Avoiding a Star-Wars-Style Idiocracy

Can we avoid this fate?

Courtesy Lucasfilm

The Star Wars movies, especially the first trilogy, describe a technically advanced but bleak future. There are many scifi techno-dystopias, but Star Wars is a special type.

It is an Idiocracy.

By “Idiocracy,” I mean a situation coined by the movie of the same name, where the average IQ is much lower in the future (or in Star Wars, a futuristic galaxy long, long ago).

In Idiocracy, a man and woman with average IQs were both frozen and revived 1,000 years in the future. While they were gone, the supposed current day reproduction “trends” were brought to their full conclusion. According to the movie, dumber people (exemplified by a couple in a trailer park) had many more children than the smarter people (exemplified by a couple in an upper class suburban home).

The end result was a society of idiots, an Idiocracy. When the two protagonists unfroze 1,000 years into the future, their average IQs made them the smartest people on the planet.

In Idiocracy, almost no one knew how to run the technology, not to mention improve it and invent new tech. They literally had a hard time holding together previous technologies, such as farming and architecture:

Courtesy: “Idiocracy”

Now, I don’t think the main premise of Idiocracy is real or true, and I reject many of its base assumptions, especially about people in trailer parks. That said, postulating that the Star Wars universe is an Idiocracy has very strong explanatory power.

1. Widespread Technological degradation. Whether we are talking about Tatooine or Jakku or Takodana, or the many ships we see in the hands of anyone (except the Nabu or the Empire or the First Order), technological decay abounds. People don’t look to buy new hyperdrives or make new things. It seems that only weapon technologies are advanced at a reasonably forward direction. Clearly the widespread technology of the Star Wars universe peaked a thousand years before Luke during the time of the Knights of the Old Republic. Galen Erso (the father of the protagonist in Rogue One) was necessary to design the Death Star because he was the only person in the galaxy smart enough to do it, even though there are arguably 500 Trillion residents of the Star Wars galaxy. Thus his intelligence was vanishingly rare. Because the galaxy was dumb.

2. Even the leading people do really dumb things. It really bothered me that Yoda had all the pieces he needed to detect and prevent Darth Sidious’ rise to power, and yet was still stumped even halfway through Episode 3. It’s amazing that the Holdo Maneuver was not a standard procedure used by many desperate people (like those trying to blow up Death Stars). And it was never thought to be weaponized by hyperdrive-enabled unmanned drones? Han Solo had maybe a 105 IQ, and he lived as a smuggler that outsmarted almost everyone he met. Palpatine’s plans indicate an IQ no higher than 120, but this was enough to allow him to rise to power from almost nothing to rule an entire galaxy for 23 years. Jar-Jar Binks was a Senator. Also, NO ONE THOUGHT TO FARM MIDICHLORIANS IN PETRI DISHES?!?

The Holdo Maneuver

Now, the Star Wars Idiocracy may not have occurred because suburbanites had just one or zero kids per family, but it did occur¹. And it seems the reason is that the technological ease granted the galaxy allowed for scientific and technological apathy. People took the tech for granted until the ability to do anything but fix it by replacement was almost gone. Star Wars appears to have many more junkyards than engineering colleges.

Here on a small planet in our galaxy, we now have Magic Rectangles that connect us across the globe and to an almost infinite store of human knowledge. We change our atmospheres up and down by single Fahrenheit degrees to maximize indoor comfort. We sous vide our steaks at home and buy $8 coffees at shops. It’s freaking awesome. I am so thankful I am living now.

But are we in danger of slipping into a Star Wars Idiocracy? Probably. It’s not inevitable, but it’s definitely not impossible either. So what steps can we take to avoid that dark fate?

In no particular order:

• Teach your children wonder. We are so astoundingly surrounded by natural and technological wonders that we take them for granted all the time. Many of the science-themed articles on this blog are me trying to express this in my way. But find your own way. What are you astounded by? Infectiously describe why to your children and express to them how important it is to appreciate how DNA makes proteins or how cell phones work or how steel is the foundation for the Industrial Revolution or how the Constitutional checks and balances work. All of these are technologies or natural wonders can set minds to explore-mode instead of consume-mode.

• Teach your children purpose. Speaking of which, I would like to emphasize that consuming entertainment is not an accomplishment. It’s a relaxation tool. Real accomplishments are backed up by purpose, a worthy reason. Collecting coins, watching anime, and following politics are all fine things to do to relax, and relaxation is good. But they have almost no redeeming purpose on their own. Teach your children to care about purposeful things and then do something purposeful about it.

• Teach your children that life is hard but sweet, and those things don’t contradict. Every single extremely interesting person I know that has deep, useful wisdom has turned out to have been through something astoundingly difficult. And most of those people also deeply enjoy life. And they are the ones I have always needed when I am struggling and going through ringers. I love them and I need them. But they wouldn’t be there for me unless they had gone through their own personal horrors. Life is good because sometimes life is bad. So expect bad to come, because you are here for a reason, and that reason is not making snarky Facebook comments². If we don’t teach our children that suffering is part of every worthy life, they may fall apart when it comes.

• Teach your children. Anything. Once a week, just sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper (or an item) and teach them something. It could be how to read music, how house loans work, how to change your AC’s air filter, or how to prune a bush.

Technological and Societal progress is a humongous benefit to our species. But we must always fight laziness, apathy, and ease.

And if you made it this far into the article, you are definitely one of the people that should have a lot of kids.

1. In-Universe

2. But it’s certainly relaxing…