It is interesting to note as I go through my day, to notice that things can be very similar to the Star Wars saga. Maybe not the techno stuff or the ability to manipulate an unseen energy field that binds everything, but rather the themes that I have taken away from a near lifetime of SW fandom. And I love to pick up on the themes and how they relate to the human condition. From Light vs. Dark, to unconditional love of family and friends, to serving others for a greater good, to the witness of a governmental or institutional breakdown.

But one theme I see that is repeated on a daily basis is the arrogant nature of some folks and their inability to see what they do to others through their actions.

Now I'm not going to go into a rant and complain about various things that annoy me, I just wanted to attempt to draw a conclusion, that is obvious in our SW universe, that those who wield their arrogance blindly will meet their fate one day.

Let's look at Sidious. Definitely arrogant and doesn't really care. He is, after all a Sith Master, so with that would go a certain level of arrogance I would presume. Of course, he was just as arrogant as his alter ego Palpatine in his manipulation to get himself to the top in order to see his plans unfold. He used various groups of people to get what he wanted and to fuel his ride to the top.

And then you have the Jedi. Of course, they follow the teachings of the Light, and wouldn't be using arrogance to propel themselves into any sort of power position to the top. At least, not knowingly. They aren't consumed by the Darkside and are not manipulators of people or groups like Sidious was, but my point is that they were brought to a level of arrogance through their role and the expectation that they would be keepers of the peace. They held a power amongst the people and a great deal of respect, and with that came certain level of arrogance. Just look at the fight between Yoda and Sidious in which Sidious taunts Yoda with the words that his arrogance has blinded him. It had blinded him to the fact that there was a great deal of Darkness happening around him without him even realizing it. He couldn't look beyond his own nose to see that the galaxy was changing around him and the Jedi were not changing with it ... or at least trying to keep their peace. In the end, he recognized his failure and dealt with it accordingly, but only at the cost of the demise of the Republic and the Jedi Order as he knew it.

And the same fate would happen to Sidious years later with Luke on the Death Star. Luke told him that his arrogance was his weakness, and he told Luke that his friends were his. Sidious was so far gone in his arrogant role as Emperor that he couldn't see that Luke's friends were his strength and were what brought him to this point. But Sidious, like Yoda years before, couldn't see beyond his own nose that his mantle of power was crumbling under the weight of change. And he was so arrogant in fact, that The Ewoks, the simple creatures of the forest moon, would be a major part of his fate. He thought nothing of the "lowly" Ewoks and feared them not. He didn't see that one coming.

And I see arrogance in our own world on a daily basis. From folks who sometimes don't even realize that their actions are hurting those around them or the natural world we live in. I try to be an "arrogant free" person who respects others and the world I live in by holding respect out in front of me wherever I go. It's a little thing, but I think it goes a long way.

If we're all a little like Yoda we can finally recognize the things we first didn't see by trying to look at the whole picture, before it's too late. Instead of taking a nosedive down a reactor shaft.