Cass Sunstein: belief

Transcript context

…So we only get the tip of the iceberg? You’ve got the — my filter is probably not sufficiently rigorous, so you probably see too much, but I do have a filter. There’s a lot of stuff that I — so I tried, like “There is no try. There’s do,” but there’s also experimenting. So, there — I’m working on a book on liberty. I’ve been doing it for a few years, and I have 90,000 words, and I don’t like what’s there. I hope something will come of it. But just the advice would be — you are a living practitioner of this — is if you have something to say, write it. And then think, “Is it worth showing to the world? ” To be too critical of your own production, I think, is — at the early stages, at least — is an error. Be critical — if it’s a book or an academic article, be really hard on yourself late. But early, just assume it’s good. On the surface it seems like Star Wars is a highly militaristic story where you have fighting resolving every important situation. But if you really think about the arc of the six stories, it seems like the war was totally futile. If the Jedi had simply surrendered in Episode I, things would have actually turned out to be better. At least a whole lot of bodies would have been spared. And it’s striking — if you take a look at the end of Episode VI in the digitally altered version, Coruscant still looks awesome. When they had the fireworks going over Coruscant, it does not seem like the emperor’s rule actually did any harm, except insofar as resisting it caused problems. So, what do you think? Is Star Wars as actually militaristic as it is on the surface, or is it a Straussian tale of pacifism as it should be?…

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