Conflicts Between Personal Desires and Community Responsibility, Research Paper Example

Star Wars, the movie is centered on a character known as Luke Skywalker who stands up against the rule of Darth Vader. Skywalker has been compared to Moses and Churchill because in the movie Skywalker faced a formidable enemy who had no scruples and who had no qualms about using brute force or taking lives. There is a need in communities to step forward and to put aside their personal and individual desires for the larger common good. It is a natural state of affairs that one should be focused on their own goals and plans but just as in the case of Luke Skywalker in his battle against evil, today’s world requires that selfish individual desires be set aside and the needs of the community be addressed in terms of sustainability and survival. Luke Skywalker, in the fictitious story related by the movie Star Wars certainly had his own agenda as all individuals in the real world do and just as individuals in the real world are hesitant to become a slayer of evil nemeses, Luke Skywalker was young with his own life to live. However, Skywalker understood that someone had to step forward to fight the evil Darth Vader, and he came to understand that he was that someone. The fight against evil and harm to community is not just an age-old battle but also one that is highly relevant in the modern world in light of global changes, food and water shortages, and the ongoing struggle between nations attempting to gain control over the world’s resources. The expectations of the individual are conflicting in today’s society as noted in the work of Nuckolls, “Men are expected to be rugged individual, but society provides too few opportunities for expression, since most men work in settings that require cooperation and teamwork” and it is questioned how it is then that a man is to simultaneously be “a rugged individual and negate, at least temporarily the values of personal responsibility and self-control.” (p.15) Required is the setting aside of personal goals and desires so that one can focus on and assist the more important community goals and assist in development of the community through a mutual team effort. In the contemporary ‘star wars’ and specifically the nuclear arms race there is an alternative and as such it is one that Churg et al states is “…so obvious it has been overlooked, trivialized, and regarded as not newsworthy.” ( p.13) The answer “a bilateral, cooperative, and verifiable dismantling of nuclear weapons along with a ban on their production.” (Churg, et al, 1987, p.13) This would require that individual goals and selfish desires of the world’s countries be set aside and the larger common good of the world community be given precedence over local goals and agendas.

References

Churg, AD, et al (1987) From Star Wars (SDI) to The Alternative. A report prepared as a public service by the Southern California Federation of Scientists published by the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race and Physicians for Social Responsibility. Retrieved from: http://www.scfs-la.org/mempubs/plotkin/SDI-SCFSjust.pdf

Humanitarian Intervention (2011) DuckofMinerva. 29 Nov 2011. Retrieved from: http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2011/11/humanitarian-intervention.html

Napping the Future of the Internet onto Global Scenarios – A Preliminary View (2010) The Millennium Project. Demographics and Human Resources. Retrieved from: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/demogrscen.html

Nuckolls, CW (1996) The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire. 15 Oct 1996. University of Wisconsin Press. Retrieved from: http://books.google.com/books?id=O6hC8Yk5_roC&dq=star+wars+and+community+responsibility&source=gbs_navlinks_s