On Hubris

When I was a freshman in high school our math class endured an entire series of study based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Pit and the Pendulum".  To be honest, I remember very little of what we did but I remember feeling like it dragged on for weeks or months (probably an exageration).  I do know that thru that series I learned the idea behind a pundulum and that the series is perhaps one of the few things that has really stuck with me in the twenty plus years since.

According to my "little kid" dictionary that I inherited from my school teacher Grandmother's second grade classroom, a pendulum is a "weight so hung from a fixed point that it is free to swing to and fro.  The movement of the works of a tall clock is often timed by a pendulum" (Thorndike Barnhart intermediate dictionary).  Often a pendulum gains momentum and force as it swings back and forth, sometimes knocking into other similar weights or objects and setting them to swinging as well.

The concept of the pendulum makes me think of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker's three lessons that he taught to Rey in the latest Star Wars movie, "The Last Jedi".  Luke refuses to teach Rey to become a Jedi because he has been deeply wounded and has lost much.  And because he has learned the lesson of the pendulum and watched it play out across galactic history.  Luke says to Rey, "The legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris... At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out."

Luke is looking back on the centuries of struggle between the Jedi and the Sith, two powerful religious groups who used and worshiped the Force.  The Jedi focusing on the "light side", and the Sith focusing on the "dark side".  Both groups used their power in the Force to maintain their version of order across the galaxy, while constantly over-powering and eliminating the other group.  Both groups were convinced that they were right and the other was wrong, even evil.  Both the Jedi and the Sith were convinced that they had a superior understanding of the Force and therefore had the moral high ground.  Their battles for power often left the rest of the galaxy reeling in war, destruction, and chaos.

Luke tells Rey, "This is the lesson: [The] Force does not belong to the Jedi.  To say that if the Jedi die the light dies is vanity.  Can you feel that?"  He is asking Rey if she can feel--sense--the Force deep within all living things, that the presence of the Force itself is so ingrained in the fabric of the universe itself that it supersedes any ancient teachings of either the Jedi or the Sith.  Regardless of the endless battling between the two groups, whether or not either of them becomes extinct, the Force itself will go on.  Because of its very nature the Force possesses both the light and the dark.

Even the villain of the series, Supreme Leader Snoke himself, seems to get this idea.  He realizes that as Kylo Ren becomes more powerful in the dark side, his counter, Rey, will become more powerful in the light side.  He says, "Darkness rises, and light to meet it."  Unlike Luke, Snoke remains focused on the dark side, much like the long-gone Jedi and Sith.

Luke has apparently now chosen to focus on the balance, making him what many now call a "Gray Jedi".  The balance lives between the dark and the light, in the tension between them.  "The Force is not a power you have.  It's not about lifting rocks.  It's the energy between all things.  A tension, a balance, that binds the universe together...", Luke says.  The image of a rubber band comes to mind.  Two sides, pulling strongly against one another, and the tension in between them, ready to snap at any moment.

Looking back to the image of the pendulum, I believe that this is where we find ourselves culturally these days.  Too often we allow ourselves to live at one end or the other of that stretched out rubber band, looking across the tension toward the "other" much like the Jedi and the Sith looked at one another: wrong, and a whole lot of other adjectives.

This is exactly what Luke referred to as the "hubris" of the Jedi.  They believed so whole-heartedly that they were right, that they were always right, that they puffed up their own ego to believe that they were superior than all others.  We see this all the time today.  All it takes is to post your opinion on a controversial topic and your "friends" will jump at the opportunity to lecture you and point out your flaws.  Because, obviously, if you are at the opposite end of that rubber band from their views, then you are as bad as the Sith.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary website has this to say about "hubris": "To the Greeks, hubris referred to extreme pride, especially pride and ambition so great that they offend the gods and lead to one's downfall.  Hubris was a character flaw often seen in the heroes of classical Greek tragedy, including Oedipus and Achilles.  The familiar saying 'pride goeth before a fall' is basically talking about hubris."

The pendulum swings, and as it "crashes like a wrecking ball" into the other weights, it causes a chain reaction, sending them swinging as well.  The rubber band is going to eventually snap.  It is a way better place to be in the balance, in the tension, than to be pulling, struggling, pushing, at one of the ends.

Luke's lesson for Rey was that the Jedi and Sith spent millenia unbalanced, struggling against each other, always right, never listening.  Their wars against each other, fueled by their hubris, tore each group apart, along with the rest of the galaxy, just like the Greek definition of the word describes.  Luke wanted Rey to see that the better way forward was to live in to the tension, in to the balance, to truly follow the will of the Force and serve and help those in need by guarding them and by finding common ground.  To deny one side or the other is to live unbalanced, weighting the conflict, and accomplishing nothing.

Author David Dark said, "Labeling people makes you stop dealing with them thoughtfully.  You miss the beauty of their complexity."

How often today do we bang into people, like the pendulum, because our hubris has convinced us that our way, our opinion, our political party, our belief, our worldview, our personal experience, is superior?  How much damage do we do to our own cause because we damage those around us by forcing our points?  Have we considered that we might actually be wrong sometimes, or at least not fully as on track as we think?  Is it really necessary for my way, my opinion, my worldview, my culture, of "how things should be" to be forced upon others before they are ready for it?  Is it ever really necessary?

Instead of tearing others down, we should be living in the balance, the tension, together.  And then together we will get thru it all much stronger.

"We are not put on this earth to see through one another.  We are put on this earth to see each other through."  Gloria Vanderbilt