” including President Bush, with whom Biden noted, he has had “many disagreements over policies throughout the years.”
Biden said that he knows that “there are many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust U.S. military presence to stand as leverage. We gave that argument a decade. It’s never proved effective … We have to change that thinking.”
I imagine that somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, there are Jedi masters, shimmering in the afterlife of the Force, who are smiling with approval.
Cyrus R. K. Patell is Professor of English at New York University. His most recent book is Lucasfilm: Filmmaking, Philosophy, and the Star Wars Universe (Bloomsbury). www.patell.net.
