Could Han Solo have been a Jedi?

Let’s unpack this, shall we?

In the Original Trilogy… sure, maybe.

I mean, it’s not likely – he was too cynical and self-interested to become a warrior/priest/monk.

But the Force flows through all living things.

He might not have had Luke’s natural advantages or the right attitude, but was there anything stopping him from learning how to, as they say, use the Force?

The movies don’t rule it out.

In the Prequel Trilogy, this interesting and realistic take gets a slight tweak:

“No. Midichlorians. I hate sand and only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

Right… so joining this military order depends on the purity of your blood. Thanks for that elaboration, Lucas. It feels like the Harry Potter series’ take on blood purity, run in reverse.

The Sequel Trilogy also sheds some light on this:

The Force manifests in between the Force and midichlorians when it comes to Sith and Jedi.

(If you’re struggling to make sense of that, it’s because I wrote three interesting sentences and then mashed them together at random, in the spirit of that trilogy.)

Anyway…

This might not be the clearest way to show how the franchise decayed.

But it’s yet another sign of it.

It’s funny to apply these different interpretations to our world:

Want angel investors? You first need a blood test to see if you’re related to Gates or Zuckerberg.

That’s not a richer world – that’s a weird, stunted and boring place to live.

Take that idea and toss it. If you want to do something or become something? Then do it. Will some folks have a natural advantage over others? Sure, but if someone with no legs can scale Everest, realise your limits are much higher than you sometimes think.

Of course, that’s real easy to say. “Achieve everything, even the impossible stuff!” What do you do if you believe that… but don’t know where to start?

Which is quite reasonable, really.

The thing is, you’ve almost certainly heard the answer:

Level up your people stills.

You don’t need to know Jedi mind tricks – all you need is a framework for what conversations actually for.

Here’s what many people forget: conversations aren’t exchanges of information. They test and build social connections, whether with strangers or people you know intimately.

Often, all it takes is a quick hey-how’s-it-going to tell when someone’s not in the mood to talk to you.

It goes deeper than that.

Almost every conversation – from ordering coffee to pillow talk with your soul mate – follows the same guidelines.

These guidelines, baked into your unconscious thanks to your pack hunter ancestry, show who is a good pack member and who isn’t.

Break these rules and people will think there’s something off about you, even if what you said ‘makes sense’.

Follow the guidelines consciously, though?

You’ll know when and with whom you can take the conversation where you want it to go… and have them like you for it.

I lay it all out in Conversation Hacker:

https://guided-thought.com/hacker