Space Capitalism (the Young Entitled)
Oct. 18th, 2016 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2egAdRh:
millicentthecat:
Here’s my rant of the day today…
You know what I never see people recognize about this line? That Rey is a scavenger.
Her entire experience of life and the world–her entire way of interacting with the world–is I CAN TAKE WHATEVER I WANT. “Might makes right,” as she describes it in “Rey’s Survival Guide.” Or, as I like to think of it: finders keepers, losers weepers. I found it? I can fight for it? Then I own it.
People keep throwing the word “entitled” around with Kylo Ren, and especially with this line, this “I can take whatever I want.” They fail to recognize that this attitude is universal to Star Wars, that this is the philosophy demanded by systems of competitve scarcity.
Entitled people don’t feel entitled; they feel obligated. They feel they must be more than others and do more than others in order to deserve life and happiness. This results from the indoctrination, at a very young age, to a belief that one must compete with and dominate others in order to survive. In order to earn life.
In anarcho-capitalist dystopia, this is not a fallacious belief. It is not a personal failing to believe this is true: that in a capitalist system, one must secure their own safety by oppressing others. Competitive, high-scarcity systems really do redistribute resources in the worst fucking way, i.e., Might Makes Right.
When Kylo Ren throws his “temper tantrums,” he is reacting to his own failures. His lack of MIGHT. He failed to prevent FN-2187’s betrayal. He left Rey inadequately guarded. He is reacting to the pressure he is under - and a feeling of utter desperation. He undoubtedly believes that his failure is a LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION. In so many ways, he is correct; he is at war. War is, by definition, a competitive and high-scarcity environment, with an inherent binary inequity. It is a system where one’s one own life continues at the expense of other lives.
War and capitalism both foster states of extreme inequity. "Success" and “life” become one and the same, both theoretically and practically - failure means poverty, violence, starvation, toil, death. There is no mediocrity and no middle class. Systems with such polarizing absolutes are hard on people at the top and at the bottom. Kylo Ren feels OBLIGATED to murder his own parent in order to maintain his status. That’s the difference between “entitled” and “obligated.”
Furthermore, we don’t know just how much might Kylo has. We know for a fact that his claim to be able to take whatever he wants is an empty threat, because he can’t. He can’t get the map. He does’t have the power or the privilege necessary to accomplish most of his goals in TFA.
We also don’t currently know much about how class-privileged Ben Solo’s childhood was. His mother was a refugee of a planet-wide genocide. His father was a criminal. Both were rebel soldiers. His grandfather started out as a slave and ended up second-in-line to the Emperor. This is a world where status is fragile and dynamic. Power shifts around a lot. One of the core premises of the Star Wars universe is that the only thing standing between life as slave and life as a tyrant is the ability to rise up and conquer. I think this is also one of the appeals of Star Wars, too; that something like the Force could precipitate that drastic social mobility, that constant macro-scale shifting of power. We have to acknowledge this fictional component of the Star Wars universe because it means that PRIVILEGE, while it exists, is exceptionally volatile. “You know I can take whatever I want” is not the declaration of a pampered princeling who thinks he’s untouchable. It is the battle cry of a freckle-faced scavenger, playing “king of the hill” in the desert, scrambling to the top of a mound of sand and fearfully huffing out “finder’s keepers!” before the next challenger rises to knock him down.
And if we keep reading stories like this to our children and spinning them as “man vs. man” instead of “man vs. fucked up competitive scarcity system,” we’re all going to be playing king of the hill in the desert for a very long time.
millicentthecat:
Here’s my rant of the day today…
You know what I never see people recognize about this line? That Rey is a scavenger.
Her entire experience of life and the world–her entire way of interacting with the world–is I CAN TAKE WHATEVER I WANT. “Might makes right,” as she describes it in “Rey’s Survival Guide.” Or, as I like to think of it: finders keepers, losers weepers. I found it? I can fight for it? Then I own it.
People keep throwing the word “entitled” around with Kylo Ren, and especially with this line, this “I can take whatever I want.” They fail to recognize that this attitude is universal to Star Wars, that this is the philosophy demanded by systems of competitve scarcity.
Entitled people don’t feel entitled; they feel obligated. They feel they must be more than others and do more than others in order to deserve life and happiness. This results from the indoctrination, at a very young age, to a belief that one must compete with and dominate others in order to survive. In order to earn life.
In anarcho-capitalist dystopia, this is not a fallacious belief. It is not a personal failing to believe this is true: that in a capitalist system, one must secure their own safety by oppressing others. Competitive, high-scarcity systems really do redistribute resources in the worst fucking way, i.e., Might Makes Right.
When Kylo Ren throws his “temper tantrums,” he is reacting to his own failures. His lack of MIGHT. He failed to prevent FN-2187’s betrayal. He left Rey inadequately guarded. He is reacting to the pressure he is under - and a feeling of utter desperation. He undoubtedly believes that his failure is a LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION. In so many ways, he is correct; he is at war. War is, by definition, a competitive and high-scarcity environment, with an inherent binary inequity. It is a system where one’s one own life continues at the expense of other lives.
War and capitalism both foster states of extreme inequity. "Success" and “life” become one and the same, both theoretically and practically - failure means poverty, violence, starvation, toil, death. There is no mediocrity and no middle class. Systems with such polarizing absolutes are hard on people at the top and at the bottom. Kylo Ren feels OBLIGATED to murder his own parent in order to maintain his status. That’s the difference between “entitled” and “obligated.”
Furthermore, we don’t know just how much might Kylo has. We know for a fact that his claim to be able to take whatever he wants is an empty threat, because he can’t. He can’t get the map. He does’t have the power or the privilege necessary to accomplish most of his goals in TFA.
We also don’t currently know much about how class-privileged Ben Solo’s childhood was. His mother was a refugee of a planet-wide genocide. His father was a criminal. Both were rebel soldiers. His grandfather started out as a slave and ended up second-in-line to the Emperor. This is a world where status is fragile and dynamic. Power shifts around a lot. One of the core premises of the Star Wars universe is that the only thing standing between life as slave and life as a tyrant is the ability to rise up and conquer. I think this is also one of the appeals of Star Wars, too; that something like the Force could precipitate that drastic social mobility, that constant macro-scale shifting of power. We have to acknowledge this fictional component of the Star Wars universe because it means that PRIVILEGE, while it exists, is exceptionally volatile. “You know I can take whatever I want” is not the declaration of a pampered princeling who thinks he’s untouchable. It is the battle cry of a freckle-faced scavenger, playing “king of the hill” in the desert, scrambling to the top of a mound of sand and fearfully huffing out “finder’s keepers!” before the next challenger rises to knock him down.
And if we keep reading stories like this to our children and spinning them as “man vs. man” instead of “man vs. fucked up competitive scarcity system,” we’re all going to be playing king of the hill in the desert for a very long time.
