NEW ESSAY: Trust and Conflict (and Dragons)

Image credit: Disney. Caption by Nicholas Brooks.

This is the latest essay I published in my project Me, Looking for Meaning. ​

I watched Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon not long after it came out in 2021, and I remember being surprised by how directly it spoke to a problem that usually gets flattened in mainstream storytelling: polarization. The film’s premise is blunt and timely—Kumandra is a land broken into five rival groups, and the fracture is sustained as much by fear and suspicion as by anything material. 

The first time I saw it, I was genuinely moved by the climactic moment when Raya finally understands that repair and connection won’t happen unless someone risks being the first to step forward. The emotional logic was simple but powerful: if everyone waits for proof of safety before reaching out, the stalemate never ends. I liked that the film insisted, in a very Disney way, that repair begins with an inner movement—a loosening of the grip of certainty, a willingness to risk being wrong, and a refusal to reduce the other side to a permanent enemy.

Even then, I felt a hesitation. The ending arrived with dragons, reunification, and a kind of visual fireworks: reconciliation as spectacle. That kind of closure can be beautiful, but it also implies that unity will look beautiful—obvious, luminous, unmistakable. In real life, when people overcome hatred or rebuild relationships, it often looks… ordinary. It can look awkward. It can look like small adjustments, uncomfortable conversations, and cautious experiments with closeness. 

But I still liked the movie overall.

When I rewatched the film recently, what stood out was the film’s near-constant insistence on one particular remedy: trust. I realized that treating trust as the central solution for conflict made the message feel less convincing to me, even though I was still touched by the film’s intent to tackle polarization.

Keep reading here.
[This essay will be included in the Newsletter#20, which will be sent out around mid January.]