Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we are returning today with the second part in our Star Wars week series. In the last episode, we focused exclusively on the ice planet Hawth from the Empire Strikes Back. We took a close look at tonton physiology and how that relates to realities from paleontology in the real world, about theropod dinosaurs that lived in freezing Arctic and Antarctic conditions in the Cretaceous period. We also talked about the real world viability
of the infamous Taunton sleeping bag. The whole segment there about you know, how long can you survive inside a gutted horse and a frozen environment? And then finally we looked at the ecology of the carnivorous beast of hawk, the Wampa. So if you haven't heard part one, i'd recommend go check that one out first. But for today we're going to be changing gears and focusing on some sith psychology topics or maybe a general episode on Sith science.
Yes, yes, and you know I was thinking maybe I should have actually worn my black hoodie all the way for a Sith episode, you know, But you applied less I cream that sort of thing, do we. But it's too late for that. We have to go with what I got.
It is too late for you, now, Okay, Well, why don't you take things first. I know we both have our own sort of Sith psychology topics we want to address, but you have a very good one that I'm keen for us to get to.
Yeah, yeah, I guess first we'll just briefly mention what the Sith are. I think everyone listening to this has a pretty good idea. But yeah, we're talking about the bad guys of the majority of the Star Wars films. This is the dark Side Force religion, dark Side Forlhilosophy and also an ancient warrior cult that long existed in stark opposition to the Jedi order. And while the Jedi stressed balance and equanimity, the Sith embraced the power of
negative emotional states. Using those states is their key to force manipulation, harnessing this submerged power of the Force, and they seek both worldly and otherworldly power through violent oppression.
That sounds about right, hate, anger, viciousness, selfishness. That they don't only practice these things, they conceptually embrace them. They say, yes, that's what I am, and it's what I'm for.
Yeah, red light, sabers, black hooded figures, that sort of thing. You know, they have their own esthetic that they cling to as well. And you know, just as the Jedi are based in large part on a number of Eastern concepts, we can look to various examples of the Siths sort of dark magic and say Dallas tradition, where it might be portrayed as an imbalance of Yin and Yang, favoring
the subtle, hidden darkness of Yen. Not in this context because Yen is evil, but because everything has to be balanced, and if you're presuming something that is lopsided, that is out of balance, well then it can become a dark path. Well.
Not to get overly nerdy, but I do now recall some of the temptations offered by Sith lords in the Star Wars movies often are bids for balance, right like it doesn't At this point, Senator Palpatine explain his knowledge of the dark side of the Forest to the young Anakin by saying that we have to understand both sides, not just the dogmatic one side of the Jedi.
Yeah, this is pretty fascinating, and this is also a trend or thread anyway that is discussed later in some of the sequel materials as I remember this idea that you know, maybe it's like the Jedi are not the ultimate answer either, but there's some sort of ultimate in between, a balance of forces that there has to be darkness in light, and you know, certainly would be more in keeping with with with Dallas philosophy, for example, but even in Dallas treatment of magic, you know, there's a lot
of talk about, you know, what happens when your interests become increasingly driven by ego or or focused on harmful intent. And then you couple this with a desire for immortality, but not immortality for any noble reason, but just for selfishness or and hunger for power, and yet then it
becomes a dark road. But yeah, there's there's an interesting case to be made, and perhaps it's exactly the kind of case of Sith Lord would make that the path of the Jedi is also one of imbalance, that if you ignore these dark paths, something else is out of line. And you know, certainly we see case after case of light Jedi that ends up falling into darkness, and maybe that because there's sort of a pendulum situation in place here.
Yeah, that is interesting. So there is some truth to the idea of the narrowness of the Jedi. Yet at the same time, I think, at least within the prequel films, I know, this bid for balance that Palpatine makes is ultimately revealed to be a false temptation. Oh it is, you know, it's not it's not actually bringing Anakin or Palpatine to a place of greater, more harmonious understanding. It is a bid to like, no, why don't you try it? Come,
come taste the dark side? Ya, that's really the operative thing there.
Yeah, Darthsidius slash Emperor Palpatine, you know, tremendous villain, but also absolutely a villain, Absolutely a murderous, hateful, mass murdering, genocidal ruler. So yeah, without any doubt he is the villain in the scenario.
But there's never just one Sith villain, is there.
That's right. Star Wars fans are well aware of the Sith rule of two, which, if you dig into the lore reportedly was instituted by Sith Lord Darth Bain after the Dark Force Order Slash religion was nearly eradicated by the Jedi Order during the Jedi Sith War. And as the part of this too is that the apparently the Old Republic era Sith, this is back when there were a lot of Sith. There's a whole full fledged faction like you might encounter in the Knights of the Old
Republic games. They were apparently plagued by infighting, and this restructuring was also intended to provide increased stability as well as secrecy that would enable the Scith to not only survive long enough to regain their power, but also to eventually enact some sort of horrible vengeance against the Jedi.
But so functionally, what is the Sith rule of two? All right?
So basically it is that we're going to reduce this entire Force Religion, Dark Side Force Relie to a two person religious order, a two person organization for the most part. And as we mentioned in the last episode, you know, we're not going to be completely dogmatic when it comes to the law here. Realizing that within Canon Star Wars
fandom and extended universe lore legends, if you will. There are going to be a lot of additional facts, and we're happy to talk about all of that in over email and we can get into it and listener mail, but we're going to deal pretty broad strokes for the most part here. Now.
While we always do accept factual corrections, I will say if you're too pedantic about star Wars low, you may be in for some light ribbing if we address it in listener may.
Yeah, yeah, all right, so yeah, always too. There are a master and an apprentice from Bain onward the Sith. They're able to exist in near secrecy for roughly a thousand years. A master, the master of the two, holds absolute power, while the apprentice craves that power, eventually inevitably slaying their own master and taking on a new apprentice to continue the chain. So the apprentice kills the master, becomes the new master, finds a new apprentice, and this
chain continues with various ins and outs. Tell the Sith apprentice Darth Sidius, slays his master, Darth Plagus, and takes on a series of apprentices himself, ultimately failing to pass the mantle of Sith Lord on to anybody else. However, of course, Sidius does largely succeed in the long term Sith goal of eradicating the rival Jedi order, So.
From his point of view, he gets a lot done, but he does not successfully pass on the torch to an apprentice, right or pass on the torch? Well, okay, I actually have a question. I maybe you don't know the answer, but if you do, are the Sith aware they're like explicitly aware that it goes the apprentice, kills the master and then takes it takes the master's place, Like, do they have this in mind? It's like part of the plan.
Well, I haven't, to my memory, I haven't read a novelization or or encountered any media that like directly gets into this. I'm sure they do. But my sort of gut read on all of this is that you're dealing with with very egotistical individuals, and I can easily imagine that as the apprentice, you know this is the way things go, and you know that the pattern has always been that the new dark Lord then takes on an apprentice,
and that apprentice rises up and kills the paster. But you can easily imagine that once the individual becomes the dark Lord, they probably think they are the exception to the rule.
I am different, Yes, very perceptive, Yes, that must be that way.
Yeah. Or and in the same way that you know, you will have you know, various individuals throughout history who recognize the the basic power structure that allows them to take power, but then reject it as soon as it is also the means to their own exit from power. So when you see that time and time again.
A standard part of the Tyrants playbook, and it is powered by Hubris. Yeah, thinking that I'm different, the rules don't apply to me like they do to everybody.
Else, right, right, So I wanted to get into the rule to here a little bit, you know, to be clear. It fulfills its main purpose in that it is it makes for great drama, it makes for great lore, and you know, ultimately we're talking about Black Magic Space Wizards. So it's silly to get too serious about all of this, but I think it's also fun fun to in good faith do some computation on this question. Okay, so let's
start with just the realm of secrecy again. The Sith want to stay very secretive throughout this rebuilding phase so that they can eventually carry out their vengeance, make sure the Jedi forget about us, and then we can rise up. So there is of course an old adage that reminds us that three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, And the logic is that secrets can only effectively be kept by parties of one. And I don't know that there's much to be gained by going
into a lot of game theory on this one. I originally thought I might go in that direction, but at the end of the day, a lot of this comes down to the advantages gained by keeping or revealing secrets. And very broadly, the whole Sith rule of two depends on the master keeping at least some secrets of power to themselves, and then the promise of those secrets and power is the sole thing driving the apprentice, both their
loyalty and their eventual betrayal of their master. But all things, I mean, all things considered equal, if you reduce your organization to just two people, you're probably going to have a much easier time keeping things secret. There's going to be fewer leaks that way, fewer people exiting the company and so forth.
Yeah, it is hard for me to imagine a model by which adding more people to the conspiracy decreases the odds of being leaked.
Yeah. Yeah, two people secrecy, two people conspiracy makes sense. However, coming back to that whole if two are dead, example, secrets are best kept when everyone is dead. And the kicker is that having us a secrets a secret society of two is in fact very close to the absolute secrecy that comes with death, which leads us to our next consideration, and that is stability of your organization, your two person organization moving across time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One thing I was thinking about is if there is only one master and one apprentice, and you consider the Master the expert in the dark side of the force. If the Master dies before the apprentice's training is complete, doesn't that mean that some expertise has just been lost? Yeah, like nobody else knows it, nobody has act it.
There are so many ways that can go wrong. Like, another way I was thinking about is if the Master becomes hesitant to in some way let go of his power. And this is this is kind of difficult to hash out because like the Master traditionally only gives up his power when he is killed. But then the model is
sort of a passing of the baton. But if the Master is too good at not being killed, he might eventually get bumped off by a rather undeserving apprentice, you know, like like he eventually like he's just defeated one apprentice is like fifth apprentice, he brings in a sixth apprentice. This guy's just as green as grass. But the Master is so old and so weakened from these various secession
battles that he's just knocked off really easily. And now the whole order is left in the hands of someone who has no idea what they're doing.
Yeah, it's a problem.
Yeah, and then how are you going to build up your your, your, your, your momentum to take out the Jedi Order at that point? Yeah, So yeah, the ideas this chain of Master and apprentice has to continue undisrupted across the centuries, centuries again, during which the Sith are supposedly keeping a low profile. But you know, these guys don't mean they're doing nothing. They're staying isolated, but they're
still going to encounter threats and dangers. You know that they're going to have their own adventures, and there's probably going to be one or two crackpot Jedi out there who are convinced that the Sith are still out there and we should maybe try and hunt them down.
I mean, if we just take the case of Darth Sidius, I say, even within your own execution of plans, there seems to be a lot of danger. There's you know, all these ruses with being kidnapped by Droid separatists and things like that, placing yourself in an awful lot of danger, especially when you are the only repository of Sith knowledge. Now, well, I guess not the only one at this point, because when that happened, there was still a Dooku out there, wasn't there.
Yeah, But always, you know, there's always the sense that he is holding something back. There are secrets he's not going to pass on yet, even though we do catch him more or less in a lie here with Anakin, because he's like, I know how people can live forever. I know how to bring the dead back to life. And then once he actually brings Anakin into the fold, he's like, we've got some work to do on this, but I have some great leads on the answer to this question.
Who would have thought it that Sith lords will lie, they will sometimes make false promises.
Yeah, yeah, so well, one, there are obviously several problems, potential problems with this setup. So even if this is a stable system, so you know, at least you know, through these long centuries of not making huge swings to take over the republic, how much work can the sith get done given that they're an asymmetrical two person organizations. So again, not even like a full partnership, but a master and apprentice set up.
Very good question. I actually just have some more questions occurring to me, but I'm want to let you go with this first.
Okay, So, I mean, obviously corporations and governments they have a hard time keeping secrets, but they can also do things that at a much larger scale, at industrial scale. But you know, presumably one of the main reasons that a Sith lord takes on an apprentice at all is that they need a powerful underling. They need some help. It's not a one person job. And yeah, they may have a small network of less powerful minions, and some of these minions may have there's no idea of what
their master's all about. You know, it may be a hidden identity like oh we don't we don't work for a dark lord. We work for a senator, or or you know, whatever the cover story may be. But yeah, it seems like you're going to be very limited in what you can do, and therefore any kind of like vengeance you're planning against, you know, a major interplanetary civilization, it's going to take some time building that up.
Yeah, totally.
We also might look at this greatly reduced and sustained reduced population of two as an extreme bottleneck for an organization. I've recently been reading about various new religious movements, and by and large you tend to find that a two person religion, which essentially is what the sith are in this case, it constitutes either the beginning or the end of a religion, not so much the heyday of it.
I think I would have known even without looking ahead in the notes which examples you may be thinking of here. But it does strike me as common that at the beginning of a new religious movement, it's often not just one person preaching or crying in the wilderness. It's one person and another loyalist. There's somebody there to be giving the message and somebody else there to be saying that's right.
Yeah, Yeah, I think you can look at a number of new religious movements where you have a pair of individuals sometimes following into falling into the roles of visionary on one hand, an organizer on the other. Uh, and that between the two of them they're able to sort
of codify the faith in its early goings. And also there might be even be in some cases a kind of like shared paranoia, you know, like the two individuals can really be a think tank for the creation of some sort of new faith, you know, and really enhancing whatever the kind of outside viewpoint or outside worldview is being nurtured in this in this partnership. So two examples
that came to my mind. First of all, the Heaven's Gate religious group at its peak had hundreds of members, but initially consisted of just Marshall apple White and Bonnie Nettles, who developed and largely solidified the teachings that would gain masses of followers. A second example that comes to mind is that from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty five, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, or the Shakers.
Some of you may have Shakers on the brain because it was the topic The founding of the Shakers was covered in the excellent film The Testament of Anne Lee, which I highly recommend, really good view. During between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty five, they were reduced to just two followers, and this was due, I believe, in large part, among other factors, to the group's key teachings against procreation. Hard to really build up your follower base whilst in
the movement you're not supposed to have any offspring. Now I'm to understand they've subsequently absorbed a third member, but unless something drastically changes, it's hard to imagine that this group's stability is improving and that they're on the upswing. Incidentally, it has also been reported that Heaven's Gate is currently reduced to two members active and kind of a caretaker
role for the movement's website and publications. But again also not a case where I think there's a strong argument to be made that Heaven's Gate has a big future ahead of them in terms of you know, building up those followers. Right. So, yeah, you could see the synergy of a two person religious movement as a great sort of consolidation engine, and maybe there's even against shared paranoia that helps cement a radical worldview, and I think a
lot of that rather fits the Sith. You can imagine this loan Sith Lord and Sith Apprentice like out there in the galactic wilderness just getting like crazier and crazier and more overflowing with hatred, and it just you know, solidifies various aspects of their philosophy. But you know, if the Faith undergoes changes during these tenures, during these little think tank periods, well what happens if it undergoes too
much change? One can easily imagine it doing so, and that would to put the whole like you know, multi generational enterprise in some sort of jeopardy, because on one hand, what if the Sith Lord and his apprentice begin introducing changes that make the Faith less desirable by others and you know, less combatible with a larger world, So it might be harder to bring on the next apprentice and allow the Faith to continue on into a new generation or reach the point where it is able to carry
out its vengeance. Or what if it makes it like more palpable to a larger audience and in doing so, brings about the end of the secret small scale you know niche system that they've put in place.
Now, I actually have a question. I wonder if you know the answer to this. In the prequel films, we see that Anakin Skywalker is lured into apprenticeship with Darth Sidius under false pretenses like this, This relationship begins, the mentorship begins without Anakin knowing that he is a Sith Lord, and they've already become pretty close and establish some loyalty before there is a revelation. Is that a standard recruiting pitch or are there a lot of apprenticeships that begin
with full knowledge that I'm a Sith Lord. I need a Sith apprentice.
How about you? I think I'm trying to remember exactly, but I believe it is more like that with Douku's apprenticeship. I think it's a little more out in the open like that, So, and you know, you could I think there's a I think there's a larger understanding that the Sith are not the only Dark Force users in the galaxy. So there may be a case where there's already someone who's been exploring the dark side of the Force, at
least in an amateur fashion. Maybe with the even within the confines of another sort of dark Force religion, and then someone else comes along and says, hey, here, you're into this dark Force stuff. Let me tell you about the sith obvious. Would you like to go pro Yeah, because obviously we see this with a lot of different
religious movements and religious groups. You know, where someone gets into say, you know, ufology and some sort of UFO religion before you know, changing up joining a different one starting their own. Well, I mean, and we don't even have to look to UFO religions. We can look to various Christian groups or you know, any group associated with any of the major long standing world religions.
Yeah.
So yeah, the recruitment policy, you know, the actual details of the recruitment I guess could could vary. But we might even look at the recruitment of Anakin as being an outlier where he's like, hey, I have to admit something to you. I'm a Sith lord. And then Anakin's like, what what are you talking about? And you know, he has to remind him, well, I'm also I'm also your friend, and I've made you know, I've made sense on all these other points, so you have to continue to follow me into this.
Yeah, well, I guess you could look at that from a storytelling point of view as Anakin is a particularly high value apprentice and it is worth the risk of making this, you know, overture toward a potentially non receptive pupil because he's so so high quality, because he's good.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's hard to imagine. I guess you'd have to deal with a scenario where you'd have to have like a very high profile celebrity that is being indoctrinated into a certain religion or a head of state or something like that. That would probably be the Something along those lines would be comparable to the scenario.
Yeah, but yeah, again, I can't help but think, like, what are the risks to changes to sith doctrine, because presumably they have traditions, they have books, But then you end up with certainly one, maybe two individuals at max having a tremendous amount of control over how the religion is portrayed and interpreted.
You know, I was reminded, for instance, something we've discussed in the show before, the example of the late eighteenth dynasty pharaoh Naughton, who elevated the solar deity Autan, and you know, above all the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon, and in this case, his successors and the religious establishment returned things to the way they were followed after his death.
But you can imagine cases, especially with a small system like this, where that wouldn't be possible or desired depending on what one or two individuals end up coming in the wake of it.
Yeah, that's right. So instead of there being a whole people to remember the old gods and then lead us back to the old ways, it could be that, like we've been saying it, with these other things, that the knowledge of the old ways are wiped out.
Yeah, it only conceivably takes conceivably takes one sith lord to say, actually, we're not really all about getting revenge on the Jedi anymore. You know, we're a dark side religion, but we're peaceful and we don't believe in violence. You know. It's like those kind of changes could conceivably take place within one generation of the religion and then it gets
passed on to the next. And then if there is any kind of like expansion of population or like you know, you know, clergy, then things could become solidified in a way that you don't easily backslide from now.
There's one thing I was wondering about a minute ago that I wanted to bring up quickly, which is the Sith are very open in their embrace of moral vices. So, you know, the Sith, at least as far as I'm aware, maybe it's different in some of the books or something, but it seems like they're openly advocating of They openly advocate hate. Of course, negative emotions like anger and hate,
but also treachery and deception and things like that. And that kind of makes me feel like it would it would undermine a conspiracy, because a conspiracy may be deceptive in its overall presentation to the larger struck sure of politics or to the outside world. I would think that within a conspiracy there actually has to be some level of trust, you know, some kind of like mutual trust
and shared values. And so if the if there's a conspiracy of two people and they both openly say that lying and treachery and backstabbing are good, how do you effectuate enough trust to carry out a conspiracy together.
That's a great point, and I think that that might actually be a point that is is difficult to to you know, come up with an answer to we maybe have to do a fair amount of mental gymnastics to make it work, because yeah, if if there if everyone's a backstabber, then how do you establish any kind of working trust? I mean, I guess the easy answer is that the apprentice needs the power and the knowledge of the Master, and so he's going to be They're going to be loyal as long as they can and in
order to gain that information. And meanwhile, the Master needs the help of the apprentice to carry out you know, whatever you know, task and duties and plots uh, they have in mind, and so they're gonna have some sort of loyalty to them as well. But yeah, eventually you're going to get into some sort of a scenario where uh, that trust is going to decay. Uh. And actually, you know, we're we're about to get into that a bit here, because you know, again, the the the the passing of
the baton pretty much exclusively. I think there may be some counterexamples if you get into the deeper like comic book and novel lore and the expanded universe and so forth in the legends, but for the most part, it has the transition has to occur when an apprentice kills the master, and you can tease that apart, like it to what extent is the Master letting go at that point?
You know, at what point if they sort of like pushed it to the level where okay, I have a worthy apprentice because they can physically kill me, I guess you can sort of look at it that way. But but then you get into this question of like what happens when the Master doesn't want to pass the baton one way or the other. And I think we actually do kind of see an example of that, you know, in the Star Wars movies with Darth Sidius, because like,
look at how it ends up going for him. He ends up running through at least what three different apprentices, tries to get a fourth essentially, and in the background is seems to be very devoted to the idea of long term rain and even some manner of physical immortality, you know, especially when you get into some of the Expanded Universe stuff and some of the stuff that they're cooking up with like the Mandalorian series now with the idea that he wants to continue his own physical existence
through like clone bodies, like this is not a guy who's looking to actually have any kind of a successful passing of the baton? Yes, yeah, And so this leads to another I think I found really interesting real world analog that of the successor's dilemma. So the basic problem here is an ancient one in human society, and you don't need black magic wizards in order to crunch it. But a ruler or individual in some level of great authority and power eventually has to contemplate the continuation of
the organization after they die or leave their post. A successor must be chosen. But as we know from countless human dramas, the most famous of which is probably King Lear complexities, complications often arise, yes, And of course there are plenty of successor dramas playing out in the political world, in the religious world all around us. But the kings of our modern age are of course sometimes the leaders
of industry CEOs. And so for this next part here I wanted to turn to what was This is something that exists largely in the business world, so I wasn't really familiar with it, but there is something called the successor's dilemma, and it originates with Dan Champa and Michael Watkins, who introduced it in their November December nineteen ninety nine Harvard Business Review article of the same title, and you can pull this up in full on the internet, as
I did so. The authors of this piece argue thatship leadership transitions in the business world being the main focus here. They often go awry with considerable frequency, generally due to an emotionally charged power struggle between the outgoing CEO and the incoming successor. And you can guess the basic typical factors here if you've ever watched even a single human drama about this sort of thing.
And to be clear, you're not talking about this drama happening only in the case where like an old, older CEO is being in some hostile way pushed out and replaced against their will, like this would be the case even for voluntary handovers of power.
Right, And really that's their main focus. Is not a situation where you're bringing in some sort of a you know, a hostile outsider like this is like best laid plans territory that we're talking about here. So this is the way they basically lay it out is happening. So a CEO realizes, as does the board or surrounding corporate structure that they need to lay the groundwork for someone to carry on leadership after the CEO leaves. CEO positions, after all,
are not generally lifetime appointments. Sometimes they kind of work out that way for one reason or another. But you know at some point they're going to need to pass the reins on to a selected air and everyone rests more easily if there is in fact a plan for this and not just a mad scramble. Again, in the business world, you're can have a board to have you know, the entire corporate structure. You're going to have shareholders and everything else, and they barely are mentioned at all in
this article. But you also have employees whose salaries and livelihoods depend on the overall corporation functioning in a healthy manner.
Right, So having a planned handoff in place, or at least having the appearance of such, is not just for the actual functional value that it would provide when the handoff happens. It's also for appearances to calm people, to give people assurances.
Yeah, exactly, And so through some combination of corporate world mysticism and politics, a successor is chosen an air appearent, often from outside the company, who now has the job of preparing for their eventual ascension to CEO hood or ceoedom, learning from the master while also making quote organizational and strategic changes to prepare the company for the time when he will.
Lead it, okay, giving the appearance of both learning and also making their mark as the as the new leader, the preparation to say I'm in charge now and you will observe that because I'm going to do something right.
And you know, this is often you're dealing with the sorts of people here that are generally going to be movers and shakers, and you're often dealing with some sort of like generational change, like this is the leader that's going to take us into the digital age, this is the leader that's going to take us into the AI age or whatever. You know, the argument happens to be.
Going to manage our pivot to blockchain.
Yeah, that sort of thing. And so you have initially a period where everybody feels really great about this. The CEO and the board, they're like they're really patting themselves in the back, saying, yeah, yeah, this is this is the guy, this is the this is the person this is the next generation, and they you know, they're they're all about the stability that they've engineered here. But then feathers begin to ruffle. The acting CEO ends up having
a trouble letting go. This is very human. We can all get this, you know, fueled by ego, worried over legacy, and on varying levels, perhaps about mortality itself. They may be dealing with like the end of their career and that forces them to think even about the end of their life.
Yeah, exactly, and not just at the CEO level. I mean, you know, you can read lots of accounts of people managing, you know, our retirement or late career transitions and thinking about thinking about mortality as a result. It kind of is inevitable that your thoughts go there, and a lot of people don't want to think about that.
Yeah. Yeah, so you know, all this is very relatable. But meanwhile, the successor, uh, they there's there's actually a lot of a lot of weight on their shoulders as well. They're expected to deliver upon taking over, but they need the cooperation of the existing CEO to reach that point.
And you know that there's they're they're they're risking alienation of that CEO if they push too hard from their end, and the relationship based basically begins to drastically sack at this point, and you know, it's just as the CEO is realizing that they need to leave on their own, they're hit with the threatening realization, you know, to varying degrees true, that their successor wants them to leave. And again that may not be with any heat. They're like,
I was brought on to be the new CEO. You know, I'm ready to take the reins, Like I'm here. I'm a go getter. That's why they hired me. That's why they're paying me the big bucks. And this big this, this this begins to be a sour situation between the two individuals.
I mean, you can imagine, even for the exact same person, it might feel good to believe you are voluntarily under no pressure handing over power, but feel very bad if if you think there's pressure on you to give up power.
Yeah. Yeah, like even if it's as simple as like, well, I was gonna, I was gonna try. We're gonna do this baton passing next Friday, and now you want it Thursday, And now I feel you know, attacked, you know, and I think we can understand how that would be. So this is where the true dilemma sets in, according to
the authors, Here, what's the successor supposed to do. The more they push, the more push back they're gonna get from the acting CEO and any loyal board members or members of the corporate structure, and they're gonna be left with two choices. Either they wage open war against the current CEO they begin to really push and try to push them out and take that top position, or they quit. They walk away and they say, you know, all right, if you're not gonna if you don't want me to
be the new CEO, I'm gonna leave. I have other offers out there. And according to the authors, both of these choices are pretty bad ones. They stress that open war with this acting CEO, this can get really ugly and apparently rarely works. So the idea of a hostile takeover, it's going to be a very risky swing that likely is going to end in defeat. Meanwhile, stepping down and leaving the company, they say this and end up being like a high profile failure that could tarnish any any
future prospects. So again, we're talking about, like, you know, really high achieving individuals that really want to be at the top of whatever company they're in. So I don't know that one thing to keep in mind here is failure for that individual still sounds a lot like victory for most people out in the world, where it's like, oh, you don't have you don't get to be number one in a company. You only get to be a high paid,
high powered number two or three. But you know, from their point of view, it could be a colossal failure.
It's kind of a classic Shakespearean or Greek tragedy point of view that, whether literally or just figuratively, the loss of power and kingship is death.
Yeah. Yeah. And the authors here argue that the situation is made all the more dire because relatively few individuals in an organization can actually help with the matter once it's reached this point. So not other board members, not hr,
just the two individuals trapped in the dilemma. They're the only ones who can really act, and everyone has something to lose in the scenario, the board, the company, the shareholders, without mentioning the employees, and the CEO themselves, but the successor they argue has the most to lose and therefore has to be the one to manage the situation. And so the authors here they have served as professional advisors for situations like this, But their core advice in this
original paper is four part. They're saying, these are the four steps that the successor in ours this scenario, This would be the apprentice can consider getting into the scenario, like even ahead of a potential dilemma. So first of all, they say, the successor needs to work ahead of time to better understand the current CEO and their emotional readiness to step aside, long before they even accept the number two position.
Now we'll have to come back and kind of translate this piece of advice for our Star Wars scenario because of major differences in how the transition happens, Yes, how the power handoff happens, and usually in CEOs versus the Sith lords.
But I think we can go ahead and handle this first bit of advice because I don't think it's particularly appliable to the Sith scenario because the Siths are such obvious liars and there's so much secrecy involved, Like what Sith apprentice is really going to be able to get a handle on their sith master's willingness to eventually give up power. I just don't know that there's any way that they could really move on that, but it makes sense from CEO standpoint.
All right, what's the rest of the advice?
Okay, So number two on the CEO level is the successor has to make regular communication with the CEO a priority.
Okay, that seems valuable, maybe even for sith who knows.
I think so. I think it is a basic human reality that the more communic communication to individuals have the better. Even if they're two sith just lying their faces off to each other, at least you have some sort of back and forth that can be read and interpreted. So I'm gonna stick with that being a piece of advice that does stand well.
Let me iterate on that just one way, which is that we're all familiar with ways that communication can go bad. Communication like a you know, a text message or an email can be read the wrong way. It can be taken with more hostility or some negative emotion that wasn't really intended by the person writing it. Communication can of course increase tensions and problems, but I think in a
lot of cases we I don't know. Maybe thinking about that aspect, we underappreciate how much tensions and problems can be created just by lack of communication. Yeah, that with silence can really amplify pre existing worries andbiguities, And almost any communication, as long as it's not overtly negative or hostile,
can reduce those negative ambiguities. And I think this is true in all different kinds of relationships, from you know, family and romantic relationships, to work relationships to whatever it's it's just usually it's good to check in to like community, having some kind of communication is better than just radio silence and leaving people having no idea what's going on.
Like in the CEO scenario, even if it's just getting together to play golf or to talk about golf, yeah yeah, or in the syth scenario getting together to play golf or talk about golf. Would that would that would probably do wonders for avoiding any unnecessary early violence between the two.
This race is a great question. Do sith lords ever have fun? You never see them doing anything that make it seem like, oh wow, it would be great to be a sith lord. In all these movies about like crime bosses and stuff. Yeah, they leave. They lead these horrible, squalid lives, full of like sin and betrayal and and treating people poorly. But at least you usually get to see them having fun and enjoying their wealth. I don't remember any scenes like that for the Sith Lord.
So if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, I guess so. I mean, Palpatine does have a really swank, dark office towards the end of his days as a secret Sith Lords, and then I guess really gets into the aesthetics of imperial rule once he's out in the open.
He just likes looking out the windows at Coruscond. No, that's true. I think he Palpatine probably does get a lot of genuine pleasure from commissioning monuments and like having things built in his honor.
Yeah. Yeah, you should see the ballroom that he exactly. Yes, But anyway, coming back to the list here, they're number three. Bit of advice to an incoming CEO or the apprentice. In our scenario, the successor needs to lean on a balanced personal advice network to navigate any struggles or problems.
I think that's a great bit of advice for the CEO scenario and probably for a lot of real world scenarios, doesn't really help the sith scenario all that much because given a secretive to individual structure, there's not really going to be a personal advice network that you can lean on, balanced or otherwise.
I'm writing a story in which someone is a secret sith lord. What do you think they would do in this scenario?
Yeah, I mean, I guess there might be some droids or uninitiated underlings he might bounce some ideas off of, but you know, they're probably not going to be great help, and you're just going to get them lightsabered by sharing anything with them.
See, my main character, Schmannikin, is really trying to figure out if his sith lord will tell him the secret of life and death.
Yeah. And then finally, the fourth bit of advice they have his they focused on professional goals, not be quote emotional traps that surround them. That's that feels like good advice. I think in the real world also probably easier said than done. There's probably a lot of coaching that goes into realizing that. Within the sith context, I would say they're probably quite a lot of emotional traps in the
Sith master Sith apprentice relationship. But yeah, it might be it might be good to be able to figure out which ones are traps and work around them, you know.
But they openly embrace emotional.
Traps, they do, that's right. They're all about negative to hate. They're constantly messing with each other. So yeah, that's a good question. To what extent can you even navigate around those emotional traps. You've you've got to indulge them to some degree.
This is like giving that advice to somebody at a corporation where their product is making their own executives angry and hateful. Like it's just not cannot be followed.
Yeah, so yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to think about this transition as being like the CEO transition. But obviously, as we've been driving home, there are number of key differences for starters they would be CEO. I think it's gonna have a hard time just quitting this in the Sith scenario, because what are you gonna do Just gonna say, actually, I'm not a Sith anymore. That sounds like a great
way to get lightsabered. They're probably maybe there are probably some expanded universe examples, but the only one I could think of where you have somebody sort of quit the Sith is by being left for dead. So like Darth Maul is cut in half, presumed dead, later re emerges as an underworld criminal figure.
I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, he comes back.
He does. He comes back in first in the Clone Wars series, and then and then in Rebels, and then it makes a brief cameo in the Han solo movie that came out years back, and his storyline is really interesting. He's a much more interesting character after his death than he was before, but he never achieves the same level. So it's like, this is very much a guy who's never gonna make CEO again. I mean, he guess he kind of becomes CEO of Darth Maul Crime Incorporated, but a much smaller organization.
Do you get to see him having fun now that you Herestrial.
No, he is especially miserable for the rest of his life. Palpatine Sidius is having a great time compared to the Ma All okay, but you know he's working his way up. He's focused on his goals, let's see. And then, of course we already mentioned how there is the whole aspect of the thing where the sith Lord does have to eventually die in order for the transition to take place. And so you know that's going to add a certain
amount of weight to the whole scenario. Anyway, interesting to think about all this again, I'm gonna say that, Yeah, I think it's a severe bottleneck for a two person religious organization to go about things like this. And I think that we can look to Palpatine's example as a downfall that is directly tied to the successor's dilemma, as he proves himself more concerned with holding on to life and power himself than to truly passing on the mantle.
Probably I think, very much in his own mind, seeing himself in his own rule as the culmination of this system and not a part of the chain, which you know, given the egotistical nature of tyrannical rule, I think this is this is pretty common. You see this time after time through human history. Now I know that you watched and very much enjoyed and or as I did, and we never see the emperor in that he is alluded to.
And there, you know, there's some great bits where I forget the spymaster's character's name, but he's like I spoke with the Emperor earlier today, and you know, if that's true or not, he still his name is invoked like that. And apparently at some level in writing the and Or series, they considered using the Emperor as a character, Like they
had access to the character and the actor. They could have employed him to some degree, but they couldn't figure out the way to do it that they liked, you know, what was the right balance. So I am curious how they thought about portraying his relationship with his you know, more political advisors and you know, spy world operatives as opposed to you know, figures like Darth Vader and and you know, and rivals and so forth.
I actually very much liked the way he does not appear directly in the story. I think that made the story. I don't know that that worked very well in the execution of Andor from my perspective that the ultimate villain of the story exists at a remove, and we only get there their will expressed second hand and third hand through all of these obsequious underlings who were all fighting each other trying to get you know, in the better graces of the Emperor who we never meet.
Yeah, and again may not even really be in direct communication with him, right, So yeah, I think it was absolutely the correct choice for the series.
Yeah, but I you know, I've not gone into a lot of the you know, Star Wars extended universe stuff. I haven't seen some of the more recent movies and shows and stuff. But I thought Indoor was fantastic though. It was really good. Yeah, absolutely, all right, folks, Well, we have just gone off Mike and looked at the time and said, you know what, we've got to wrap
up this episode here. We had a whole other section we planned on doing today, but it's pretty pretty long, pretty substantial, and it would probably really just make a whole other episode worth that segment. By the way, I'll just go ahead and tease it is going to be called Palpfacts, where we just check it fact check some claims made by our beloved Emperor Palpatine.
Yes, we may even at times say, you know, don't like that Emperor Palpatine, but he was right on.
A few things. He tells it like it is, tells it tells it like it is sometimes. Yeah, so yeah, we're we're gonna come back with some Palp facts and some fact checking the Emperor in the future. But I think that's it for today.
Right, Yeah, that'll be it for this our second episode for Star Wars week. But yeah, keep an eye on the feed because in the future we'll come back in and we'll finish up this treatment. Perhaps it's just kind of like a standalone episode, but you'll be able to tell it's the it's the essentially the third Star Wars episode. Right, all right, let's see in the meantime, what else suit
should we tell you? Well, will just remind you that stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Indeed, tomorrow's episode of Weird House Cinema will be Star Wars related. I'll just go and let you know. I don't want to build up. Are not going to cover an actual Star Wars film.
We are going to cover one of the many films that came out in the wake of Star Wars. In an attempt to ride that wave of commercial success and maybe artistic success, though I think these efforts were more about making money.
I think the one that we're going to do this week is maybe the greatest of the Star Wars ripoffs arguably.
All right, well, join us for a conversation on that topic. In the meantime, we'll just remind you that, hey, you can get stuff to blow your mind episodes wherever you get your podcasts. We've been around for years and years at this point, so there's a vast audio reserve of episodes, a stockpile. We are also in video form on Netflix. Those are just recent episodes only, however, so if you're watching on Netflix, we thank you for doing that. Certainly
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