Why I Do This Newsletter

Your favorite stories are trying to tell you something. Listen.

Owen: "We don't need anything from you, Kenobi."
Obi-Wan: "It's just a toy."
Owen: "It's a lot more than that."

―Owen Lars to Obi-Wan Kenobi

I’ve been thinking a lot today about why I do this. Here’s what I came up with.

Geeky Stoics is about drawing out the transcendent from the entertaining. It’s about reaching beyond “escapism” and expanding your potential in the real world through the enjoyment of other worlds. Every place we visit, we take something home. You travel to South Carolina….you come home with a sea turtle mug and sand between your toes. You return from California with a tan. You go to school and hopefully return with fun facts, or maybe a black eye. You go to the movie theater to see Star Wars or Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings or The Avengers, and you come home with ideas of a larger world. Why do you think Obi-Wan Kenobi gave young Luke Skywalker a toy T-16 Skyhopper as a gift? The one we see a more grown-up Luke playing with in the original Star Wars film. It was to inform Luke, to delight and direct his mind toward the stars. Uncle Owen forbids it at first. He takes the toy away and angrily returns it to Obi-Wan. Knowledge of the stars and ships to visit them would direct Luke’s imagination toward them. That opens Luke up to great danger. He could be harmed by the galaxy. But Obi-Wan persisted and made sure Luke had this toy at his desert home on Tatooine. It primed Luke to want more. Yes, it’s just a toy, the definition of escapist entertainment. But toys are how we act out greatness. We roleplay heroism and courage with toys and costumes. In the theater seat, are you not doing the same thing? Wondering to yourself during the movie, “Is this how I would respond to Darth Vader’s offer of power and empire? Would I walk away from the burning Homestead and leave Mos Eisley with strangers to rescue a princess?” Every few days I hear from someone that we take these stories too seriously, and that they weren’t meant to be philosophies or profound insights about life. They’re just meant to be “simple” and “family entertainment”. When I think of simple family entertainment I think of a waterslide. You climb up, you go down, you get wet, and do it all over again. But I don’t know how you could look at Spider-Man….when Peter Parker chooses out of vengefulness to let an armed robber escape with a bag of cash, something he has the power to stop, but he shirks that responsibility and it cascades directly to the murder of his beloved uncle by that same thief….and think, “simple entertainment”. Someone quipped to me that it’s not like Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are philosophical. Surely that would be a huge stretch to argue. I don’t particularly care for those films, but just five minutes of reflection would lead you to see that even the Transformers movies, which are dripping in shiny objects, sex appeal, and big explosions, have a very basic perspective about human existence….which is that it’s worth fighting for. Optimus Prime doesn’t come down to Earth and encourage the people he meets to roll over and die. When you come to realize that there a tons of people, philosophers even, who promote the idea that humanity is an invasive species, you then have to ask yourself, “Well what is this goofy Transformers movie telling me?” And it’s saying, in the booming voice of Optimus Prime…Defend planet Earth from the Decepticons. Be brave. Stand up for yourself. Fight. Almost every story you’ve ever read has a point of view and something it wants you to understand. Every story is written in the context of a civilization and its values, and every little thing that you think is “simple” is very likely an alien concept to some man or woman your age on the other side of the globe. It makes me think of this old Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet, where Pitt plays an Austrian Olympic climber visiting Tibet. He brags of his feats climbing mountains in hopes of seducing a local woman, but she’s gobsmacked that this Western man thinks it is valiant to conquer mountains. I don’t know about you, but as a Western man myself, I see a mountain and I think “You climb it”…Why? “Because it’s there”. I suspect we will never hear the end of criticism and naysaying about how we take simple stories too seriously or bend over backward to find meaning in ridiculous children's stories, but I know in my bones that they are much more than that. These “toys” these “escapist” pieces of entertainment, they are telling us something. The question is, are you listening?

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

-C.S. Lewis

This morning I was alone for a while in a lovely wooded area outside of my town. I was dwelling on some negative comments I’d seen recently about the stuff we make here. And I started writing in my journal. That was the first piece of what you just read. The intent is for it to be part of a book that

Riley Blanton

and I are working on, all about Geeky Stoics. Stay tuned.