Nudge Italia

The first Star Wars movie was released in 1977, when Americans were still recovering from the Vietnam War. George Lucas built up a story about the struggle between light and darkness, good and evil. His decisions were deeply linked with the historical events of the time, and lots of scholars wrote and write even now about the philosophy behind the space fantasy saga.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor and former White House advisor, author with Richard Thaler of Nudge. Improving decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, has recently published his new book, The world according to Star Wars, out from 31 May 2016.

Sunstein explored the well-known saga, dealing with contradictions and different interpretations of the meaning. The result is a careful analysis of the pervasive themes in Star Wars, such as the Dark side, rebellion, and redemption, and a description of their potential relationship with governance decisions about constitutional law, behavioral economics and political uprisings.

Star wars is explained by Cass Sunstein as a mythological version of our Age, where freedom of choice brings to the conflict between rationality and instinct, light and darkness.

It’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense

As in our dimension, also in the galaxy, nobody can undertake to control every move he takes, every consequence of his choices, without being mistaken. No rational theory can save us from the countless tricks hidden behind the illusory balanced face of reality. Bias and wrong beliefs bring us to choose with the certainty of being aware of all we need to know, but the truth is that we are story tellers, as George Lucas himself, and we need to find out coherence, ignoring all that doesn’t sound good. The result is a symmetrical world, where we grow up, fight, and love. Here we find our dimension, which is just a tiny part of the mysterious, unknowable, messy universe.

Too many words could get you bored, so I’ll leave you with Solo’s message:

< Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. [Kenobi smiles] Anyway, it’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.>

Solo, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, 1977 by George Lucas

Edited by Eleonora Volta