Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Tarzan and his ape-mother appeared on “Good Morning, America” last week in a scene from the new Disney animated movie, “Tarzan.” The ape was warmly lecturing the boy. “Now forget what you see,” she said. “What do you feel?” “My heart,” replies Tarzan. He feels her heart, too, and they hug.

“Tarzan” is said to be a very good movie, and isolated scenes watched while brushing one’s teeth at 8 a.m. probably shouldn’t be overanalyzed. Still, I think the lovable step-ape made a big mistake here. Listening to your heart is important, particularly in a Disney movie, but little Tarzan wouldn’t last two days in the jungle if he forgot what he saw and merely consulted his feelings. More likely, the movie would end abruptly as Tarzan became a snack for some emotionally underdeveloped but visually alert predator who lacked a feelings-oriented adviser.

Tarzan is hardly the only fictional hero placed in needless jeopardy by the feelings culture, Hollywood division. It happens to Jedi knights, too, in one “Star Wars” picture after another. In fact, this is one of nagging problems about being a Jedi, which is otherwise a very good job. You have to be able to fight deadly duels blindfolded and drop important bombs without looking because, in times of crisis, feelings are way more important than eyesight, facts, reason, technology, common sense and computerized bombsights.

In the original “Star Wars” movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi sternly tells Luke Skywalker, “Stretch out with your feelings,” “Let go your conscious self and act on instinct” and finally, “Let go, Luke!” This last piece of advice comes when Skywalker is foolishly trying to destroy the evil Death Star by using a computer instead of his feelings to hit a target the size of a grapefruit while flying 300 mph at an altitude of 20 feet. Luckily, Luke has the wit to turn off his mind and his computer, so there are no remaining obstacles to successful bombing.

The same sort of keen advice about the power of feeling is dispensed in the new “Star Wars” movie, “The Phantom Menace.” Obi-Wan Kenobi is in this movie, too. This time, the sage advice on the folly of thinking comes from an older Jedi master, Obi-Gee-Wye-En (I hope I have that name right), played by Liam Neeson. Nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker is about to risk his life in a 300 mph race of pods, or space chariots. So the Jedi knight naturally thinks this is a good time to offer the child useful advice about feelings. “Feel, don’t think!” barks the master, who must have been drilled in the dangers of common sense and rational thought by some other Master Feeler back in the year 3049, when he was tiny himself and listening to a Hollywood Jedi seemed perfectly normal. Young Anakin wins the race, so maybe the advice to avoid thinking at all costs served him well. On the other hand, the child grows up to be Darth Vader, so maybe not.

In the forthcoming Episode 2 of the continuing “Star Wars” saga, a dramatic debate takes place among galaxy historians. They argue over where the Jedi got their odd philosophy of celebrating every feeling as a precious trump card and struggling to stamp out every trace of actual thought. Most of these scholars will conclude that it came from a brief blip in American popular culture in the emotionally fertile period of 1990 to 2010, when the United States decided to stretch out with its feelings, just as Obi-Wan shrewdly suggested when they put him in the first “Star Wars” movie.

This was the period in which America was busy switching to a feelings-centered morality. Since the self was more important than society, values created by the self (feelings) took precedence over any social or traditional values, which are the encrusted remains of other people’s feelings and biases. The language of “Me Decade” pop therapy, not shaken off until the late 2020s, played a role, too. If we are open to experience, wrote the famous therapist Carl Rogers, “doing what feels right proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying.”

Galaxy scholars found that thinking, on the other hand, fell into disrepute. It was an abstract, culture-bound, Western activity. Undemocratic, too, since it privileged people who could do it over people who couldn’t. In contrast, anyone can produce feelings. And because they’re all personal and self-created, they can’t be challenged the way old-fashioned arguments used to be. So more and more laws and behavioral codes were written in the language of feelings and insensitivity. Politicians felt everybody’s pain.

With thinking gone, colleges turned into summer camps, heavy on entertainment, pop culture and consumer satisfaction. A small remnant of pro-thinking students was left alone so that someone would produce the great Death Stars that could be blown up and the computerized bombsights that could be turned off. Everybody else, even the cartoon apes, came out in favor of feeling over thinking. But it didn’t last very long and even the Jedi became disillusioned. All this takes place in “A Disturbance in the Farce: The Rational Mind Strikes Back.”