The University of WisconsinMadison solidified its standing as a leader in the field of quantum information science when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the White House announced the Q-NEXT collaboration as a funded Quantum Information Science Research Center through the National Quantum Initiative Act. The five-year, $115 million collaboration was one of five Centers announced today.

Q-NEXT, a next-generation quantum science and engineering collaboration led by the DOEs Argonne National Laboratory, brings together nearly 100 world-class researchers from three national laboratories, 10 universities including UWMadison, and 10 leading U.S. technology companies to develop the science and technology to control and distribute quantum information.

The main goals for Q-NEXT are first to deliver quantum interconnects to find ways to quantum mechanically connect distant objects, says Mark Eriksson, the John Bardeen Professor of Physics at UWMadison and a Q-NEXT thrust lead. And next, to establish a national resource to both develop and provide pristine materials for quantum science and technology.

Q-NEXT will focus on three core quantum technologies:

Eriksson is leading the Materials and Integration thrust, one of six Q-NEXT focus areas that features researchers from across the collaboration. This thrust aims to: develop high-coherence materials, including for silicon and superconducting qubits, which is an essential component of preserving entanglement; develop a silicon-based optical quantum memory, which is important in developing a quantum repeater; and improve color-center quantum bits, which are used in both communication and sensing.

One of the key goals in Materials and Integration is to not just improve the materials but also to improve how you integrate those materials together so that in the end, quantum devices maintain coherence and preserve entanglement, Eriksson says. The integration part of the name is really important. You may have a material that on its own is really good at preserving coherence, yet you only make something useful when you integrate materials together.

Six other UWMadison and Wisconsin Quantum Institute faculty members are Q-NEXT investigators: physics professors Victor Brar, Shimon Kolkowitz, Robert McDermott, and Mark Saffman, electrical and computer engineering professor Mikhail Kats, and chemistry professor Randall Goldsmith. UWMadison researchers are involved in five of the six research thrusts.

Im excited about Q-NEXT because of the connections and collaborations it provides to national labs, other universities, and industry partners, Eriksson says. When youre talking about research, its those connections that often lead to the breakthroughs.

The potential impacts of Q-NEXT research include the creation ofa first-ever National Quantum Devices Databasethat will promote the development and fabrication of next generation quantum devices as well as the development of the components and systems that enable quantum communications across distances ranging from microns to kilometers.

This funding helps ensure that the Q-NEXT collaboration will lead the way in future developments in quantum science and engineering, says Steve Ackerman, UWMadison vice chancellor for research and graduate education. Q-NEXT is the epitome of the Wisconsin Idea as we work together to transfer new quantum technologies to the marketplace and support U.S. economic competitiveness in this growing field.

Read more here:

Q-NEXT collaboration awarded National Quantum Initiative funding - University of Wisconsin-Madison

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The Drake equation is one of the more famous reckonings in science. It calculates the likelihood that we are not alone in the universe by estimating the number of other intelligent civilizations in our galaxy that might exist now.

Some of the terms in this equation are well known or becoming better understood, such as the number of stars in our galaxy and the proportion that have planets in the habitable zone. But others are unknown, such as the proportion of planets that develop intelligent life; and some may never be known such as the proportion that destroy themselves before they can be discovered.

Nevertheless, the Drake equation allows scientists to place important bounds on the numbers of intelligent civilizations that might be out there.

However, there is another sense in which humanity could be linked with an alien intelligenceour world may just be a simulation inside a massively powerful supercomputer run by such a species. Indeed, various scientists, philosophers and visionaries have said that the probability of such a scenario could be close to one. In other words, we probably are living in a simulation.

The accuracy of these claims is somewhat controversial. So a better way to determine the probability that we live in a simulation would be much appreciated.

Enter Alexandre Bibeau-Delisle and Gilles Brassard at the University of Montreal in Canada. These researchers have derived a Drake-like equation that calculates the chances that we live in a computer simulation. And the results throw up some counterintuitive ideas that are likely to change the way we think about simulations, how we might determine whether we are in one and whether we could ever escape.

Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard begin with a fundamental estimate of the computing power available to create a simulation. They say, for example, that a kilogram of matter, fully exploited for computation, could perform 10^50 operations per second.

By comparison, the human brain, which is also kilogram-sized, performs up to 10^16 operations per second. It may thus be possible for a single computer the mass of a human brain to simulate the real-time evolution of 1.4 10^25 virtual brains, they say.

In our society, a significant number of computers already simulate entire civilizations, in games such as Civilization VI, Hearts of Iron IV, Humankind and so. So it may be reasonable to assume that in a sufficiently advanced civilization, individuals will be able to run games that simulate societies like ours, populated with sentient conscious beings.

So an interesting question is this: of all the sentient beings in existence, what fraction are likely to be simulations? To derive the answer, Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard start with the total number of real sentient beings NRe, multiply that by the fraction with access to the necessary computing power fCiv; multiply this by the fraction of that power that is devoted to simulating consciousness fDed (because these beings are likely to be using their computer for other purposes too); and then multiply this by the number of brains they could simulate Rcal.

The resulting equation is this, where fSim is the fraction of simulated brains:

Here RCal is the huge number of brains that fully exploited matter should be able to simulate.

The sheer size of this number, ~10^25, pushes Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard towards an inescapable conclusion. It is mathematically inescapable from [the above] equation and the colossal scale of RCal that fSim 1 unless fCiv fDed 0, they say.

So there are two possible outcomes. Either we live in a simulation or a vanishingly small proportion of advanced computing power is devoted to simulating brains.

Its not hard to imagine why the second option might be true. A society of beings similar to us (but with a much greater technological development) could indeed decide it is not very ethical to simulate beings with enough precision to make them conscious while fooling them and keeping them cut-off from the real world, say Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard.

Another possibility is that advanced civilizations never get to the stage where their technology is powerful enough to perform these kinds of computations. Perhaps they destroy themselves through war or disease or climate change long before then. There is no way of knowing.

But suppose we are in a simulation. Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard ask whether we might escape while somehow hiding our intentions from our overlords. They assume that the simulating technology will be quantum in nature. If quantum phenomena are as difficult to compute on classical systems as we believe them to be, a simulation containing our world would most probably run on quantum computing power, they say.

This raises the possibility that it may be possible to detect our alien overlords since they cannot measure the quantum nature of our world without revealing their presence. Quantum cryptography uses the same principle; indeed, Brassard is one of the pioneers of this technology.

That would seem to make it possible for us to make encrypted plans that are hidden from the overlords, such as secretly transferring ourselves into our own simulations.

However, the overlords have a way to foil this. All they need to do is to rewire their simulation to make it look as if we are able to hide information, even though they are aware of it all the time. If the simulators are particularly angry at our attempted escape, they could also send us to a simulated hell, in which case we would at least have the confirmation we were truly living inside a simulation and our paranoia was not unjustified...conclude Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

In that sense, we are the ultimate laboratory guinea pigs: forever trapped and forever fooled by the evil genius of our omnipotent masters.

Time for another game of Civilization VI.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/2008.09275 : Probability and Consequences of Living Inside a Computer Simulation

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This Equation Calculates The Chances We Live In A Computer Simulation - Discover Magazine

Earlier this year, a Japanese supercomputer built on Arm-based Fujitsu A64FX processors snatched the crown of worlds fastest machine, blowing incumbent leader IBM Summit out of the water.

Fugaku, as the machine is known, achieved 415.5 petaFLOPS by the popular High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, which is almost three times the score of the IBM machine (148.5 petaFLOPS).

It also topped the rankings for Graph 500, HPL-AI and HPCH workloads - a feat never before achieved in the world of high performance computing (HPC).

Modern supercomputers are now edging ever-closer to the landmark figure of one exaFLOPS (equal to 1,000 petaFLOPS), commonly described as the exascale barrier. In fact, Fugaku itself can already achieve one exaFLOPS, but only in lower precision modes.

The consensus among the experts we spoke to is that a single machine will breach the exascale barrier within the next 6 - 24 months, unlocking a wealth of possibilities in the fields of medical research, climate forecasting, cybersecurity and more.

But what is an exaFLOPS? And what will it mean to break the exascale milestone, pursued doggedly for more than a decade?

To understand what it means to achieve exascale computing, its important to first understand what is meant by FLOPS, which stands for floating point operations per second.

A floating point operation is any mathematical calculation (i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) that involves a number containing a decimal (e.g. 3.0 - a floating point number), as opposed to a number without a decimal (e.g. 3 - a binary integer). Calculations involving decimals are typically more complex and therefore take longer to solve.

An exascale computer can perform 10^18 (one quintillion/100,000,000,000,000,000) of these mathematical calculations every second.

For context, to equal the number of calculations an exascale computer can process in a single second, an individual would have to perform one sum every second for 31,688,765,000 years.

The PC Im using right now, meanwhile, is able to reach 147 billion FLOPS (or 0.00000014723 exaFLOPS), outperforming the fastest supercomputer of 1993, the Intel Paragon (143.4 billion FLOPS).

This both underscores how far computing has come in the last three decades and puts into perspective the extreme performance levels attained by the leading supercomputers today.

The key to building a machine capable of reaching one exaFLOPS is optimization at the processing, storage and software layers.

The hardware must be small and powerful enough to pack together and reach the necessary speeds, the storage capacious and fast enough to serve up the data and the software scalable and programmable enough to make full use of the hardware.

For example, there comes a point at which adding more processors to a supercomputer will no longer affect its speed, because the application is not sufficiently optimized. The only way governments and private businesses will realize a full return on HPC hardware investment is through an equivalent investment in software.

Organizations such as the Exascale Computing Project (EPC) the ExCALIBUR programme are interested in solving precisely this problem. Those involved claim a renewed focus on algorithm and application development is required in order to harness the full power and scope of exascale.

Achieving the delicate balance between software and hardware, in an energy efficient manner and avoiding an impractically low mean time between failures (MTBF) score (the time that elapses before a system breaks down under strain) is the challenge facing the HPC industry.

15 years ago as we started the discussion on exascale, we hypothesized that it would need to be done in 20 mega-watts (MW); later that was changed to 40 MW. With Fugaku, we see that we are about halfway to a 64-bit exaFLOPS at the 40 MW power envelope, which shows that an exaFLOPS is in reach today, explained Brent Gorda, Senior Director HPC at UK-based chip manufacturer Arm.

We could hit an exaFLOPS now with sufficient funding to build and run a system. [But] the size of the system is likely to be such that MTBF is measured in single digit number-of-days based on todays technologies and the number of components necessary to reach these levels of performance.

When it comes to building a machine capable of breaching the exascale barrier, there are a number of other factors at play, beyond technological feasibility. An exascale computer can only come into being once an equilibrium has been reached at the intersection of technology, economics and politics.

One could in theory build an exascale system today by packing in enough CPUs, GPUs and DPUs. But what about economic viability? said Gilad Shainer of NVIDIA Mellanox, the firm behind the Infiniband technology (the fabric that links the various hardware components) found in seven of the ten fastest supercomputers.

Improvements in computing technologies, silicon processing, more efficient use of power and so on all help to increase efficiency and make exascale computing an economic objective as opposed to a sort of sporting achievement.

According to Paul Calleja, who heads up computing research at the University of Cambridge and is working with Dell on the Open Exascale Lab, Fugaku is an excellent example of what is theoretically possible today, but is also impractical by virtually any other metric.

If you look back at Japanese supercomputers, historically theres only ever been one of them made. They have beautifully exquisite architectures, but theyre so stupidly expensive and proprietary that no one else could afford one, he told TechRadar Pro.

[Japanese organizations] like these really large technology demonstrators, which are very useful in industry because it shows the direction of travel and pushes advancements, but those kinds of advancements are very expensive and not sustainable, scalable or replicable.

So, in this sense, there are two separate exascale landmarks; the theoretical barrier, which will likely be met first by a machine of Fugakus ilk (a technological demonstrator), and the practical barrier, which will see exascale computing deployed en masse.

Geopolitical factors will also play a role in how quickly the exascale barrier is breached. Researchers and engineers might focus exclusively on the technological feat, but the institutions and governments funding HPC research are likely motivated by different considerations.

Exascale computing is not just about reaching theoretical targets, it is about creating the ability to tackle problems that have been previously intractable, said Andy Grant, Vice President HPC & Big Data at IT services firm Atos, influential in the fields of HPC and quantum computing.

Those that are developing exascale technologies are not doing it merely to have the fastest supercomputer in the world, but to maintain international competitiveness, security and defence.

In Japan, their new machine is roughly 2.8x more powerful than the now-second place system. In broad terms, that will enable Japanese researchers to address problems that are 2.8x more complex. In the context of international competitiveness, that creates a significant advantage.

In years gone by, rival nations fought it out in the trenches or competed to see who could place the first human on the moon. But computing may well become the frontier at which the next arms race takes place; supremacy in the field of HPC might prove just as politically important as military strength.

Once exascale computers become an established resource - available for businesses, scientists and academics to draw upon - a wealth of possibilities will be unlocked across a wide variety of sectors.

HPC could prove revelatory in the fields of clinical medicine and genomics, for example, which require vast amounts of compute power to conduct molecular modelling, simulate interactions between compounds and sequence genomes.

In fact, IBM Summit and a host of other modern supercomputers are being used to identify chemical compounds that could contribute to the fight against coronavirus. The Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium assembled 16 supercomputers, accounting for an aggregate of 330 petaFLOPS - but imagine how much more quickly research could be conducted using a fleet of machines capable of reaching 1,000 petaFLOPS on their own.

Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, is another cross-disciplinary domain that will be transformed with the arrival of exascale computing. The ability to analyze ever-larger datasets will improve the ability of AI models to make accurate forecasts (contingent on the quality of data fed into the system) that could be applied to virtually any industry, from cybersecurity to e-commerce, manufacturing, logistics, banking, education and many more.

As explained by Rashid Mansoor, CTO at UK supercomputing startup Hadean, the value of supercomputing lies in the ability to make an accurate projection (of any variety).

The primary purpose of a supercomputer is to compute some real-world phenomenon to provide a prediction. The prediction could be the way proteins interact, the way a disease spreads through the population, how air moves over an aerofoil or electromagnetic fields interact with a spacecraft during re-entry, he told TechRadar Pro.

Raw performance such as the HPL benchmark simply indicates that we can model bigger and more complex systems to a greater degree of accuracy. One thing that the history of computing has shown us is that the demand for computing power is insatiable.

Other commonly cited areas that will benefit significantly from the arrival of exascale include brain mapping, weather and climate forecasting, product design and astronomy, but its also likely that brand new use cases will emerge as well.

The desired workloads and the technology to perform them form a virtuous circle. The faster and more performant the computers, the more complex problems we can solve and the faster the discovery of new problems, explained Shainer.

What we can be sure of is that we will see the continuous needs or ever growing demands for more performance capabilities in order to solve the unsolvable. Once this is solved, we will find the new unsolvable.

By all accounts, the exascale barrier will likely fall within the next two years, but the HPC industry will then turn its attention to the next objective, because the work is never done.

Some might point to quantum computers, which approach problem solving in an entirely different way to classical machines (exploiting symmetries to speed up processing), allowing for far greater scale. However, there are also problems to which quantum computing cannot be applied.

Mid-term (10 year) prospects for quantum computing are starting to shape up, as are other technologies. These will be more specialized where a quantum computer will very likely show up as an application accelerator for problems that relate to logistics first. They wont completely replace the need for current architectures for IT/data processing, explained Gorda.

As Mansoor puts it, on certain problems even a small quantum computer can be exponentially faster than all of the classical computing power on earth combined. Yet on other problems, a quantum computer could be slower than a pocket calculator.

The next logical landmark for traditional computing, then, would be one zettaFLOPS, equal to 1,000 exaFLOPS or 1,000,000 petaFLOPS.

Chinese researchers predicted in 2018 that the first zettascale system will come online in 2035, paving the way for new computing paradigms. The paper itself reads like science fiction, at least for the layman:

To realize these metrics, micro-architectures will evolve to consist of more diverse and heterogeneous components. Many forms of specialized accelerators are likely to co-exist to boost HPC in a joint effort. Enabled by new interconnect materials such as photonic crystal, fully optical interconnecting systems may come into use.

Assuming one exaFLOPS is reached by 2022, 14 years will have elapsed between the creation of the first petascale and first exascale systems. The first terascale machine, meanwhile, was constructed in 1996, 12 years before the petascale barrier was breached.

If this pattern were to continue, the Chinese researchers estimate would look relatively sensible, but there are firm question marks over the validity of zettascale projections.

While experts are confident in their predicted exascale timelines, none would venture a guess at when zettascale might arrive without prefacing their estimate with a long list of caveats.

Is that an interesting subject? Because to be honest with you, its so not obtainable. To imagine how we could go 1000x beyond [one exaFLOPS] is not a conversation anyone could have, unless theyre just making it up, said Calleja, asked about the concept of zettascale.

Others were more willing to theorize, but equally reticent to guess at a specific timeline. According to Grant, the way zettascale machines process information will be unlike any supercomputer in existence today.

[Zettascale systems] will be data-centric, meaning components will move to the data rather than the other way around, as data volumes are likely to be so large that moving data will be too expensive. Regardless, predicting what they might look like is all guesswork for now, he said.

It is also possible that the decentralized model might be the fastest route to achieving zettascale, with millions of less powerful devices working in unison to form a collective supercomputer more powerful than any single machine (as put into practice by the SETI Institute).

As noted by Saurabh Vij, CEO of distributed supercomputing firm Q Blocks, decentralized systems address a number of problems facing the HPC industry today, namely surrounding building and maintenance costs. They are also accessible to a much wider range of users and therefore democratize access to supercomputing resources in a way that is not otherwise possible.

There are benefits to a centralized architecture, but the cost and maintenance barrier overshadows them. [Centralized systems] also alienate a large base of customer groups that could benefit, he said.

We think a better way is to connect distributed nodes together in a reliable and secure manner. It wouldnt be too aggressive to say that, 5 years from now, your smartphone could be part of a giant distributed supercomputer, making money for you while you sleep by solving computational problems for industry, he added.

However, incentivizing network nodes to remain active for a long period is challenging and a high rate of turnover can lead to reliability issues. Network latency and capacity problems would also need to be addressed before distributed supercomputing can rise to prominence.

Ultimately, the difficulty in making firm predictions about zettascale lies in the massive chasm that separates present day workloads and HPC architectures from those that might exist in the future. From a contemporary perspective, its fruitless to imagine what might be made possible by a computer so powerful.

We might imagine zettascale machines will be used to process workloads similar to those tackled by modern supercomputers, only more quickly. But its possible - even likely - the arrival of zettascale computing will open doors that do not and cannot exist today, so extraordinary is the leap.

In a future in which computers are 2,000+ times as fast as the most powerful machine today, philosophical and ethical debate surrounding the intelligence of man versus machine are bound to be played out in greater detail - and with greater consequence.

It is impossible to directly compare the workings of a human brain with that of a computer - i.e. to assign a FLOPS value to the human mind. However, it is not insensible to ask how many FLOPS must be achieved before a machine reaches a level of performance that might be loosely comparable to the brain.

Back in 2013, scientists used the K supercomputer to conduct a neuronal network simulation using open source simulation software NEST. The team simulated a network made up of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses.

While ginormous, the simulation represented only 1% of the human brains neuronal network and took 40 minutes to replicate 1 seconds worth of neuronal network activity.

However, the K computer reached a maximum computational power of only 10 petaFLOPS. A basic extrapolation (ignoring inevitable complexities), then, would suggest Fugaku could simulate circa 40% of the human brain, while a zettascale computer would be capable of performing a full simulation many times over.

Digital neuromorphic hardware (supercomputers created specifically to simulate the human brain) like SpiNNaker 1 and 2 will also continue to develop in the post-exascale future. Instead of sending information from point A to B, these machines will be designed to replicate the parallel communication architecture of the brain, sending information simultaneously to many different locations.

Modern iterations are already used to help neuroscientists better understand the mysteries of the brain and future versions, aided by advances in artificial intelligence, will inevitably be used to construct a faithful and fully-functional replica.

The ethical debates that will arise with the arrival of such a machine - surrounding the perception of consciousness, the definition of thought and what an artificial uber-brain could or should be used for - are manifold and could take generations to unpick.

The inability to foresee what a zettascale computer might be capable of is also an inability to plan for the moral quandaries that might come hand-in-hand.

Whether a future supercomputer might be powerful enough to simulate human-like thought is not in question, but whether researchers should aspire to bringing an artificial brain into existence is a subject worthy of discussion.

See the article here:

I confess, I'm scared of the next generation of supercomputers - TechRadar

Besides an F-35 in action, the U.S. Air Force has featured several other pics including a Pave Hawk chopper, B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and a C-17.

Every week, the United States Air Force likes to showcase its militaryin a series of glorious, high-resolution photographs that have been taken by its photographers. This week, we have a few of those featured in this article, with some fascinating images making the cut. First up, we have in the featured image the latest fighter jet, the F-35, some of which have recently been scrambled for an excercise in the Middle East. This is the F-35 Demonstration Team, with pilot Capt Kristin Wolfe flying during practice for the 2020 Ocean City Air Show at Ocean City, Md on August 14th, 2020. There were other displays from the USAF on offer too, including the Thunderbirds and F-22 and A-10 Demonstration Teams.

Next up, we have this head-on shot of the HH-60G Pave Hawk from the 55th Rescue Squadron. The aircraft is seen turnings its rotors, as part of a pre-flight inspection on the 17thof August, while on the ground at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. The 55th is participating in exercise Gunfighter Flag 20-1. This is where they train with joint international partners to complete combat and rescue exercises.

RELATED:U.S Air Force Mulling Prospects For Sixth-Generation Fighter Jets

One of the most impressive aircraft in the USAF fleet is the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. The F-117 Stealth Fighter may no longer be flying, but the B-2 is and here we have one from the 393rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. Senior Airman Robert Witkowski and Staff Sergeant Mark Farrar are preparing their B-2 Spirit for takeoff at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia.

Finally, in the midst of the tragedy of the Beirut port explosion in Lebanon, we see a C-17 Globemaster III. The Globemaster, among the largest aircraft in U.S. Air Force service, is seen at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, being loaded up with humanitarian aid bound for the devastated city, with critical supplies in the cargo hold which is being loaded on August 7th, 2020.

Source: U.S. Air Force

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An astrophysicist, a policeman and a Baptist pastor walk into a bar. This is no joke. This cantina can be a little rough. Actually, it's been called a wretched hive of scum and villainy. So, watch your step. They may not serve your kind in here. We are entering the eternally expanding universe of Star Wars - that colossal labyrinth of movies and merchandise, mystery and magic that has consumed followers and confounded non-believers ever since a visionary young filmmaker named George Lucas fashioned a rollicking space adventure from the archetypal hero's journey monomyth of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Back in 1977, pioneering visual effects notwithstanding, Star Wars was pretty straight forward. Borrowing from such auteur idols as John Ford (The Searchers) and Akira Kurosawa (The Hidden Fortress), Lucas dressed the tropes of his favourite childhood movies - Wild West gunslingers, Errol Flynn duels, World War II dogfights, Tarzan and Jane on the vine - in captivating, futuristic packaging and infused his hero's journey narrative with a spiritualism ("the Force") akin to Zen Buddhism. More than four decades and an estimated $US70 billion in gross revenues later, Star Wars in 2020 is, well, complicated. The final films in the trio of saga trilogies,The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, divided fans and disappointed at the box office, raising questions about entertainment giant Disney's creative stewardship of the lucrative media property it bought from Lucas for $US4 billion in 2012. Evidently spooked, and with cinemas worldwide hit hard by COVID-19, Disney says it will "step back" from making Star Wars movies for now. Not long ago, there were grand plans to put out a new film every two years starting in 2022. But proposed offshoot trilogies by The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss appear to have gone the way of the Death Star, leaving only Kiwi Taika Waititi - director of Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit - contracted to deliver a new film at some point. With fans still eager to see every curious corner of this famous galaxy, Disney is turning instead to TV, with four Star Wars spin-off shows in the pipeline and five others rumoured to be in development following the success of The Mandalorian, which has helped the Disney+ streaming service amass 60 million subscribers worldwide in its first nine months. With the show's second season dropping in October and its title character joining Frozen's Elsa, Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear and Marvel's Captain America in the Disney+ Ooshies collection launched this week at Woolworths (along with a hologram Princess Leia!), the future of the Stars Wars universe - narratively and commercially - hangs on two characters first introduced 40 years ago in The Empire Strikes Back - the film that turned Star Wars from a hit movie into an epic saga. Long since enshrined as the best entry in the series, Empire opened in Australian cinemas in August 1980. Most of what is still loved today about Star Wars has roots in its darker, deeper first sequel, including gnome-like Jedi master Yoda and masked bounty hunter Boba Fett - inspirations for The Mandalorian - as well as the slow-burn romance between Princess Leia and Han Solo ("I love you." "I know."), composer John Williams' thundering Imperial March theme and Darth Vader's shock plot twist ("No, I am your father"). The film's limited 40th anniversary rerun in selected cinemas from September 10 may be the last time in a long time that a Star Wars movie swashbuckles across the big screen. Which raises the question: Is Star Wars done for as a movie-going experience and the ultimate four-quadrant blockbuster (appealing to both male and female audiences, both under- and over-25s)? Now that it's one franchise among many, will Star Wars ever recapture its original wonderment? Or has that star destroyer sailed? For fans clinging to the original trilogy, The Mandalorian may be the spin-off they were looking for - but can Disney keep this sprawling genre world spinning in infinity on TV? And why do these fans have such powerful proprietary feelings? Is it nostalgia, and is that what compels grown men to trade vintage toys for hundreds of dollars in livestreamed auctions? To help us to understand the forces that have shaped Star Wars and will forever dominate its destiny, we've assembled a small band of experts and aficionados. We're on a diplomatic mission to explore why, unlike its fans, Star Wars never seems to get old. Of course, bellying up to the bar together as if at the Mos Eisley cantina was not an option in the age of coronavirus. So the heroes of our quest - Mick the Fanatic, Brad the Astrophysicist, Heather the Preacher, Ben the Psychologist, Andrew the Marketing Expert and Kieren the Picture Show Man - shared their insights via phone and email. Mick "Fett" Pylak is a Star Wars superfan. His $500,000 collection of toys and memorabilia fills his Sydney house. When he's not trading action figures online or masquerading at events as "Aussie Vader", he has a day job with another kind of force - the police. Credentials: He named his firstborn Leia. Where it began: As a boy, when he saw Return of the Jedi (his parents were divorced and his Dad came specially to take him). "I can still remember how amazed I was by it - the characters, the creatures, the spaceships and this whole new world." His collection: "I started out wanting to find the toys to get back those memories of childhood, but I just never stopped. When they began to increase in value, I viewed it as an investment. Then it became about needing to complete a set and the thrill of the hunt. Once you get a set of, say, mint-on-card figures, you want to get more. I've got a normal job and income but I've acquired this collection by constantly buying and selling. For example, I was paying $500 10 years ago for the vinyl cape Jawa [action figure], the TolToys version on The Empire Strikes Back card which was only ever released in Australia, and these days they sell for $3000." The community: He established the Australian Star Wars Trading Post on Facebook in 2014. It now has 13,000 members. Last year, he set up the Australian Live Toy Auctions page, which hosts livestreams of collectors buying and selling action figures and other merchandise. "Collecting is no longer seen as a nerd thing," he says. "The kids who grew up in that era of the original films and toys are in their spending prime now, so they have the disposable income and the will to spend top dollar for the memories." But what compels him now has moved beyond nostalgia. "When you find and buy something you've been chasing for a while, you get a kind of euphoria which is almost like a drug. When you win the item and then it arrives, you feel this pleasure. And then you put it in your collection and you want to do it all over again." Disney: "They have kept Star Wars alive, which is great. After the prequels it wasn't looking like George Lucas was doing any more movies. The downside is the political correctness - trying to please everybody and not offend anybody." The Mandalorian - based on his favourite character, Boba Fett - has found the sweet spot to please all generations, he says. "TV series open up so many more possibilities for expanding storylines with different characters." Of course, that also means an infinite amount of future merch. "Ah, yes, that is going to be a problem." Dr Brad Tucker is an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the ANU's School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Credentials: He didn't watch Star Wars until his mid-20s. "That sounds weird for someone in my job, but space stuff didn't really register with me as a kid and I didn't become interested in astronomy until university," he says. "So, it's given me an outsider's view of science fiction." The science: "Science does owe a lot to the legacy of science fiction like Star Wars and the way it depicts the science, the storytelling and the visuals. For example, it's very hard to visualise travelling near the speed of light. That is an abstract thing to think about, but the visual storytelling of fiction like Star Wars helps open us up to that as visual creatures - we see it and become inspired," he says. "Our world now is facing really pressing scientific issues, from climate to COVID, so you need people to be inspired to want to pursue those questions. Look at Elon Musk and SpaceX - he's a billionaire fuelling private space endeavours because as a kid his imagination was opened up to the possibilities by Star Wars." The fiction: "People have always looked up at the stars and had a sense of wonder. We are one small world in one solar system that's one of 300 billion solar systems in a galaxy and our galaxy's one of 2 trillion - it makes us feel insignificant in the universe. Then, when you see that same vast backdrop of space and stars and planets depicted in art like Star Wars, it connects the dots straight back to that sense of wonder. When Star Wars came out it would be almost 25 years before we actually found the first planet around another star - so it was make-believe projecting possibilities and inspiring people to wonder. Then you layer over that an adventure story exploring the human condition, and it becomes a way to explore ourselves as a species." The aliens: "Star Wars, and sorry to be sacrilegious here but Star Trek too, were novel for portraying aliens as simply characters - other beings, other lifeforms, who can be good or bad. So, there can be a bunch of aliens in a bar having a beer and listening to a band - it flips the whole H.G. Wells War of the Worlds idea of monsters invading to destroy us, and changes how we think about alien life - and that question: 'Is there life out there?'" The Force mythology: "We often think about science and religion always being at odds, but to my mind they are complementary. They are both trying to help us understand our place in the world, how it works, where we are going, why we do what we do, and to ultimately better our world and our lives. Of course, sometimes science and religion can be at odds, but along comes Star Wars, weaving this narrative of the Force which says you can kind of do both - that there's a higher power, we don't know exactly what it is but it permeates everything and it's good because it gives us energy and life, but there also needs to be balance as part of this bigger universe (the meaning of which we are trying to unravel). That's exactly what we're doing with trying to understand the Big Bang. To me, the Big Bang is the intersection between physics and philosophy and theology - it's where these lines of questioning meet and each spins off in a different direction to try to help us understand." Heather Packett is a teaching pastor at Crossway, Australia's largest Baptist church, and co-director with husband Lucas of ARK, a foster care organisation that recruits and supports faith-based carers. Credentials: Hasn't seen Disney's sequels. Nothing could top her favourite film - Return of the Jedi - anyway. "It showed us that the most evil of people can still be reached with empathy," she says. Where it began: "We didn't have a TV for a chunk of my childhood to avoid bad influences on us as kids. But we did go to the movies, and my brother, seven years older than me, was my influence as far as Star Wars goes - I watched it to be with him." There she marvelled at the "sheer brilliance of the effects, the majesty of the score" and the contest between good and evil. "It was like my understanding of the spiritual realm was playing out before my eyes, albeit in a caricature-like way," she says. Today she often draws from movies in her work as a minister. "Star Wars has definitely influenced my interest in film, and most likely has contributed to my reading and interpreting of faith things within films, whether put there intentionally by the writers or not - for example, I see Messianic themes within most superhero films." The fantasy: "Fantasy and imagination are great for kids and should be encouraged and nurtured. It should also lead to them discovering ways to imagine and create fantasy themselves." But merchandising "can be a problem in an affluent society"," she says. "Kids can easily become entitled, and less creative, when merchandise is readily available, so I'm not really a fan." She has yet to introduce her children to Star Wars. "It'll happen, but currently both ours are still a little sensitive to even fictionalised violence on screen. They're 11 and 13. Most kids have seen it by that age, I know, but I have no interest in pushing them before they'll enjoy it. I was much younger, but I wonder if back in the '70s and '80s there was a greater expanse between reality and fantasy, so it was easier to compartmentalise than it is for kids now." The Force mythology: "I think initially when Star Wars was released, it connected to a generally accepted understanding of spirituality that exists far less now than it did then." She says the films "dabbled in spiritual things to make sense of a fictional galaxy, and to help audiences relate. For me 'the Force' is not the equivalent to God, nor is 'the dark side' an equivalent to satanic force". While actual religious faiths "attempt to help us make sense of life through the lens of a greater power", as a moral compass in the real world "the good versus evil homily of Star Wars doesn't delve into our personal brokenness, and can therefore allow us to remain removed from it, without ever providing answers or a redemptive path ... If it did provide that moral compass for people initially, then I guess, yes, it is less demanding and disappointing than actual faith. But it's also written to entice and entertain audiences - something actual faith has no interest in." Dr Andrew Hughes is a lecturer in marketing at the ANU's Research School of Management. Credentials: A certified fan since childhood. "Loved the storylines, the escapism of it all, be it the stories or the settings, and of course who as a little kid does not want to see good triumph over evil?" The Empire Strikes Back is his favourite. "It expanded the storyline dramatically, and added far more depth to the characters ... it made a story about space very human." The toys: "Toys, and merchandise of any sort, are a bridge to the experience and emotions we have to the franchise/brand. In a way, having a toy, or merchandise, allows us to access those positive emotions at any time. Even as adults this is what makes toys so collectible - it is the access to those emotions, those memories which the toy represents, that we are buying." Disney: "Buying Star Wars wasn't about movies, it was about owning a story which could be developed, changed and altered to match the needs of multiple markets ... smart thinking really, because 10 years from now, if not sooner, it will be all profit. Just look at the excitement around Baby Yoda (from The Mandalorian). That's one story alone where you could run for a decade, and tie in various merch opportunities." There's risk, though. "If the franchise dies or suffers from any poor management then that is going to compromise the entire brand. With home streaming services, though, the future does look bright. Right now Star Wars is propping up Disney+ ... allowing them some time to get it right. But they need to hurry up as streaming is becoming very competitive, and the margins are getting smaller as more and more competitors enter the market." The future: "The story has no end." Kieren Dell is chief executive of Majestic Cinemas, which operates picture theatres in Port Macquarie, Nambucca Heads, Singleton, the Entrance, Inverell, Nambour, Sawtell and Kempsey. Credentials: He saw the original Star Wars at the age of 12 on one of his first trips to the movies with mates rather than family. "It was mesmerising to my young brain [as] I was already a fantasy/sci-fi fan. I think I saw it about 10 times during its season and was forever changed." The movies: "Other than [James] Bond, it is the most enduring [franchise]. It is more anticipated by multi-generations than Bond, which does largely play older now. When Episode VII [The Force Awakens] was about to open, I talked to all of our young staff, who were very excited about it, and stressed that old farts like me in their early 50s were just as excited due to our childhood experiences. So it is the true four-quadrant blockbuster franchise. Marvel tends to play to younger audiences, Star Trek - I'm a big Trekkie too - is a smaller demographic of nerds, and Lord of the Rings was huge - and one of my all-time favourites - but seems a bit tapped out due to the source material getting thinner now." Disney: "I think they need to come up with new concepts that keep the look and feel of the mythology and develop good characters that they can build on and make iconic. Rogue One, as a standalone movie, was ... worth doing. I personally liked Solo, but it didn't do as well as expected ... but I don't think it should put them off going back and doing origin stories if they are good stories." He does not see The Mandalorian replacing the communal experience of seeing Star Wars at a cinema. "The Mandalorian was a slow burn that would not be acceptable in the tighter time frame of a feature film, but it helps to flesh out characters and the mythology, as did Clone Wars and other shows and books over the years. They are different products for different purposes." Ben Fletcher, of Newcastle-based Newpsych Psychologists, has been a clinical psychologist for 17 years. Credentials: Too young when the original trilogy came out, he preferred Batman comic books as a teen. "A bit darker. So edgy. Probably fitting for adolescence". The saga: "We've always told stories. These franchises are our modern myths." Star Wars repackaged "simplistic, comforting depictions of good and evil" with "familiar themes of the classic hero's journey, in a fresh setting with the effects to pull it off. Samurai movie in space - what's not to like?" The nostalgia: "Everyone relates to art in their own way, but some themes endure and resonate with us across time and media. I imagine Star Wars stays with us because of the classic hero's journey - the monomyth." The stories we grew up with "remain sources of comfort and wisdom, maybe a vehicle for catharsis and group/self-identification at times. It is appealing, in an ever-complex world, to take refuge in pleasant memories from our childhoods. Maybe the child and adult in us always needs a bit of room - for a well-rounded existence." The Force mythology: "Most well-crafted systems to foster good living, be they rationally derived or based on faith, can be prone to benefit or misuse. Some have argued that faith is meaningless without healthy doubt - one needs to be mindful of blind spots." With the "zen" of the Jedi and "the Force" as an expression of mindfulness, "some of these principles have been useful in facilitating corresponding concepts in psychology to promote mental health ... It's how you use it. It's not always as simple in practice though. We have competing forces within us - and thus we have the monomyth."

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/e3b796ce-020f-4492-81e4-27bd4eb90ab0.jpg/r501_0_3340_1604_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

An astrophysicist, a policeman and a Baptist pastor walk into a bar.

This is no joke. This cantina can be a little rough. Actually, it's been called a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

So, watch your step. They may not serve your kind in here.

Can Baby Yoda save Star Wars?

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/e3b796ce-020f-4492-81e4-27bd4eb90ab0.jpg/r501_0_3340_1604_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

As Disney says it will "step back" from movies for more TV like The Mandalorian, a small band of experts are enlisted to embark on a bold quest.

news, latest-news, star wars, the empire strikes back, the mandalorian, canberra times

2020-08-30T04:30:00+10:00

https://players.brightcove.net/3879528182001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6185324261001

https://players.brightcove.net/3879528182001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6185324261001

We are entering the eternally expanding universe of Star Wars - that colossal labyrinth of movies and merchandise, mystery and magic that has consumed followers and confounded non-believers ever since a visionary young filmmaker named George Lucas fashioned a rollicking space adventure from the archetypal hero's journey monomyth of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Back in 1977, pioneering visual effects notwithstanding, Star Wars was pretty straight forward.

Borrowing from such auteur idols as John Ford (The Searchers) and Akira Kurosawa (The Hidden Fortress), Lucas dressed the tropes of his favourite childhood movies - Wild West gunslingers, Errol Flynn duels, World War II dogfights, Tarzan and Jane on the vine - in captivating, futuristic packaging and infused his hero's journey narrative with a spiritualism ("the Force") akin to Zen Buddhism.

The first Star Wars movie came out in 1977. Picture: Lucasfilm

More than four decades and an estimated $US70 billion in gross revenues later, Star Wars in 2020 is, well, complicated.

The final films in the trio of saga trilogies,The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, divided fans and disappointed at the box office, raising questions about entertainment giant Disney's creative stewardship of the lucrative media property it bought from Lucas for $US4 billion in 2012.

Evidently spooked, and with cinemas worldwide hit hard by COVID-19, Disney says it will "step back" from making Star Wars movies for now. Not long ago, there were grand plans to put out a new film every two years starting in 2022. But proposed offshoot trilogies by The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss appear to have gone the way of the Death Star, leaving only Kiwi Taika Waititi - director of Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit - contracted to deliver a new film at some point.

The Mandalorian's title character joins Frozen's Elsa, Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear and Marvel's Captain America in the Disney Ooshies collection just launched at Woolworths. Picture: Supplied

With fans still eager to see every curious corner of this famous galaxy, Disney is turning instead to TV, with four Star Wars spin-off shows in the pipeline and five others rumoured to be in development following the success of The Mandalorian, which has helped the Disney+ streaming service amass 60 million subscribers worldwide in its first nine months.

With the show's second season dropping in October and its title character joining Frozen's Elsa, Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear and Marvel's Captain America in the Disney+ Ooshies collection launched this week at Woolworths (along with a hologram Princess Leia!), the future of the Stars Wars universe - narratively and commercially - hangs on two characters first introduced 40 years ago in The Empire Strikes Back - the film that turned Star Wars from a hit movie into an epic saga.

Bounty hunter Boba Fett was originally introduced in The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Picture: Lucasfilm

Long since enshrined as the best entry in the series, Empire opened in Australian cinemas in August 1980. Most of what is still loved today about Star Wars has roots in its darker, deeper first sequel, including gnome-like Jedi master Yoda and masked bounty hunter Boba Fett - inspirations for The Mandalorian - as well as the slow-burn romance between Princess Leia and Han Solo ("I love you." "I know."), composer John Williams' thundering Imperial March theme and Darth Vader's shock plot twist ("No, I am your father").

The film's limited 40th anniversary rerun in selected cinemas from September 10 may be the last time in a long time that a Star Wars movie swashbuckles across the big screen.

Which raises the question: Is Star Wars done for as a movie-going experience and the ultimate four-quadrant blockbuster (appealing to both male and female audiences, both under- and over-25s)?

Now that it's one franchise among many, will Star Wars ever recapture its original wonderment? Or has that star destroyer sailed?

The Mandalorian helped launch Disney's streaming service with more than 60 million subscribers worldwide in its first nine months. Picture: Lucasfilm

For fans clinging to the original trilogy, The Mandalorian may be the spin-off they were looking for - but can Disney keep this sprawling genre world spinning in infinity on TV? And why do these fans have such powerful proprietary feelings? Is it nostalgia, and is that what compels grown men to trade vintage toys for hundreds of dollars in livestreamed auctions?

To help us to understand the forces that have shaped Star Wars and will forever dominate its destiny, we've assembled a small band of experts and aficionados. We're on a diplomatic mission to explore why, unlike its fans, Star Wars never seems to get old.

Of course, bellying up to the bar together as if at the Mos Eisley cantina was not an option in the age of coronavirus. So the heroes of our quest - Mick the Fanatic, Brad the Astrophysicist, Heather the Preacher, Ben the Psychologist, Andrew the Marketing Expert and Kieren the Picture Show Man - shared their insights via phone and email.

Mick "Fett" Pylak trades in action figures on his Australian Live Toy Auctions Facebook page. Picture: Supplied

Mick "Fett" Pylak is a Star Wars superfan. His $500,000 collection of toys and memorabilia fills his Sydney house. When he's not trading action figures online or masquerading at events as "Aussie Vader", he has a day job with another kind of force - the police.

Credentials: He named his firstborn Leia.

Where it began: As a boy, when he saw Return of the Jedi (his parents were divorced and his Dad came specially to take him). "I can still remember how amazed I was by it - the characters, the creatures, the spaceships and this whole new world."

His collection: "I started out wanting to find the toys to get back those memories of childhood, but I just never stopped. When they began to increase in value, I viewed it as an investment. Then it became about needing to complete a set and the thrill of the hunt. Once you get a set of, say, mint-on-card figures, you want to get more. I've got a normal job and income but I've acquired this collection by constantly buying and selling. For example, I was paying $500 10 years ago for the vinyl cape Jawa [action figure], the TolToys version on The Empire Strikes Back card which was only ever released in Australia, and these days they sell for $3000."

Specific Jawa toys can go for big money to keen collectors. Picture: Supplied

"Collecting is no longer seen as a nerd thing," he says. "The kids who grew up in that era of the original films and toys are in their spending prime now, so they have the disposable income and the will to spend top dollar for the memories." But what compels him now has moved beyond nostalgia. "When you find and buy something you've been chasing for a while, you get a kind of euphoria which is almost like a drug. When you win the item and then it arrives, you feel this pleasure. And then you put it in your collection and you want to do it all over again."

Disney: "They have kept Star Wars alive, which is great. After the prequels it wasn't looking like George Lucas was doing any more movies. The downside is the political correctness - trying to please everybody and not offend anybody." The Mandalorian - based on his favourite character, Boba Fett - has found the sweet spot to please all generations, he says. "TV series open up so many more possibilities for expanding storylines with different characters." Of course, that also means an infinite amount of future merch. "Ah, yes, that is going to be a problem."

Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker. Picture: Rohan Thomson

Dr Brad Tucker is an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the ANU's School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Credentials: He didn't watch Star Wars until his mid-20s. "That sounds weird for someone in my job, but space stuff didn't really register with me as a kid and I didn't become interested in astronomy until university," he says. "So, it's given me an outsider's view of science fiction."

The science: "Science does owe a lot to the legacy of science fiction like Star Wars and the way it depicts the science, the storytelling and the visuals. For example, it's very hard to visualise travelling near the speed of light. That is an abstract thing to think about, but the visual storytelling of fiction like Star Wars helps open us up to that as visual creatures - we see it and become inspired," he says. "Our world now is facing really pressing scientific issues, from climate to COVID, so you need people to be inspired to want to pursue those questions. Look at Elon Musk and SpaceX - he's a billionaire fuelling private space endeavours because as a kid his imagination was opened up to the possibilities by Star Wars."

The fiction: "People have always looked up at the stars and had a sense of wonder. We are one small world in one solar system that's one of 300 billion solar systems in a galaxy and our galaxy's one of 2 trillion - it makes us feel insignificant in the universe. Then, when you see that same vast backdrop of space and stars and planets depicted in art like Star Wars, it connects the dots straight back to that sense of wonder. When Star Wars came out it would be almost 25 years before we actually found the first planet around another star - so it was make-believe projecting possibilities and inspiring people to wonder. Then you layer over that an adventure story exploring the human condition, and it becomes a way to explore ourselves as a species."

Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker being trained by Yoda to be a Jedi in The Empire Strikes Back. Picture: Lucasfilm

The aliens: "Star Wars, and sorry to be sacrilegious here but Star Trek too, were novel for portraying aliens as simply characters - other beings, other lifeforms, who can be good or bad. So, there can be a bunch of aliens in a bar having a beer and listening to a band - it flips the whole H.G. Wells War of the Worlds idea of monsters invading to destroy us, and changes how we think about alien life - and that question: 'Is there life out there?'"

The Force mythology: "We often think about science and religion always being at odds, but to my mind they are complementary. They are both trying to help us understand our place in the world, how it works, where we are going, why we do what we do, and to ultimately better our world and our lives. Of course, sometimes science and religion can be at odds, but along comes Star Wars, weaving this narrative of the Force which says you can kind of do both - that there's a higher power, we don't know exactly what it is but it permeates everything and it's good because it gives us energy and life, but there also needs to be balance as part of this bigger universe (the meaning of which we are trying to unravel). That's exactly what we're doing with trying to understand the Big Bang. To me, the Big Bang is the intersection between physics and philosophy and theology - it's where these lines of questioning meet and each spins off in a different direction to try to help us understand."

Pastor Heather Packett. Picture: Supplied

Heather Packett is a teaching pastor at Crossway, Australia's largest Baptist church, and co-director with husband Lucas of ARK, a foster care organisation that recruits and supports faith-based carers.

Credentials: Hasn't seen Disney's sequels. Nothing could top her favourite film - Return of the Jedi - anyway. "It showed us that the most evil of people can still be reached with empathy," she says.

Where it began: "We didn't have a TV for a chunk of my childhood to avoid bad influences on us as kids. But we did go to the movies, and my brother, seven years older than me, was my influence as far as Star Wars goes - I watched it to be with him." There she marvelled at the "sheer brilliance of the effects, the majesty of the score" and the contest between good and evil. "It was like my understanding of the spiritual realm was playing out before my eyes, albeit in a caricature-like way," she says. Today she often draws from movies in her work as a minister. "Star Wars has definitely influenced my interest in film, and most likely has contributed to my reading and interpreting of faith things within films, whether put there intentionally by the writers or not - for example, I see Messianic themes within most superhero films."

The fantasy: "Fantasy and imagination are great for kids and should be encouraged and nurtured. It should also lead to them discovering ways to imagine and create fantasy themselves." But merchandising "can be a problem in an affluent society"," she says. "Kids can easily become entitled, and less creative, when merchandise is readily available, so I'm not really a fan." She has yet to introduce her children to Star Wars. "It'll happen, but currently both ours are still a little sensitive to even fictionalised violence on screen. They're 11 and 13. Most kids have seen it by that age, I know, but I have no interest in pushing them before they'll enjoy it. I was much younger, but I wonder if back in the '70s and '80s there was a greater expanse between reality and fantasy, so it was easier to compartmentalise than it is for kids now."

The Force mythology: "I think initially when Star Wars was released, it connected to a generally accepted understanding of spirituality that exists far less now than it did then." She says the films "dabbled in spiritual things to make sense of a fictional galaxy, and to help audiences relate. For me 'the Force' is not the equivalent to God, nor is 'the dark side' an equivalent to satanic force". While actual religious faiths "attempt to help us make sense of life through the lens of a greater power", as a moral compass in the real world "the good versus evil homily of Star Wars doesn't delve into our personal brokenness, and can therefore allow us to remain removed from it, without ever providing answers or a redemptive path ... If it did provide that moral compass for people initially, then I guess, yes, it is less demanding and disappointing than actual faith. But it's also written to entice and entertain audiences - something actual faith has no interest in."

Darth Vader during a pivotal scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Picture: Lucasfilm

Dr Andrew Hughes is a lecturer in marketing at the ANU's Research School of Management.

Credentials: A certified fan since childhood. "Loved the storylines, the escapism of it all, be it the stories or the settings, and of course who as a little kid does not want to see good triumph over evil?" The Empire Strikes Back is his favourite. "It expanded the storyline dramatically, and added far more depth to the characters ... it made a story about space very human."

The toys: "Toys, and merchandise of any sort, are a bridge to the experience and emotions we have to the franchise/brand. In a way, having a toy, or merchandise, allows us to access those positive emotions at any time. Even as adults this is what makes toys so collectible - it is the access to those emotions, those memories which the toy represents, that we are buying."

Disney: "Buying Star Wars wasn't about movies, it was about owning a story which could be developed, changed and altered to match the needs of multiple markets ... smart thinking really, because 10 years from now, if not sooner, it will be all profit. Just look at the excitement around Baby Yoda (from The Mandalorian). That's one story alone where you could run for a decade, and tie in various merch opportunities." There's risk, though. "If the franchise dies or suffers from any poor management then that is going to compromise the entire brand. With home streaming services, though, the future does look bright. Right now Star Wars is propping up Disney+ ... allowing them some time to get it right. But they need to hurry up as streaming is becoming very competitive, and the margins are getting smaller as more and more competitors enter the market."

The future: "The story has no end."

Majestic Cinemas chief executive Kieren Dell and Kempsey Cinema manager Chelsea Curyer. Picture: Ruby Pascoe

Kieren Dell is chief executive of Majestic Cinemas, which operates picture theatres in Port Macquarie, Nambucca Heads, Singleton, the Entrance, Inverell, Nambour, Sawtell and Kempsey.

Credentials: He saw the original Star Wars at the age of 12 on one of his first trips to the movies with mates rather than family. "It was mesmerising to my young brain [as] I was already a fantasy/sci-fi fan. I think I saw it about 10 times during its season and was forever changed."

The movies: "Other than [James] Bond, it is the most enduring [franchise]. It is more anticipated by multi-generations than Bond, which does largely play older now. When Episode VII [The Force Awakens] was about to open, I talked to all of our young staff, who were very excited about it, and stressed that old farts like me in their early 50s were just as excited due to our childhood experiences. So it is the true four-quadrant blockbuster franchise. Marvel tends to play to younger audiences, Star Trek - I'm a big Trekkie too - is a smaller demographic of nerds, and Lord of the Rings was huge - and one of my all-time favourites - but seems a bit tapped out due to the source material getting thinner now."

Disney: "I think they need to come up with new concepts that keep the look and feel of the mythology and develop good characters that they can build on and make iconic. Rogue One, as a standalone movie, was ... worth doing. I personally liked Solo, but it didn't do as well as expected ... but I don't think it should put them off going back and doing origin stories if they are good stories." He does not see The Mandalorian replacing the communal experience of seeing Star Wars at a cinema. "The Mandalorian was a slow burn that would not be acceptable in the tighter time frame of a feature film, but it helps to flesh out characters and the mythology, as did Clone Wars and other shows and books over the years. They are different products for different purposes."

Star Wars action figures.

Ben Fletcher, of Newcastle-based Newpsych Psychologists, has been a clinical psychologist for 17 years.

Credentials: Too young when the original trilogy came out, he preferred Batman comic books as a teen. "A bit darker. So edgy. Probably fitting for adolescence".

The saga: "We've always told stories. These franchises are our modern myths." Star Wars repackaged "simplistic, comforting depictions of good and evil" with "familiar themes of the classic hero's journey, in a fresh setting with the effects to pull it off. Samurai movie in space - what's not to like?"

The nostalgia: "Everyone relates to art in their own way, but some themes endure and resonate with us across time and media. I imagine Star Wars stays with us because of the classic hero's journey - the monomyth." The stories we grew up with "remain sources of comfort and wisdom, maybe a vehicle for catharsis and group/self-identification at times. It is appealing, in an ever-complex world, to take refuge in pleasant memories from our childhoods. Maybe the child and adult in us always needs a bit of room - for a well-rounded existence."

The Force mythology: "Most well-crafted systems to foster good living, be they rationally derived or based on faith, can be prone to benefit or misuse. Some have argued that faith is meaningless without healthy doubt - one needs to be mindful of blind spots." With the "zen" of the Jedi and "the Force" as an expression of mindfulness, "some of these principles have been useful in facilitating corresponding concepts in psychology to promote mental health ... It's how you use it. It's not always as simple in practice though. We have competing forces within us - and thus we have the monomyth."

Excerpt from:
40 years after the first Star Wars sequel, can Baby Yoda save the franchise? - The Canberra Times

by Tom Leonard The Daily Mail

Every day at 2pm on a dusty road through the mountains of Oregon, hundreds of young people dressed head to toe in various sunrise hues of red and orange would gather to wait solemnly for a car to go past.

It was always a Rolls-Royce, although a different one each day, and it would glide slowly past as they bowed and threw roses on the bonnet.

Inside, wearing robes, a tea cosy-style woolly hat, flowing grey beard and beatific smile, was the object of their devotion, the guru and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Once he had passed by, the crowds would return to toiling in the fields or finding their true selves in group sex sessions.

Rajneesh not to be confused with the far tamer Maharishi, who was the Beatles Indian guru presided over a New Age sex cult that was second to none in its embrace of free love, unorthodox meditation techniques and sheer outrageousness.

In India, he was known as the Sex Guru and attracted tens of thousands of followers from all over the world, including celebrities, from the venerable British journalist Bernard Levin to film star Terence Stamp.

In the U.S. he was dubbed the Rolls-Royce Guru. Given that he owned 93 of the luxury cars, the title was more than fair.

His followers were often highly educated professionals ready to reject the strictures of middle-class convention and seek enlightenment first in India and later at communes in Oregon, Cologne and Suffolk.

Some left spouses and children, while others donated everything they had to the cult.

What they received in return were a bead necklace with a locket bearing the gurus picture, a new Rajneeshi name and the great mans thumb imprint on their forehead, giving them their third eye of insight.

However, it was the groups attempt to build a $100 million utopian city in a remote corner of the northwestern state of Oregon that became its downfall in the Eighties, resulting in a jaw-dropping scandal that included attempted murder, election rigging, arms smuggling and a mass poisoning that still ranks as the largest bio-terror attack in U.S. history.

The story of the Rajneesh movements slide from peace-and-love hippiedom into machine gun-toting, homicidal darkness is revealed in a new six-part Netflix documentary entitled Wild Wild Country.

The makers talked to key former Rajneeshis also known as sannyasins including the gurus terrifying second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela. All of them seem nostalgic for those heady days.

The series uses some of the reams of previously unseen home-video footage shot by the movement, and has been criticised for leaving viewers to decide whether the Rajneeshis were a terrifying, murderous cult or as some of them still insist just a peaceful, persecuted minority religion.

The facts, say former prosecutors and other outsiders who came into contact with the toxic clan, are as indisputable as they are damning.

Rajneesh was a philosophy lecturer who, in 1970, founded a spiritual movement and commune in Pune, near Mumbai (formerly Bombay). His teachings were a bizarre mixture of pop psychology, ancient Indian wisdom, capitalism, sexual permissiveness and dirty jokes that he gleaned from the pages of Playboy magazine.

His dynamic group meditation performed with eyes closed and pop music blaring involved periods of screaming, frenetic dancing, standing still, and jumping up and down shouting Hoo!.

Sex lots of it and with as many partners as possible lay at the core of his philosophy. He insisted that repression of sexual energy was the cause of most psychological problems.

Rajneesh argued that monogamous marriage was unnatural and advocated unrestricted promiscuity, including partner-swapping, from the age of 14.

Blessed with a captivating stare from huge, soft eyes, he was so charismatic that many of his followers who would fill 20,000-seat stadiums to hear him speak believed he could be a second Buddha.

But Rajneesh, born in 1931, was no ascetic mystic in a loincloth. He couldnt get enough material possessions, collecting not only Rolls-Royces but expensive jewellery and diamond-studded Rolex watches.

He concentrated on luring affluent Westerners to his ashram (hermitage) in Pune, where he lectured in front of a 20ft-long banner which proclaimed: Surrender to me, and I will transform you.

The fees he charged for group therapies were so exorbitant that some women disciples worked as prostitutes to raise the money.

The actor Terence Stamp, star of the films Billy Budd and Far from the Madding Crowd, visited in 1976 after his girlfriend, Sixties supermodel Jean Shrimpton, left him. He stayed for several years, dropping out of society.

Anneke Wills, a British actress who had played Dr Whos sidekick Polly, joined the ashram in 1975. For the first few nights I cried into my pillow. Id swapped my wonderful home for a mattress in a communal dormitory, she recalled.

But there were some wonderful people there. I was a bit bored by the free love thing. Id had enough of all that. It was the meditation I was interested in.

She remained there for six years before following the Bhagwan when he moved to Oregon, where she became one of thousands of non-U.S. followers who undertook arranged marriages so they could stay there.

The late Bernard Levin, one of Britains best-known newspaper columnists and a former Daily Mail writer, was also taken in. He stayed at the ashram in his late 40s and later wrote a string of drooling articles about the Bhagwan, describing him as the conduit along which the vital force of the universe flows.

Rajneeshs move to Oregon in 1981 was prompted by an investigation by the Indian authorities over immigration fraud, tax evasion and drug smuggling. The group purchased a 64,000-acre ranch near the tiny settlement of Antelope, and the 7,000 disciples who moved in swamped the 50-strong resident Bible-bashing population. The two sides mistrusted each other from the start.

Rifle-toting ranchers started driving around with Bag a Bhagwan car bumper stickers but the Rajneeshis, by force of numbers, soon won control of the town in a local election.

Antelope was renamed Rajneeshpuram. The victors set up a heavily armed peace force, practising daily with Uzi sub-machine guns on their range, and drove a Jeep with a 30-calibre machine gun mounted on it around town.

A local park was reserved for nude sunbathing. One scandalised woman complained that she could hear peoples orgasmic experiences all day and all night.

Construction began on a self-sustaining Rajneesh city intended for 50,000 residents, with scores of houses, shops, restaurants and even an airport built. But local people jointly took legal action against the development, backed by politicians increasingly convinced that the Rajneeshis were a dangerous cult.

Alarming evidence of this included a BBC documentary in which a British journalist, the late Christopher Hitchens, filmed one of the Rajneeshis encounter sexual therapy sessions. Footage showed a crowd of naked men and women packed into a room, screaming and attacking each other.

Hitchens described another disturbing session in which a woman was stripped naked and surrounded by men who bark at her, drawing attention to all her physical and psychic shortcomings, until she is abject with tears and apologies.

He went on: At this point she is hugged and embraced and comforted, and told that she now has a family. Sobbing with masochistic relief, she humbly enters the tribe. Hitchens added darkly: It was not absolutely clear what she had to do in order to be given her clothes back, but I did hear some believable and ugly testimony on this point.

Rajneeshs own sexual needs were largely met by his long-standing British lover and care giver, an attractive long-haired brunette named Christine Wolf Smith (or Vivek, as he renamed her). Amid rumours that he had his own harem, he boasted to the media of having had sexual relationships with hundreds of women.

However, beset by health problems, Rajneesh had already stopped addressing his followers before he arrived in the U.S. He retreated into public silence, living in a heavily guarded compound and rarely venturing out apart from his afternoon spins in the Roller. He left day-to-day running of the movement to Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary, who became his official mouthpiece.

Sheela was a young Indian woman whose small stature and disarming smile hid a ruthless megalomaniac who walked around with a large handgun strapped to her hip. She would do anything to preserve the movements survival and her dominance.

In 1984, the Rajneeshis gathered up 6,000 homeless people from across the U.S. and brought them to live on the ranch as an apparent act of charity.

In fact, they had bused them in so they could register to vote in an election for the local county commission, which the Rajneeshis also wanted to control so they could get their new city approved.

When the ruse was foiled by officials, the homeless were put back on buses and dumped in surrounding cities.

Sheelas dominance was threatened when Hollywood became fascinated by the guru. Francoise Ruddy, the glamorous co-producer of The Godfather, started throwing glitzy fundraisers for him at her Hollywood Hills mansion, where guests indulged his greed for expensive baubles, including a $3 million diamond watch he had requested.

Rajneesh was also spending heavily to feed his serious dependence on drugs, taking large amounts of Valium and inhaling nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to get high. Possibly delusional because of the drugs, he became convinced that a global catastrophe was imminent. He asked his personal doctor, an Englishman named George Meredith, to supply him with drugs to ensure that he passed away painlessly.

By now the paranoid Sheela was bugging key personalities in the group, including the guru. Eavesdropping on Rajneeshs death discussions with Dr Meredith, she convinced her closest allies that the doctor was colluding in their masters death and had to be killed.

Jane Stork, an Australian disciple, jabbed a miniature hypodermic needle containing adrenaline into the doctors left buttock but he survived. I felt like Joan of Arc, who was going into battle, she says in the documentary. It was all about keeping the Bhagwan alive.

But the doctors name was only one of those on a hit-list of cult enemies drawn up by Sheela. It included local journalists, officials and the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Charles Turner.

She knew Mr Turner was planning to charge the group with immigration fraud over the sham marriages it arranged so foreign members could stay in America.

Jane Stork again agreed to be the assassin, waiting all day outside Mr Turners office with a revolver. He didnt appear. Other officials were also staked out but the murder plots were scrapped.

Rajneeshs girlfriend, Vivek, was also targeted. She later told the FBI she believed Sheela once gave her a poisoned cup of tea that sent her heart-rate racing and made her deeply nauseous.

The cult had its own biological warfare laboratory and some targets were sent contaminated boxes of chocolates. A judge almost died after eating one.

A pilot who worked for the groups airline, Air Rajneesh, also claimed that Sheela made him drop a bomb from his plane over a courthouse. The local planning office was set on fire.

As relations within the group deteriorated, one night in September, 1985, Sheela and a small group of allies fled the ranch and went to ground in West Germany.

Furious at her desertion, Rajneesh broke his four-year silence and publicly accused her and her gang of fascists of various serious crimes, including three attempted murders and embezzling $55 million in funds. He suggested she had left out of sexual jealousy because he wouldnt sleep with her.

She didnt prove to be a woman, she proved to be a perfect bitch, he said.

She hit back, branding the movement a gigantic con practised by a man not remotely interested in enlightenment.

However, Rajneeshs allegations allowed the FBI to descend on the ranch, where they found a secret bunker under Sheelas home containing 10,000 tape recordings from her mass bugging operation, plus an arsenal of unregistered guns intended for a Rajneeshi hit squad.

As they questioned disciples, the Feds turned up even more devilish plots. In a bid to incapacitate non-Rajneesh- supporting voters in Antelope, the Rajneeshis had tried to poison the water supply of the nearest large town, The Dalles, by introducing beavers, on grounds that they carried harmful bacteria.

When the beavers proved too big to be slipped through the reservoirs covers, they were shoved into food blenders and their liquidised bodies poured into the reservoir instead. It didnt work but in a trial run for a more extensive effort to incapacitate voters, Rajneeshis contaminated food on display at salad counters in restaurants across the town with salmonella. More than 750 people fell seriously ill and a few, including a newborn baby, almost died.

Sheela and seven others were extradited to the U.S., where they were convicted of conspiracy offences including assault, attempted murder, arson, mass poisoning and illegal wiretapping. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison but served only 29 months before being released and deported. Jane Stork was also jailed. Two British disciples, Susan Hagan and Sally-Anne Croft, were charged with plotting to murder U.S. Attorney Charles Turner and served two years of six-year sentences.

Prosecutors were only able to charge Rajneesh with immigration fraud. They feared a bloody shootout with his heavily armed defence force if they tried to arrest him but Rajneesh obligingly fled in a Lear jet. He was caught when it landed to refuel just before leaving America.

The guru agreed to a plea deal and was deported. He returned to Pune, renamed himself Osho, and died aged 58 of heart failure in 1990.

Today, there are still small numbers of Rajneeshi devotees around the world.

In the years since the cults heyday, former members have exposed ugly truths about the free-love culture: some women were raped, abortions were sometimes enforced and nearly 90 per cent of disciples had a sexually transmitted disease.

Insiders have also admitted that Rajneesh had some very unsavoury views, including being a fan of Hitler and euthanasia.

In a final irony, the Oregon ranch that was once a haven for free sex is now a Christian youth camp where evangelical young Americans are taught the virtues of sexual abstinence.

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Rajneesh: The Indian Sex Guru Who Slept with Hundreds of ...

When Ma Anand Sheela first met the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in his apartment in Mumbai in 1968, she hugged him and cried. My whole head melted, Sheela says in the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country, which discusses Rajneesh and his cult. My life was complete. My life was fulfilled.

Rajneesh, who died in 1990, was a powerful spiritual guru who had thousands of followers in India and the West. In 1981, with the help of Sheela, who became his personal assistant, Rajneesh bought a ranch nearby the tiny town of Antelope, Oregon, and moved his cult there, creating a whole new city named Rajneeshpuram. Its no surprise that the situation snowballed, leading to heated confrontations with local residents, attempted murder, and mass poisoning. Wild Wild Country follows the saga in captivating ways, through historical footage as well as sit-down interviews with Sheela, who effectively ran the cult and was Rajneeshs spokesperson, and other members who had prominent roles, like Rajneeshs lawyer Swami Prem Niren.

But as Ronit Feinglass Plank notes in The Atlantic, the series doesnt really explain what the day-to-day life was like in Rajneeshpuram. And it doesnt really address how its possible that thousands of people could just give up their lives, wear only maroon clothes, and blindly follow one man. What are the psychological mechanisms at play?

Rajneesh preached to his followers about the idea of creating awakened people who live in harmony with their surroundings. But his cult also forced members to donate large quantities of money, while creating an isolated community that kept tight control over its members. The Netflix documentary doesnt show this, but Win McCormack, who wrote about the cult in the 1980s, points out in The New Republic that Rajneeshs followers were encouraged to get sterilized or have abortions. (For more on Rajneesh and his cult, read The Oregonians 20-part investigation from the 1980s.)

Rajneesh was just one of many cult leaders who have captivated and horrified people throughout history. In 1978, cult leader Jim Jones urged more than 900 of his followers to kill themselves by drinking poison in Jonestown, Guyana. In 1993, in a standoff with government officials, more than 75 Branch Davidians died in a building fire in Waco, Texas, together with their leader David Koresh. All of these groups, and many more less prominent cult organizations, have some things in common. I talked with Louis Manza, chair and professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College about how cult leaders control their followers, when people are most vulnerable to cults, and the difference between cults and religions.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

How do cult leaders like Rajneesh exert control over their followers?

They can take a lot of approaches, obviously. On a real simple level, they could take control in a very physical way, restraining someone from leaving a space, but that doesnt seem to happen a whole lot. Its more of a psychological control. If you look historically at different types of cults, theres always an indoctrination period where the cult leader is going to form a bond with people. Once they have that bond, now they can get inside of someones head, because now those people start to trust that person. And now the leader can start to make other suggestions to them: You should move away from your family. You should come live with us, etc. Thats one of the critical things: there has to be that emotional connection thats made by the person whos running everything with the people they want to bring in with them. If you dont have that connection, its going to be really hard to get people to do anything.

What kinds of psychological mechanisms do cults use to keep their members in line?

Once someone forms a bond with a person, you can use that to your advantage, to a certain extent. You can withhold certain types of things. If youre the cult leader, [you can decide] we all get to meet at this point in time, and we all get to talk about our feelings, but you cant come this week because youve been misbehaving, or youve not been pulling your share, or whatever the case might be. Once you have that relationship with that person, punishing [or rewarding] them can get something out of them. Again, its not a physical-restraint type of thing, but it is a form of control.

Theyre also paying attention to what works, the same way that a spouse pays attention to what works with their significant other, the same way a parent pays attention with their kids. [Parents] can punish their children by making them stand in a corner for 10 minutes, and that works because that kid doesnt like to stand in a corner. But for another kid, that doesnt work, so they have to find something else. So they take the tablet away from them, or they dont let them watch television. People who are very good at understanding other people, are very good at paying attention, can get inside someones head and then exploit that. But the person whos exploited has to be exploitable. If someone is in a good place psychologically, then theyre most likely not going to be exploitable.

People who are very good at understanding other people, are very good at paying attention, can get inside someones head and then exploit that.

When are people most vulnerable to a cult?

On a simple level, when theyre in a state of psychological instability if something is not quite right in their life, if theyre missing something, especially on a relationship perspective. We are social creatures. Theres going to be some variability there; some people like much larger social circles than others, some people like to live in a cabin in the woods by themselves. But the majority of us fall in the middle. Its part of what makes us humans. And so if thats missing for individuals, and they dont have a way of meeting that need on their own, theyre going to look for someone else who can maybe provide that need for them. Now, lots of people will join cults as a way of satisfying that. Other people will join other types of groups.

I compete in ultramarathons, so I do a couple races a year. And that kind of satisfies that need for me. Now, is that a cult? I dont think so, not in a way we define a cult, when you think of like the Jonestown massacre and Jim Jones. If youre into certain sports teams, that social need is being met there. Its just that idea that someone needs some type of social connection. I think its one of the primary forces. If they simply cant find a way on their own to fulfill that, and then someone comes along and says, Hey, we have this group. And youre welcome. Join us! it can be a very subtle thing at first. If you want to get someone in, and you know how to manipulate people, its fairly simple to do: you bring them in, you establish the relationship, and then you just start sucking them in more and more, and eventually, someone just crosses a line and theyre in. And then they can have a hard time getting out, because now they have that social need being met. It can be a very subtle process along those lines.

What do cult leaders have in common?

They tend to be charismatic. Historically, if you think of the people we call cult leaders, like David Koresh, James Jones, they all had a certain charisma. That goes back to what I was saying about forming social bonds. If you cant attract people to you, then youre going to be hard-pressed to form a cult. Beyond that, its going to depend. You have to understand people, you gotta know whats going on inside of their heads, you gotta talk to them, you gotta be able to pull information out of them. Those are skills. All of us use them in different ways. Ive been teaching since 1992, so I know if I do this, I will get students to interact in class. Is that a form of manipulation? Sure it is. I wouldnt put it up with the same kind of manipulation that a cult leader is doing, but they are also doing that. Theyre understanding people, theyre studying people. They develop that kind of skill-set, but I think charisma has to be at the top of it, because just knowing people, its a skill people can acquire. Being charismatic and understanding people, thats another thing altogether.

People who are in power also like to keep that power, and they dont want to give that power up. The cult leader wants to control people, to a certain degree. When you look at people who run these organizations, if you look at the more historically famous ones, they had a need to control people, and when that control got pushed up against, they pushed back. When David Koresh and the Branch Davidians went down, Koresh didnt want to give up control of those people. And you had the gun fight and the burning of a building and all that. Jim Jones didnt want to give up control of those hundreds of people in Jonestown, and people died. I think wanting to control is a driving force from the leader, and wanting to belong is the driving force for the member. You put those things together, you create the perfect storm for getting people into a cult.

Whats the difference between a cult and a religion?

Religions are an organized belief system, and cults are organized belief systems. People will engage in lots of behaviors on the part of their religion, that can be very good but it can also be very bad. People have killed other individuals in the name of their religion. Now, will Catholics prevent you from leaving the church? Not to my knowledge. I was raised Catholic. Im an atheist now. No one held me back. So what we usually consider cults tend to exert a bit more control over their members, but thats not to say that that control doesnt happen in more organized, traditional religions. But with cults, you see that real psychological, physical-restraint thing kick in to a much higher degree than you see in Catholics, Lutherans, or whatever. If there is a dividing line, its along those lines, but they definitely share a lot of features, because theyre organized belief systems.

But there are lot of things that are not even religions or cults that are organized belief systems. Again, if youre part of a certain sports team, you have an organized belief system. But mental manipulation, psychological manipulation is something you tend to see more in cults than in organized religion.

Originally posted here:
Heres what Netflixs Wild Wild Country doesnt explain ...

I probably wouldnt have detoured from the trail except that my son, Max, insisted.

Im glad his power to persuade is considerable for a kid whos celebrated just nine birthdays.

Because without Maxs cajoling I likely would have plodded ahead, as though I were on a schedule, and in my stubbornness I would have missed one of those serendipitous and joyful moments that happily interrupt the humdrum passage of our days.

But thats not quite what happened.

We were, it turned out, two days too late for what would have been a memorable encounter for me and for my wife, Lisa.

Max would have remembered it, too, albeit for different reasons.

The person we missed meeting is not a celebrity on the level of, say, Paul McCartney.

But William L. Sullivan is, I daresay, famous among many of us who think one of the better ways to appreciate Oregons beauty and variety of landscapes is to get our boots dusty tramping its trails (or muddy, or snowy, as the season and the situation dictate).

Sullivan is to Oregon hiking guidebooks what Stephen King is to horror novels.

Not that I mean to typecast either of these fine writers.

King, as anyone knows who is more than slightly familiar with his work, has authored many compelling tales which feature no monsters and carry nary a whiff of the supernatural.

Sullivan, though he is best known for his series of 100 Hikes books that divide Oregon into five regions, has also penned many other books. These include Cabin Fever, a memoir about building a log cabin with his wife near the Oregon Coast, a history of the states greatest natural disasters, and six novels, including ones that feature such iconic (and real) Oregon characters as skyjacker D.B. Cooper and guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

But Sullivans first book has always been my favorite, and I suspect it will retain that title no matter what subject he turns his prodigious talent to.

Listening For Coyote is Sullivans story about the 1,361-mile solo backpacking trip he made in 1985 from Oregons westernmost point, at Cape Blanco, to its easterly extremity in Hells Canyon.

As someone who relishes hiking but rarely stays out for more than a couple nights in a row, or covers more than 30 miles in one excursion, I have long been drawn to accounts of truly epic journeys such as Sullivans.

I own several books describing hikes on long-distance routes such as the Pacific Crest and Appalachian trails, and I can while away hours following in the authors bootsteps while I relax on a sofa or a reclining lounge chair in the backyard.

But none of these accounts has ever endured itself so thoroughly as Listening For Coyote.

I suspect this is due in some small part to my age when I first read it. I was in high school, an era when I think many of us are susceptible to the lure of an adventure story in a way that we never are later, as our own experiences accumulate and our sense of wonder at new things atrophies. Its a sad, but I think also inevitable, transition.

But for me the most powerful attraction of Listening For Coyote is that its simply a cracking good story, and Sullivan tells it with deft and piquant prose. I have probably read the book a dozen times, and never does the scent of Sullivans campfires fail to reach my nose, never do I not shiver when hes trudging through snow after an early blizzard in the Blue Mountains.

That snowbound trail where Sullivan left his tracks is the very one that Max, Lisa and I walked earlier this summer, the path that follows the North Fork John Day River through its wilderness canyon west of Baker City.

The conditions could scarcely have been different on the day of our trip. The mid-July afternoon was that rare sort when the old chestnut about there not being a cloud in the sky happened to be true.

We couldnt, at any rate, see so much as a scrap of cumulus or tendril of cirrus in the somewhat abbreviated scope of sky visible from our vantage point in the depths of the densely forested canyon.

We bought Max his first real backpack a couple of years ago and just lately hes been nudging us, like a frisky horse too long stabled, to get out in the woods. Lisa and I picked the North Fork trail, which we had hiked before, albeit without children in tow. We chose the path largely because, as riverside routes often are, it lacks the lung-straining climbs that can quickly sap a young hikers enthusiasm.

(And, if I must be honest, a somewhat older hikers.)

When Max spied the cabins metal roof glinting among the lodgepole pines he darted onto the spur path leading toward the structure.

Guy Hafer of Cove, who died in 2007, built the cabin on his mining claim. It stands on public land and the cabin is left unlocked. There were a few rodent droppings inside but it appears the people who use the cabin respect it, and Hafers legacy, and try to ensure it remains usable.

I noticed a notebook ensconced in a plastic bag on a table. It looked to be a sort of guest book. I pulled it out and was shocked by the most recent entry. It was signed William L. Sullivan. The date was July 16, just two days earlier. He was doing research for an updated version of his 100 Hikes In Eastern Oregon book.

I hollered at Lisa, who was outside.

We were both thrilled, albeit a trifle disappointed to have come so close to having met Sullivan.

I interviewed him in 2006 when he made a presentation at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.

But meeting him on the North Fork trail would be another matter altogether. And the reason is that one of the most memorable chapters in Listening For Coyote is the one in which Sullivan, hiking through a rainstorm that soon turned to snow, was spared from having to pitch his tent in inclement weather when he came across another old mining cabin about a mile or so downriver from Hafers.

This other cabin, nicknamed the Bigfoot Hilton by someone who visited it before Sullivan, has become something of a shrine for hikers due to its inclusion in Listening For Coyote.

Not to belabor my earlier reference to Paul McCartney, but for me, coming across Bill Sullivan in a cabin on the North Fork John Day would be comparable to bumping into the ex-Beatle while taking the requisite photo in the most famous crosswalk on Londons Abbey Road.

It was not to be.

But I was pleased just the same to have shared a trail, in a manner of speaking, with the man who must be Oregons most famous hiker.

Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.

See the article here:
COLUMN: Following in the boots of a legendary hiker - Baker City Herald

A new book shows the troubling consequences of Grafton, New Hampshires anti-government experiment.

From his books very title, its clear that Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling sees his story as one great big joke. As he describes it, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear tells the strange-but-true story of Grafton, NH, a small town that became the nexus of a collision between bears, libertarians, guns, doughnuts, parasites, firecrackers, taxes and one angry llama. The bookhis firstis based on a lively article, published in 2018 in The Atavist Magazine, about an attempted political takeover of the small New Hampshire town by a motley crew of libertarians and survivalists from all across America. Their stated goal was to establish the boldest social experiment in modern American history: the Free Town Project.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling PublicAffairs, 288 pp.

Their effort was inspired by the Free State Project, a libertarian-adjacent organization founded in 2003 with the goal of taking over New Hampshire and transforming it into a tiny-government paradise. After more than a decade of persistence, the project persuaded 20,000 like-minded revolutionaries to sign its pledge to move to New Hampshire and finally force the state to live up to its Live Free or Die motto. (Despite their pledged support, only about 1,300 signers actually made the move. Another 3,000 were New Hampshire residents to begin with.) The projects political successes peaked in 2018, when 17 of the 400 members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives identified as Free Statersalthough all but two were registered Republicans.

The affiliated Free Town Project set its sights on Grafton in 2004 because of both its small sizeabout 1,200 residentsand its long history as a haven for tax protesters, eccentrics, and generalized curmudgeons. The Free Town Project leaders figured that they could engineer a libertarian tipping point by bringing in a few dozen new true believers and collaborating with the resident soreheads. Over the next decade or so, Free Towners managed to join forces with some of the towns most tightfisted taxpayers to pass a 30 percent cut in the towns $1 million budget over three years, slashing unnecessary spending on such municipal frills as streetlights, firefighting, road repairs, and bridge reconstruction. But eventually, the Free Town leadership splintered and the haphazard movement fizzled out. The municipal budget has since bounced back, to $1.55 million.

But even though the Free Towners full-scale libertarian takeover of Grafton never fully materialized, they fanned the flames of a community culture that prioritized individual freedom above all elsewhether the individual sought the freedom to smoke marijuana or feed daily boxes of donuts to the increasingly aggressive local bears. The libertarian battle cry of Nobody tells me what to do! drowned out all other political debate, at least temporarily, and the results of their blindly anti-government,anti-authority mind-set were both troubling and predictable.

Hongoltz-Hetling presents the Grafton experience as a rollicking tale of colorful rural characters and oddly clever ursines. The Free Towners wacky political views, like their eccentric clothes, their rusting pickup trucks, and their elaborate facial hair, present him with seemingly limitless opportunities to display his own cleverness.

Certainly, the author is not alone in finding cause for amusement in Graftons funny little basket of deplorables. For years now, reporters and pundits have chosen to focus on the style, rather than the policy substance, of the growing libertarian right. Again and again, we read stories of rural rubes clad head to toe in MAGA swag, hunched over chipped cutlery in dingy diners, wielding biscuits to wipe the last of the sausage gravy from their oversized plates while vociferously proclaiming that taxation is theft and inveighing against the nanny state. In choosing to shoot these red, white, and blue fish in a barrel, Hongoltz-Hetling is in very good company.

But had the author not chosen snark over substance, his book could have served as a peculiarly timely cautionary tale, because the conflicting philosophical principles that drive this story are central to understanding American politics today. The differences between the libertarian stumblebums who moved to Grafton and the staff of the Koch-funded Cato Institute are mostly sartorial. And the sad outcomes of Graftons wacky social experiment are now being repeated in American communities every single day.

If it seems unkind to slam a writer for indulging in a bit of a laugh as he slogs his way through a story that basically boils down to fundamentally divergent views of tax policy, consider the chapter in which Hongoltz- Hetling drags his reader into an ultimately unsatisfactory discursion into the political dynamics of French- occupied Tunisia. In the chapter, he references the work of the Oxford University professor Daniel Butt, a noted scholar of colonialism. In his discussion of Butts academic work, Hongoltz-Hetling brutally torques his sentences to produce the phrases Butt heads, Butt wipe, Butt cracks, and Butt (w)hole. Oh, how devilishly cheeky.

Look. I get it. Snark is to reporters what salmon is to bearsthey thrive on it, and many cant survive without a lot of it. But back in my crime-reporting days, our city editor routinely tossed back any sophomoric attempts to inject witticisms into odd little crime stories by asking, Would this be funny if it happened to you?

Hongoltz-Hetlings chronic prioritization of style over substance brings his reportorial judgment and diligence into question at multiple points throughout the book. He lightly glosses over one characters conviction on 129 counts of child pornography, and later compares Graftons troubling influx of sex offendersfrom eight to 22 in four yearswith an equally disconcerting drop in the tiny towns local recycling rates. Later, he chuckles about a man found in questionable circumstances with a preteen who was [asked to] leave in an impolite manner involving a very visibly wielded baseball bat. I raise this issue not solely because I am a midwestern mom who is absolutely unamused by child sex abuse, but also because Hongoltz-Hetling does not mention that pedophilia and child pornography are profoundly schismatic issues for the American libertarian community. Mary J. Ruwart, a leading candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2008, wrote,

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if its distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

In 2008, the party refused to vote on a resolution asking states to strongly enforce existing child pornography laws.

The author takes a similarly lighthearted approach to his account of the Unification Churchs establishment of a summer retreat in Grafton in the early 1990sa lengthy episode that buttresses his portrayal of Grafton as a weirdo magnet of national proportions. In fact, there are numerous villages across this country where religious leaders have walked into town and proclaimed, This is the place, regardless of whether that place was already occupied by nonbelievers. The resulting conflicts between townspeople and the invading faithful can be deadly serious. When the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh founded a commune of 2,000 followers in Oregons rural Wasco County in the 1980s, for example, the groups resistance to land-use laws fueled a campaign of terror against local residents. Group members poisoned hundreds of people in the county by spraying salmonella bacteria on salad bars, and the communes leaders targeted state and county officials for assassination, sending one county commissioner to the hospital with a potentially deadly case of salmonella poisoning.

Againwould it be funny if it happened to you?

These shortcomings, and many others like it throughout the book, would diminish Hongoltz-Hetlings narrative even in normal times. But today more than ever, there is nothing remotely amusing about a group of wrongheaded extremists plotting to take over a government and impose its own dangerously eccentric views on an unwitting and unprepared majority. And it is this reality that makes A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear such a painful missed opportunity. With the story of Grafton, Hongoltz-Hetling was handed the American character in an ant farm. This New England hamlet twines together the most significant strands in our history: tax aversion, religious fervor, veneration of individual liberty, and a deep vein of cantankerousness, all counterbalanced by our equally powerful belief that we are on a God-given mission to establish on this continent a shining City on the Hill. In Grafton, we find a microcosm of the constant American tension between Dont Tread on Me and E Pluribus Unum.

Certainly, one cannot fault a writer for failing to anticipate the specific details of the present disaster. This time last year, none of us could have foreseen that a new, fast-moving virus would spark a global pandemic, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, nor that wearing a mask to prevent infection would be viewed as a political statement. But the test of a great writer, or a great editor, is the ability to look deeply into a specific set of circumstances and to extrapolate from them, to assess the present and then take a leap of faith into a prophetic vision of the future. In the Grafton experience, we see clearly the chaos that can be created when a significant chunk of the community rejects the strictures of government, science, and the notion of community itself.

As I write this, more than 159,000 American lives have been sacrificed to failures of government at almost every level, and to the refusal of millions of Americans to curtailtheir sense of personal liberty and submit to relatively brief inconvenience to protect their neighbors and their communities. It is heartbreaking to think of how many more lives will be lost to COVID-19 by the time this magazine goesto print.

This is what happens when massively funded propaganda campaigns lead large numbers of Americans to lose faith in our system of government. This is what happens when that loss of faith leads to blind opposition to taxation. This is what happens when public services and public infrastructure are systematically starved of resources in the name of fiscal responsibility. And this is what happens, shamefully, when those who are best able to recognize the threat and sound the alarm choose instead to treat local politics like some sort of low-stakes sporting event for out-of-shapepeople.

Today, we are all living in Grafton. Armies of rabid bears are wandering through our streets, clawing at our window screens, and gnashing their teeth at our children while the phone rings unanswered at the state department of fish and game. The old village church is erupting in flames, but someone has slashed the tires on our towns lone fire truck, and the fire hydrantsunmaintained for adecadehave all run dry. Terrified, we beg our neighbors for help, only to be told that the Lord will protect us, or that the cataclysm in the streets is just punishment for our moral failures or our political misdeeds.

And all of this is happening because a large, disgruntled minority of Americans dutifully memorized the Declarations listing of our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without perceiving that these rights can exist only within the context of the social contractan Enlightenment concept so deeply familiar to the Founding Fathers that, tragically, they didnt consider it necessary to mention.

Right now, I am sitting in self-imposed quarantine with my husband, in a small Michigan town far from our home. Our beloved daughtersboth adultsare thousands of miles away, in California. We havent seen them now for almost seven months, and in my darkest moments, I wonder whether we will ever be all together again in this lifetime. We are separated today, and likely will be for long weeks and months to come, because millions of my fellow Americans have been unwilling to sacrifice even a shred of their perceived personal liberty to the higher consideration of what we owe to each other.

And its not funny. None of it is funny. It isnt funny at all.

Elizabeth Austin is a writer and political consultant. She lives in Oak Park, Ilinois.

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Libertarians Took Control of This Small Town. It Didn't End Well. - Washington Monthly

Regular and longtime readers of this space have probably figured out by now there is at least one thing in my life I am passionate about.

Spirituality.

Admittedly, this term can be confusing for many, and create all kinds of misunderstandings. When the question arises whether someone is spiritual or religious, many people see it in dualistic terms like you must be one or the other, but you cant be both.

This is just not true.

In fact, after reading about and studying spirituality for 25 years, I would propose that before religion comes into ones life, one is already, by birthright, a spiritual person.

Although it has been attributed to various people over the years, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is credited with originating this statement: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

This implies, that just by being born, each human is a spiritual being. Indeed, some would include in that spiritual being category, all living things animals, plants, trees

Before I sat down at the keyboard this week, I looked up the term spirituality to try to get a grasp on a generally accepted definition of what it means to be spiritual.

There are, of course, many factors that go into determining this, but probably the most basic answer is this, which appeared when I googled the word. This definition is from Oxford Languages:

the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

I might elaborate on that just a bit, to say that spirituality is an effort to find meaning, in ones own life, in others lives, in the world around them, and in the events that take place in their lives.

Another description of what it means to be a spiritual person came from an article on HuffPost in 2015. This one is more detailed than the above definition, but overall (and as in anything, there are exceptions), this definition better encapsulates what it means to be spiritual in these days in which we live:

Being a spiritual person is synonymous with being a person whose highest priority is to be loving to yourself and others. A spiritual person cares about people, animals and the planet. A spiritual person knows that we are all One, and consciously attempts to honor this Oneness. A spiritual person is a kind person.

Now, in reading this definition, we can see that it does not preclude spiritual people from also being religious. For some people, they dont have a spiritual awakening for years, even though they have practiced a religion for their entire life. In fact, most world religions, in one way or another, teach the highest priority of human life is to be loving to yourself and others.

As we all know, not all religious peoples lives reflect this, however. In fact, sadly, religions can be divisive, when seen as the be all and end all of existence.

Anyway, the reason I decided to write about this topic this week, is because I was thinking about 2020 and what an unusually, pardon my language, hellish year it has been. Honestly, humanity has been blindsided this year in more ways than we ever thought possible, at least in modern times. At least that is how it seems to those of us living it out. Now.

And I know for almost everyone scratch that everyone, adjusting to these new realities has been mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually challenging scratch that word challenging exhausting.

I know and have heard of many people with heightened anxiety and other mental health issues that are directly related to the extreme uncertainty we live with now.

Each day we awaken, we wonder what life is going to throw at us today.

It cannot possibly get any worse than it is already, we think.

But then it does.

So as someone who is passionate about spirituality, I look at it this way:

In many ways, there is not a lot we can do hands-on, at least not immediately, to resolve the circumstances we find ourselves in. Many of them, especially those more medically related, take time to research and find solutions to.

Others which are more systemically related with deep, thick, sprawling roots must be addressed with much dialogue and mutual respect. No easy answers here.

At the foundation of all these attempts to find a solution, however, is the need for each one of us to tap into that spiritual side of us, that is our birthright.

For months, millions of people have been at home, afraid to go out into public; many of them elderly with few family or friends to check on them.

Others have watched helplessly as nearly 200,000 Americans have succumbed to Covid-19, or complications from the virus. They have watched as dear family and friends have died painful, awful deaths, alone in a hospital room, without anyone even being able to physically touch their skin, or say goodbye. They have grieved their losses relatively alone, without the human support they so desperately need.

Hostilities related to all kinds of situations have boiled up and exploded in recent months, and only seem to be getting worse with each passing day.

As I write this today, I do so without, GOD FORBID, any intention of stirring up yet another political debate. Life is not all about politics. It is about so much more than that.

That is where this idea of spirituality comes in.

I believe that these terrible months we have all endured, if looked at in a positive light, have been an opportunity for every single one of us to get in touch with that spiritual side with which we were born.

That doesnt mean necessarily going to church. Many people cant go to church right now.

It is something more basic than that.

It is getting in touch with a loving Reality that undergirds all the pain and alienation so many of us feel from life, from each other, from ourselves

It is sitting still, quiet, and reaching out to that loving Reality to try to find out more about that Reality, and to find some way to make sense of it all.

Not that we will make sense of it all.

I have found in my life that when we go looking for answers as to why something happened, we might as well be beating our heads against a wall.

We just cannot be assured we will get an answer as to why something happened.

But

We can find meaning in it.often after much time has elapsed.

We can find ways to get grounded in this loving Reality that is eternal the beginning and the end of all things.

We can find ways to acknowledge that we are not isolated beingswe are connected to one another in ways we cannot imagine or explain.

And what happens to one of us, impacts the rest of us.

We can find ways to be the spiritual beings we are.those whose highest priority is to be loving to ourselves and others.those who care about people, animals and the planet.those who know that we are all One, and consciously attempt to honor this Oneness.

those who are kind

SPIRIT MATTERSis a weekly column that examines spirituality in The Times' readership area. Contact Jerrilyn Zavada at jzblue33@yahoo.com to share how you engage your spirit in your life and in your community.

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SPIRIT MATTERS: In matters of the spirit, spirituality matters - LaSalle News Tribune