George Lucas
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George Lucas
George Lucas is the creator of Star Wars and an unwitting Agent of Consciousness who helped distribute and indoctrinate children with the Zoroastrian Master Narrative.
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Agent of Consciousness Examples
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Quotes
GL: I had studied Joe Campbell, I continue to study Joe Campbell, and I really tried to take these psychological motifs from mythology all over the world...and as a result I was able to take these ideas that go through all society, through all the ages, and bring them down and put them into a razzle-dazzle, Saturday matinee serial, action adventure film.[1]Interviewer: And did you consciously think about when you were making it that you really want to make this a force for good?[2]
GL: Yes, part of it is to bring back some of those old psychological motifs from mythology...It is basically just the same thing with the Force, which is basically just an amalgamation of all religions...you know, ever since the very beginning it always comes down to this mysterious thing that we can't see that has some kind of power over and/or we have power over it or that we go to it for help...[3]
Interviewer:And you wanted to bring spiritual traditions together in a positive force?[4]
GL Yes...
Interviewer: ...You have struck a very powerful blow for the good, there is no question about that.GL: Well, if I had really made a difference, we wouldn't be sitting where we are today with the mess that it's in.
“Understand the scale,” director J. J. Abrams had told her when he offered her the part of Rey. “This is not a role in a movie. This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable.” At the time, Ridley leapoped at the opportunity, but she couldn’t have known what was coming."[5]
Full Transcript of Lucasfilm Video
I: What interests you about the conflict between good and evil
G: well a conflict between good and evil is the basic conflict. The universal question is am i a good person. I mean not counting social misfits of course for
I: people like you and me
G: ya know I mean
I: are you a good person I try to be a good person but of course that's a very complicated question
I: it is
G: and it's something you have to ponder because you're doing it every day. You're saying should I do this or shouldn't I do this now through mythology and things were taught certain things that are good and certain things that are bad but a thinking person questions all that say is this really good am I really doing the right thing here am I really being a kind compassionate person because to me that's really about a compassionate person as opposed to a person that is consumed with self-interest or a selfish person those are the two things mm-hmm we all have good and evil in us because we have the selfish side of us and we have the compassionate side of us the idea is how do you keep those things in balance and by keeping those things in balance you can do a lot of good things you're never gonna get, everybody's human, everybody's greedy, when you become greedy then you do bad things to get stuff from other people once you get that stuff then you become afraid once you become afraid that somebody's gonna take it from you then you start striking out at people and you start you get angry at things you get worried didn't that put you in a whole psychological mindset that makes you turns you ultimately into an evil person where you're doing two horrible things two people thinking that you're doing the right thing but you're doing it because you're afraid they're gonna hurt you before you hurt them
I: How did Joseph Campbell affect your thinking when you were formulating the ideas?
G: Joe Camel was a comparative mythologist and the Joseph Campbell angle really came out of my anthropology classes when I was in college yeah I was very curious about the way societies work and why people do the things they do in a society why they form their ideas and I used to always think of mythology as a form of psychological archaeology you're not just thinking up pieces to look at them and try to figure out what is what's going on with a society with mythology you can actually understand the psychological underpinnings of what people actually were thinking what they were afraid of what they felt about their parents what you know the real psychology of the whole thing so that's what sort of started that whole process and I had studied Joe Campbell I continued to study Joe Campbell and I really tried to take these psychological motifs from mythology all over the world as a result I was able to take ideas that go through all societies through all the ages and bring them down and put them into a razzle-dazzle Saturday matinee serial action-adventure film.
I: And did you consciously think about when you were making it you really wanted to make this a force for the good
G: yes part of it is it bringing back some of those old psychological motifs from mythology that, part of it was I just wanted to see if they were still relevant. I knew they were but you don't really know a lot of its turning to Freud and Jung and but you you kind of know things are still working that way a little bit but I didn't know how much how much are just the basics of what are friends for why do you join together in a society to help each other your relationship to your father your relationship to the generation that came before you that seems to accrued everything up and how do you feel about passing that on to your kids and how do your kids feel about the fact that you've been handed this mess from the earlier generation you know can you be stronger than your father in terms of the temptations that he was over you know the things he was maybe able to come over overcome or not overcome maybe he's very successful it would still have a lot of flaws..
I: right
G: So there's a lot of complicated things that are put in there you know there are basic issues that you want to deal with it's the same thing with a force which is basically just like an amalgamation of all religions and what all you know ever since the very beginning it always comes down to this mysterious thing that we can't see that has some kind of power over us and or we have power over it or we go to it for help that explains a lot of the things that the mysteries that we can't explain any other way
Audio Clip:
Yoda: for my Ally is the force and appalled for colleges bleeds it makes it grow its energy surrounds us and binds us luminous beings are we not this crude matter you must feel the force around you. You. Between you... Me. The rock. Everywhere. Yes. even between the land and this ship
I: And you wanted to bring spiritual traditions together in a positive force
G: yes to say it's okay to believe whatever you believe organizers religions have a place but in the end when they start saying things that are not positive and are not compassionate they're not caring you know the Inquisition's and all killing people in the name of God is wrong there's just no question about because that's absolutely opposite of what all gods Shaman everybody have taught us which is God is love not God is hate.
I: So if you were gonna put together you know the power of this influence that Star Wars has been in the world right and the kids that come up to you they've come up to you in different cultures yes
G: all around the world
I: Do you have any stories about that
G: one is just the look on their faces when they talk about where their voice goes which is you know really inspired things you know we discovered early on with with Star Wars because that was before video tape and everything so we would get requests when the first bar were from hospitals there would be a child who would be dying and they said can we see the movie because he's not gonna last the week ... so we'd show him the movie and he would live for another six or nine months and it wasn't once that this happened it happened hundreds of times and you just sort of say well whatever we're giving them whatever inspiration would give them allows them to take the struggle further
I: Absolutely
G: And you know and maybe embrace the fact that it may not be that bad in the end
I: So what do you think's in Star Wars helps them do that
G: Well, I just think the fact that they that there is good in the world and there's kindness in the world and that they can go on and and laugh and enjoy themselves and that there is always change so if it changes down then they will change back up again they won't it's not like life is not a constant so you're not just going downhill or you're not just going uphill
I: And maybe they feel the force within and then one might say that there's a continuity so the child begins to think well maybe there's something beyond
G: Right well that's conceptually when you get into the force and you get into the Living Force and the Uber Force which is basically well however you want to call it heaven or born again or however you want to you know in terms of karma that there is a continuum and that you join the force when you die and you lose your personality but you become one with this bigger living entity.
I: if you look at Star Wars you know they're different kinds of myth as a heroic myth there's the Democratic myth there's religious myth its economic myth where would you put Star Wars in the context of those mythic traditions
G: Well it's the hero's myth really I mean it there's a whole political side to it which is the same as the mythological side of it which is where you take one of the issues was is how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship which I was fascinated with happens in Rome happened in France it happened in Germany and what causes that to happen so that was the political side of things because the mythological side was more psychological was more on the personal side of relationships and how people were doing things
I: so we had the head of the Stanford School of Design on David Kelly we talked about creativity and he was saying that your creative tell you about the fourth grade and then it pushes you into a channel and so the key to be creative is to find the child that you were. **
G: Well the thing is being creative basically means and have an imagination it means you work inside the box you know like the beaten in the box
I: When did you realize you were outside the box
G: Pretty early on that's why I didn't do well in school
O: how did you learn to trust you're outside the boxness?
I: Well I didn't really trust it until I got into film school and I realized that I could do something that I could do that nobody else could do so suddenly I was like the best of everybody there is because the way I was thinking was normally not the way other people thought and and I could see very clearly the ones that were trying to follow the box the ones that we're trying to put tab A into tab B and that [intelligible], they weren't gonna ever go anywhere you know you had to say that doesn't work guys look if you work inside the box you'll never win the game. That's where politics comes in because politics is a big box
I: so you found yourself
G: and you get squashed if you go outside the box
I: we're not gonna go their, right now.
G: Ok [laughs uncomfortably]
I You've had this tremendous success therefore and you've had tremendous success in film and therefore you are a quote celebrity right, which is a burden in and of itself, but you are also someone with a deep emotional commitment to your craft and to making the good prevail and when you go to sleep at night and you realize you've accomplished so much in terms of the Star Wars and the metaphors and the mythic dimensions to it and the force for the good and so forth how do you feel put the other stuff aside the negative aspects (why, George mentions politics and getting crushed by it, why not talk about that)
G: [Laughs], Yeah
G: Well obviously I feel good when I have kids and people come up and you know are shaking and want to say you know you've changed my life you feel good about that no matter no matter how many sort of intellectuals or whatever say you're you know an idiot you know that you've had an effect and when I sit in a movie and I watch people react I know it works and that's all I need to know as I know I've I've taken somebody on a trip that is going to make them a more interesting person and that's all I do. I don't think of any grand picture you know it's did I, most of the people in the silent era movies are forgotten and I assume that we will all be forgotten, but I have while i was here i tried to live a good life I tried to do the right thing I tried to make this a better world and you know people disagree about what's the better world and all that kind of stuff and I feel that my picture of a better world is as accurate as any I do even though I make the movies about it it's, the world to me is split into two halves you know the the selfish part and the giving compassionate part and we're all struggling with both of them and I know a lot of people that are thinking they're doing good but they're selfish and all they're doing is making the world a worse place
I: Well but you've struck a very powerful blow for the good there's no question about that
G: Well, if I'd have really made a difference we wouldn't be sitting where we are today with this country in the mess that's it
I: No I don't think so. Where you've made the difference is in the hearts of people
G: Ya but...
I: and encourage them to be their true selves and recognize their commonality. Not everybody saw Star Wars millions and millions saw Star Wars
G: I know that, I know that. But I hope people...
I: And maybe there are plenty people who should have seen Star Wars
G: I only hope that those who have seen Star Wars recognize the Emperor when they see him
I: Ya, you know, [laughter]
I: You know what you oughta do, you oughta make your list of the hundred people that should see Star Wars and send them each and say just watch this movie yeah
G: but the evil people don't you know the Emperor's don't see it no matter how much you tell them they can't see beyond their own greed and anybody's talking about hate or you know putting doing bad things to people, they are on the upper side there and it's it's not hard to see people doing that you see that isn't right you shouldn't be saying bad things about people that's not helping anybody
I: but you're on the Force's side
G: Well I'm on the side that says you should treat people decently and that yeah you can argue about whatever you want to argue about but we're all in this boat together everybody's in it together and we're gonna all sink or swim together and we haven't been doing a very good job over the last 10,000 years all of my movies are about one thing which is the fact that the only prison you're in is the prison of your mind and if you decide to open the door get out you can, there's nothing stopping
I: There it is! George Lucas thanks for much for joining us thank you
[Music]
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Footnotes
- ↑ Lucasfilm Fan Club - George Lucas Joseph Campbell Mythology, Religion, Creativity, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpXdM3i5V0
- ↑ Lucasfilm Fan Club - George Lucas Joseph Campbell Mythology, Religion, Creativity, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpXdM3i5V0
- ↑ Lucasfilm Fan Club - George Lucas Joseph Campbell Mythology, Religion, Creativity, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpXdM3i5V0
- ↑ Lucasfilm Fan Club - George Lucas Joseph Campbell Mythology, Religion, Creativity, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpXdM3i5V0
- ↑ Isaac Feldberg, “Daisy Ridley Reveals the Terrifying Advice J.J. Abrams Gave Her For Star Wars,” Inverse, 2024, https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/daisy-ridley-interview-star-wars-sometimes-i-think-about-dying.