Rebels: "Spark of Rebellion" -- Part 1 (Ep. 1.1a)

"I'm in space... and I'm going to die!"

So... the opening. The opening of "Spark of Rebellion," the first episode of the seemingly very popular Star Wars Rebels, is... well, let's just say it's foreshadow heavy. I mean, right off the bat you get Darth Vader telling some guy called The Inquisitor to hunt down and destroy the "children of the Force." Why, golly, I wonder who that could be...

That's not really part of the episode, though; it just serves as the prologue to the series. I'm assuming that's so that we'll know who The Inquisitor is when he shows up. Also because they wanted to get James Earl Jones in there as the voice of Vader, which they did.

Ezra, our young protagonist, is an Aladdin-esque kind of hero. Or, maybe, Oliver Twist for those of you more classically inclined. He's a street urchin who steals to eat and gets up to all kinds of mischief but who is, basically, good at heart. Sounds like just the right kind of recipe for a show like this, especially when we find out, almost immediately (so this isn't really a spoiler), that Ezra is one of those "children of the Force." No Inquisitor in this episode, but I'm sure it won't be long.

Oh, yeah, and, of course, Ezra gets tangled up with a group of Rebels. Because, well, that's what the title of the show says, right?

An Abdication of Thought

There's a scene in Oliver Twist where he attacks another boy, an older boy. His "owners" can't figure out why it happened and they call the man they got Oliver from to find out and, maybe, return him. This man blames Oliver's behavior on meat. If they'd just kept Oliver on a nice diet of gruel, he wouldn't be acting so independently.

Now, hold onto that thought. We'll be coming back to it.

Mankind, in general, has never been that big on thinking. Most of us are quite content to sit back and let other people do the thinking for us. It's so much easier to let other people do the thinking, make the decisions, and tell us what to do. And, when we do what we're told, we're saved from any responsibility, and that's good, too, right? "It wasn't my fault; I was just following orders."

Not that everyone is like that or that it's always this way. There have been times when, culturally, we have been more intent on thought and thinking, which is not to say  that everyone thought, but, certainly, more of us did. This, unfortunately, is not one of those times. We are in the grips of a mass abdication of thinking. We're more intent on entertainment and a free ride than we are in thinking and, having thought, doing.

Or maybe it's always been this way. The same small number of thinkers with the mass of humanity just following along. Actually, I know that's true, but it sure doesn't feel that way. It's feels worse now. Maybe it's because no one is calling attention to it. There is no Emerson or Thoreau out there telling us to "think!" And not just to think but to follow our thoughts into action.

It's so endemic that we have at least one presidential candidate out there specifically catering to non-thinkers and non-doers. A candidate who spends his time pointing at the other one saying, "It's his fault," rather than talking about what he's going to do. What he thinks. I'm pretty sure the problem is that he doesn't think. He has none of his own opinions, and, if you look at his voting record, I'm pretty sure you can see the evidence right there. The message here is "you should elect me because I'm not him," not "you should elect me because I can do a better job and here's how."

But this isn't meant as a political statement. It's just an example as to how much we don't think in our society. Often, even our leaders don't do it. I'm sure that's not confined to one party or the other, either.

This lack of thought, lack of promotion of thinking, is in our TV. It's in our movies. And, sadly, it's in our books. You can see it clearly by looking at the things that currently have mass popularity: 50 Shades of Not Thinking and Twilight of Our Minds. Really, it all makes me sad. Traditionally, books have been a place for thoughts, but it seems that that is becoming less and less true.

This is funny: My daughter has this Barbie video in which one of the girl's mothers accuses her of reading too much because it puts thoughts in her head. The mother is a bad guy. Person. Villain. Books should be for thoughts and giving thoughts!

Studies show that TV is almost always bad for thinking. It turns our brains off. Movies, also, are mostly bad for thinking, although we do somewhat engage with them. Books, though, that's where our minds turn on and we think. We think! But we seem determined to drive all thought from books, too. Unless they're fantasizing type thoughts about sparkly chests. Or something.

And all of this brings us back to Oliver Twist, because the rise of obesity in America is just another sign of the lack of thought that's going on and the trend toward more not thinking. What? Yeah, you heard me. Eating too much sugar and carbs not only makes you fat, it turns your brain off. It makes it harder to think and to focus. It makes us all nice, docile little followers that are content to sit around on our lard butts all the time just following along with our consumerist, entertainment culture.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Put down your chocolate and your muffins or whatever it is you're eating and go do some thinking. Or some reading that will make you think. Don't be content with mere popcorn literature. Read something challenging that will engage your mind. Think! And, then, go write something that will make others think, too!

Looking Back Through the Looking Glass of A to Z

So... let's just get this whole reflections thing out of the way so that next week I can start getting everything back to normal for real. Or as real as anything is around here. After my a to z series, I'm beginning to wonder what real really is.

Okay, not really... that's mostly the fault of my kids.

But what did I think of the whole A to Z thing? That's a good question that I don't have a good answer for. So, before I get to the part where I start trying to evade that question, let's deal with the stuff I do know.

The first thing I know is, wow! I had no clue that fiction, specifically science fiction, introduced so many ideas to the world. I mean, I knew that science fiction was responsible for some stuff. I figure we all knew that. But I had no idea it introduced SO MANY THINGS. You think I talked about a lot? You should see the list of things I didn't talk about! What amazed me most was how many of them, especially the stuff about space travel, tied directly back to the fiction with people saying, "I was inspired by this." That's pretty amazing, if you ask me. And I'm really glad my wife made this suggestion, because it was all very interesting and good research.

[At some point, I may talk about more of these things, so I'm gonna keep my lists and my links to myself for the moment. Maybe, I'll post some in the future. (before anyone asks)]

The second thing I know is that there are a bunch of books I want to read now. I've already ordered Snow Crash and also have plans to pick up some Vinge novels within the next couple of weeks (crossing my fingers that they still have them when I go to get them (because, yes, I already called)). Doing this series made me want to reread a bunch of stuff, too, like War of the Worlds, but I know I probably won't actually do that even though I want to. My reading list (of things I haven't read) is just too long, and I don't think I'll be able to work a bunch of rereading in (even if I am rereading Jekyll and Hyde).

Those are the things I know. But it's also raised a question.

Doing all of this has, in many ways, caused me to question literature. Not in a "what is literature?" kind of way, but in a "what's the point of most literature?" kind of way. After seeing the impact of so much of science fiction, it makes me wonder about the worthwhileness of whole genres of "literature." If reading doesn't prompt us to do something, what's the point? It doesn't have to be science fiction. Dickens didn't write science fiction, but his novels were often social commentary that prompted people to respond (like with Oliver Twist). Honestly, this has been a question I've struggled with since, well, since high school, even back when I was reading Piers Anthony (and most of his books don't do anything). And I get entertainment. I like being entertained. But isn't providing something more than just mere entertainment something we should be striving for? Of course, writing books that say something is a lot harder than just writing books. Writing books that say something well... well, that's pretty rare.

Anyway...

The A to Z challenge itself... was it worth it? I don't think I have an answer to that question. Looking at the numbers, just the numbers, I'd have to say "no." I mean that in that I put a whole lot more work into it than I got back from it. It didn't raise my daily traffic by any considerable amount. I did gain followers, but it certainly wasn't a huge number. No great increase in comments. In fact, that number dropped, but I'm sure it was because people got burned out by the end of the month. At any rate, I think it will take a couple or few months to actually see what the real impact of participating was. At the moment, I'm saying it was tiring, it made me cranky, and it made my wife cranky at me. And, see, I had, like, 9 posts completed before April started, but I only finished my "Z" post two days before it was due. And I worked on these almost every single day (I think I took a total of 3 days off from working on blog posts the whole month (which is why my wife was cranky at me)).

Here's what I observed:

People who wrote short "nothing" posts picked up more followers and got more comments. On one level, I get this. People want to zip through the blogs and check them out, because there are just a lot of them. However, in relation to people that I already followed, those that took this approach, I really just didn't read their blogs the whole month of April. Why? Because they didn't post about anything. Whatever it was that I like about their blog was just gone, so I didn't even bother. In that sense, it all feels like false advertising to me. The people that pulled the most new people in were the ones that "lied" about who they are by throwing up frivolous posts. And I just don't know how I feel about that overall. I think it makes me sad.

In the same way, I didn't find very many new blogs I felt were worth following. The few I did choose to follow were blogs that said something. Had significant posts that took some time to read. Some of these blogs picked up so few new followers as to be insignificant. And that makes me sad. It makes me feel like most people don't want to take the time to read something that will make them think. Actually, I know this is true, because most people don't read. And, here, among people that (supposedly) do read, they're only really attracted to the short, flashy posts with pictures of kittens.

But here's the thing, of the blogs that I skipped over because their A to Z posts were short, frivolous things (like A is for Apple (because I really came across that one (more than once))), how many of them actually have blogs worth following but were "lying" during the A to Z month because the short posts attract more flies? I'll never know.

And that... that's actually why I wrote long posts in the vein of what I normally do. I wanted the people that stopped by my blog to see what I'm actually about and make a decision based on me, not a "used car salesman" persona that I threw on during A to Z month to drive traffic in. Having said that, I did do one post that was "lighter" than  the rest. It had more pictures than any other post I did and less of me talking. It felt natural to me to demonstrate that one through pictures because of the subject matter: exo-suits. They're just cool. And that post, the one I viewed as kind of a throwaway post, got twice as many page views as the next most viewed A to Z post. And I don't know how I feel about that, because, if I were to pick my top 3 posts of A to Z, or my top 5, or, even, my top 10, that one would not be in it.

I suppose it's just going to come down to a question of quantity vs quality. I chose to not go for quantity. I did that on purpose and, even, stated my decision to go the route I was going to one of the hosts. Unfortunately, quality is more difficult to measure, to >heh< quantify, so it may take me a while to figure out if the time I spent on A to Z was worth it in the grand scheme of things. I do think I picked up, at least, a few quality people, and, for that, I'm grateful. Beyond that, we'll just have to see how it goes.

[EDIT: As a follow up to my series and as an addition (specifically) to my Cyborg post, I just saw an article yesterday about the very first bionic eyes being implanted and returning (limited) sight to some people suffering from a degenerative genetic condition that causes blindness. This is pretty big news!]