Saga Why is the light side bad? (Balance in the Force)

Of course they didn't trusted him, he was an unstable psycho who had some serious tendencies for violence.Even in TCW, where he was way more likeable, he had some messed up things, like the whole colvis thing and his jealousy.That guy barely had any self control.

 

To be of the light side means to allow the Force to guide you
To be of the dark side means to bend the Force to you.

But that is of course putting it quite simply.

 

The dark side is the same as turning the lights off? The dark side is the same as death? Really?

I know.

I was making fun of the idea that it means being half-good, half-evil... I was saying that's ridiculous. You misunderstood.

 

Given the evidence, it's not hard to conclude. He was raised normally, he had the dark side growing within him. He went to train with Luke and then fell.

Given that only five Jedi ever fell during the last thousand years, I'd say it worked out swell.

No. The dark side controls and consumes a person.

They weren't intolerant. They didn't want their members to become too attached to people which is what Anakin did and why he became Vader. Forbidding attachments didn't cause him to turn. His ignoring the Jedi Code and doing what he wanted, fueled by his negative emotions and a Sith Lord screwing with his mind did that.

You didn't answer my question. When did the Jedi suppress thoughts? When did they repress healthy emotions? As to Ben Solo, it's also very true. He wasn't trained from birth and allowed to be normal until he was trained. Then he turned around and killed his father and a bunch of other people.

Uh, when did Yoda display fear and aggression in the films? Fighting does not equate having fear. All Jedi can fight without it and Yoda did just that. And when did Yoda show fear? As to Obi-wan, he was a Padawan on Naboo. He had realized his error and let go of his fear, anger and hate and defeated Maul without them. What Yoda said is that when a Jedi uses those emotions all the time and use them to kill, like Anakin did, then you begin to fall to the dark side.

 

And none of that leads to your post that said "Kylo Ren had healthy emotions, look where that got him."

1. It's probably more than that
2. That's still more than 0
3. That doesn't prove Jedi are better-off being raised by birth

 

They trusted Anakin until they didn't give him a reason to be trusted, which was when he had an emotional outburst about being denied the rank of Master. Starting with that, the Council stopped trusting him completely.

It does. He was raised normally. Which meant that it came with all the emotional baggage that comes with that. He developed attachments to his family and those same attachments lead to his killing Han, so that like his grandfather, he could be free of them and thus free of the light.

We saw Dooku, Anakin, Krell, Vos and Barriss. No other Jedi had fallen during the war and none before then. All of whom turned during the war. These were the only ones. I never said that no Jedi had turned ever. I said that for a thousand years, there hadn't been any fallen Jedi. And yes, it proves that the Jedi are better off trained from birth.

Lucas even says that if Anakin had been taken like Obi-wan had been, he wouldn't have had these strong attachments to people.

"It's about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that's why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine Interview; June 2005.

"If he'd have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn't have this particular connection as strong as it is and he'd have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

 

No one is trying to rob anyone of their opinions. But to equate a psychopathic killer to healthy emotion is worthy of a counter-opinion.

















darth-sinister You call it attachment. I call it trying to purge the mind of passionate emotion, which is a very healthy emotion so long as it does not become an obsession. Often, Anakin's ignoring of the Jedi Code saved lives and ended up being the right call, as seen numerous times in TCW.

Ben Solo managed his emotion in an unhealthy manner. His allure to Vader caused his turn, not the fact that he trained at an older age. Luke Skywalker didn't begin training until 19 years of age, and he was the sole flag bearer for the light side for a long time and possibly the greatest Jedi to ever live.

 

darth-sinister

You are making so many assumptions and leaps-in-logic. You're really grasping. I'm not sure you're even aware of the assumptions you're making.

But to focus on just a few things...

-Kylo Ren's attachments to his family definitely did NOT lead to him killing Han

-Vader didn't try to kill Padme or Luke to be free of them and the light, either

-Kylo Ren does not have healthy emotions

-being raised by a family doesn't turn you into a family-murderer

You. don't. know. that.
I feel like, before TCW, you would have said only Anakin and Dooku were the only Jedi in a thousand years to fall to the dark side, and insisted they were the only ones. Please, stop making assumptions. Especially when they don't prove anything, anyways.

Saying the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true.

 

I'm not sure the Force is any of those things - ergo I'm not sure if the 'light side' is equivalent to birth and 'turning the lights on'. But if the Force is such things externally, then yes. All I know is that the light side is positivity, hope, compassion and peace and the dark side is negativity, despair, fear and anger. All of these things are natural parts of the human mind and of all life, and must be balanced.

 

I think you misunderstood what I said.

I agree the dark side is negativity, despair, fear, and anger.

I agree the light side is positivity, hope, compassion, and peace.

This is what I said, that you responded to:

I was saying some people confuse the dark side to literally mean natural darkness... example: it being night-time, quite literally.

 

Ghost
Okay sorry about that.

However, regarding your statement that 'the light side is balance', how you see this as practically true? Do you think the dark side of the Force can be destroyed and all the anger, agression and fear would leave the universe?

 

No, I don't think it can be destroyed, or needs to be destroyed, as I said here, especially in the first paragraph:

"Now, everyone has a dark side, a shadow, and that must be understood and accepted in order to control it and not feed it... you can't really cut if off, you can just hope it shrinks by not feeding it, keeping it tame.

But some people think this means the dark side is ok. No, it's just that it's not that easy to get rid of it, and it can be even more dangerous if it's left to grow in the unconscious/subconscious."

The shadow is integrated... we are aware of it and understand it and accept it... we refuse to "feed" it... and it is tamed, and no longer has power over us, and may even shrink.

That is victory of the light. That is balance.

 

Ghost I think would be more accurate to say that balance is the healthy coexistence of the light and dark - following the path of the light whilst being acutely aware of your darkness so as to keep it tamed. It think we basically agree, but saying 'light is balance' suggests the exclusion and destruction of the dark side, whilst balance is really about its healthy integration.

 

I think we agree in essence but disagree semantically.

Integrating the shadow (our inner "dark side") tames it and makes it powerless over us, because we understand it and accept it, and choose to no longer "feed" it.

That creates a healthy co-existence (since it can't be cut-off or destroyed, and trying to makes it worse). That is balance, and this is victory of the light.

"Light is balance" does not suggest destruction of the dark side, just integrating and taming it, as described above.

 

Snoke told him that to kill Han in order to silence the call of the light. It was in part due to his attachment to him.

He choked Padme and when he did that and found out that she died because of that, he went full on Vader. It wasn't to be free, but when he did it to Padme, he was Vader from then on. And was willing to kill Luke if he didn't stop fighting him, as much as he didn't want to, he would have.

He had them before turning.

There's a reason the Jedi forbade attachment and raised kids from birth.

Lucas would have shown us that there were other Jedi who fell, before the events of the PT. The Council wouldn't be so taken back by the fact that there was a Sith Lord running around. They would have addressed someone else who had fallen. Hell, they couldn't even believe that Dooku was evil because of his training.

 

Luke wasn't raised by the Jedi from birth.

And Vader had healthy emotions before turning.

Why would The Jedi need to be so preoccupied with the dangers of turning to the darkside if they have never witnessed it?

 

That's not the same as saying having a family made Kylo want to kill them. He killed Han because he chose the dark side, and Snoke pushed him in that direction to prove himself.

You don't know that. I doubt he did, or he wouldn't have turned.

And saying Vader tried to kill Padme to free himself of the light is not true, that's what I was disagreeing with.

Seriously? I can't believe that's your response to "being raised by a family doesn't turn you into a family-murderer."

 

Kylo Ren's perceived "call to the light" was his attachment to his family. It was the only thing keeping him from fully falling. "Releasing" his attachment was when he murdered his father.

Yes, he experienced healthy emotions before turning. But the healthy ones didn't cause him to turn. The unhealthy ones did, along with ambition for power.

Lucas didn't get a chance to show us every event that happened before the PT. There easily could have been (and likely were) other Jedi who succumbed to the dark side. They couldn't believe Dooku fell because they were arrogant and thought their system was flawless. They were clearly wrong.

 

Right, to prevent the Sith from finding out about Luke and Leia. And Luke almost fell because of his attachment to Han and Leia.

Yes, he did. But then they became unhealthy around the time his mother was being tortured and Padme came back into his life.

Because the Jedi of the past witnessed it and every generation since kept to the rules. The Jedi always have to be vigilant against the dark side. This was especially true when Obi-wan fought Maul the second time and after the death of Satine. He had grown too close to her and almost lost control. He was able to let go during their third battle and their fourth battle ended decisively. Likewise, Yoda learned that constantly fighting in the war was leading to his own inner darkness stirring when he faced his darker image. And later on, he was tested again with Ahsoka's potential demise and the deaths of the Jedi in the Temple and then with having the ideal life where there was no war and all the Jedi who had died were alive. And Dooku was not evil.

Except Anakin had them as well once, before he became Vader. Almost every Jedi who became either a Sith or a Dark Jedi, in both the films and in the EU, had healthy emotions and also turned because they developed an attachment. Ulic Qel-Droma, Quinlan Vos, Jacen Solo, Xanatos, Gantoris and Kyp Durron were prime examples of this. Other Jedi came close because of attachments. Sylvar and Jaina Solo, for instance. It's a common pattern.

I may have worded it wrong, but the point still stands.

A valid one when you take everything into account.

Lucas had opportunity, especially with the Lost 20 scene to state that there were Jedi who fell during the last thousand years. The fact that he didn't is telling.

 

The point does not stand about Vader killing his family to escape the light too.

It is not valid that having a family turns you into a family murderer.

No, having healthy emotions doesn't turn you to the dark side.

 

So Jedi have turned to the dark side in the past.

I thought their overconfidence about Dooku having not was supposed to be justified by the fact it had never happened before.

 

It does when one becomes too attached to a family over the galaxy at large. That's the point.

You're misunderstanding. A Jedi who is raised by a family starts out with healthy emotions. But once training begins, those healthy emotions begins to become twisted as the Jedi grows in strength. Part of the Jedi discipline is to learn to detach, but if a Jedi has a family like that, the danger is increasingly more severe than it is when trained from birth. That's why Anakin falls, because he was raised by his mother and has a memory of her which set the course for his own downfall. Likewise, Ben was raised by his family and had healthy feelings, until those feelings became corrupted. That's why Lucas said if Anakin was raised by the Jedi, he wouldn't have had such strong feelings of attachment.

No, their overconfidence is that they believe that Dooku would never turn having completed his training long ago and having reached the rank of Jedi Master, that he was considered safe. Their arrogance was in thinking that he wouldn't turn and that it had been so long since a Jedi had turned, that it seemed all but impossible. That they would have detected if he had gone off the rails when he left, but they didn't. They didn't know that he had turned much sooner than they had assumed and had done far more damage than they realized.

 

That's not the same as your point that being a Jedi who's attached to their family inevitably leads them to killing their family or coming very close to it.

Isn't that a sign that the Jedi should change? Especially in how they train apprentices starting as adults? Obi-wan and Yoda definitely treated Luke differently than Anakin, they were pioneering a new way with him.

It's not being raised by his mother that caused him to fall to the dark side... he turned away from Shmi and Padme when he turned to the dark side, going against what they believed in. Anakin turned because he saw them possessively more than compassionately... "I, me Anakin I, don't want to lose someone (again)... me me me." You can have personal love for people, and still be willing to let them go when the time comes, if holding on means doing something severely immoral. It was his personal love for Luke, now finally not possessive, that redeemed him... returning to the kind of person Shmi raised him to be and Padme admired in him.

Yes, he became corrupted... we don't know how yet. But we know Snoke feared Ben/Kylo's personal love he still had for his father Han Solo, demanding he'd deal with him, and openly doubting he was strong enough in the dark side to reject and kill his family. Kylo said his love to his family was the light calling to him, and how he must reject light/family.

Yes, Anakin wouldn't have had such a strong attachment... but he would have lost a lot of his goodness along with his temptation. And as Dooku showed, it didn't necessarily make him safe either, Palpatine would have had even more time to corrupt the Chosen One, and Anakin wouldn't be able to draw on his healthy emotions of love and family for strength. If Anakin became Vader without ever knowing Shmi or Padme or having Luke (or other offspring)... and that's still very possible if he was raised as a Jedi with Palpatine around... then he would have almost no shot at redemption, as little a shot at redemption as Palpatine, Maul, or Dooku.

 

Lets also not forget that a huge reason Anakin turned to the dark side was his STAUNCH belief in direct action and excessive law and order. 'If politicians can't agree, someone should make them.' An awful lot like a dictatorship 'if it works.' His adherence to this type of Machiavellian philosophy likely would have developed as part of his personality regardless of who raised him and when he began his Jedi training. Vader was born out of Anakin's affection for extreme power as much as it was out of his attachment to individuals.

 

Slight disagreement... I think that side of Anakin came from Palpatine. Of course he'd be frustrated with the limited nature of how the Jedi/Republic help people. But I think it was Palpatine stoking the "you need to force people to accept what the leaders decide" idea.

Really, I don't think the Chosen One needed to be a Jedi. If he had stayed with Shmi, been freed along with Shmi by Cliegg... he'd have come to maturity away from Palpatine, with Shmi's kindness and the Lars work ethic as his solid moral compass. And would have escaped the Jedi Purge, and probably lead a slave rebellion against the Emperor, he could have met Padme as a fellow leader who had experience in the Republic.

In the end, Vader didn't need the Force to kill Palpatine... he just need to lift the guy up, and toss him over a ledge. The Force just made Anakin more in-tune with the Force.