2Irandrura posted:Actually, if you recall Knights of the Old Republic II, the message that Kreia was wrong comes across pretty strongly. She thought the Force was some sort of malicious manipulative deity and wanted to destroy it. That was wrong.
JaySkywalker01 posted:Kreia's view of the force was that it should be cut off from every being in the galaxy; destroyed. Isn't that kind of like...no view at all? I don't know...She was a confusing character
2Irandrura posted:Carnage04 posted:"Cade, if the force wills the Princess dies here today, then who are you to stop it?" - Wolf "How do you know it's not the will of the force that I save her?" - Cade "Because to do it you must touch the dark side. You're not accepting the Will of the Force, you are imposing your own." I understand the motivation behind Wolf's statements, but I can't help but feel that he is looking at it from a very narrow angle. The Force has a Light and Dark side....who is to say that only the light side has a "will". Perhaps Sia almost died because the Force willed that Cade use the dark side. I think the problem there is that if you go so far as to say 'maybe the will of the Force is that I impose my own will upon the Force', in the long run you can justify anything, no matter how morally questionable. After all, maybe that's what the Force willed? Now I'm not saying Cade was wrong to save Marasiah, but Wolf Sazen does make a very valid point. You can't make that into a rule. What Cade did was certainly questionable. Cade himself admitted it, as I recall. Can a person impose their will upon the Force? It's a Sith doctrine that you can, and whether or not Cade was supposed to do it comes down to how strongly you believe in predestination in Star Wars. To what degree does the Force manipulate events? Does it at all? Or is it just there, taking no action? I'm leery of saying 'the Force wanted X' or the like because that shifts moral responsibility from the person to the Force - and when people fail to take responsibility for their own actions, well, suffice to say the consequences are not good.
Carnage04 posted:"Cade, if the force wills the Princess dies here today, then who are you to stop it?" - Wolf "How do you know it's not the will of the force that I save her?" - Cade "Because to do it you must touch the dark side. You're not accepting the Will of the Force, you are imposing your own." I understand the motivation behind Wolf's statements, but I can't help but feel that he is looking at it from a very narrow angle. The Force has a Light and Dark side....who is to say that only the light side has a "will". Perhaps Sia almost died because the Force willed that Cade use the dark side.
Carnage04 posted:Under different circumstances, instead of meaning "I'm going to save the Princess because I want to", it could have meant "How dare you speak as if you know what the force wills."
Carnage04 posted:I am of the opinion that the force wills nothing. It simply Is. It has no mind of it's own to push things in one direction or the other. Sentient beings are the ones that do that. If this is the truth, Wolf's statement means little more than "I don't want you to do that."
Carnage04 posted:Wolf's Motives for not wanting him to do that were very pure, no doubt. Saving the Princess at the Cost of Cade going dark is not a good trade. He could end up taking her life, as well as thousands of others down the road if he takes the wrong path.
2Irandrura posted:If simply learning from Palpatine makes Vergere a Sith and incontrovertibly corrupts all her teachings to the dark side, then everything Luke taught after Dark Empire was also corrupted
2Irandrura posted:Is not the onus on you to prove that the view of the Force presented in Traitor is incompatible with and contradictory to George Lucas' view of the Force?
2Irandrura posted:Yet no one complains about Jedi healers, and indeed they're usually seen as definite servants of the light side. (Darth Bane noted that he could not heal his own wounds, for example, as that was a Jedi ability, which seems oddly counter to the dark side's 'I want it and the Force will give it to me!' mindset.)
2Irandrura posted:Carnage04 posted:Under different circumstances, instead of meaning "I'm going to save the Princess because I want to", it could have meant "How dare you speak as if you know what the force wills." That too is a fair point. Jedi are sometimes vulnerable to deciding that they have some exclusive knowledge of the will of the Force, and thus greater moral authority than any other - even though Jedi are supposed to be servants, of the Force most of all but through that of all life. In that sense, Cade is right to question Sazen's claim. Note Wolf's specific wording: 'if the Force wills the Princess dies here today'. But can Wolf really talk about the Force willing Marasiah's death? After all, Sia was only mortally injured in the first place because of the Sith. If the dark side is to impose your own will on the Force, and Sia's injury stemmed from the actions of an individual overriding the Force's will with his own, then surely it is instead the will of the Force that she survives, and Cade's effort to save her was in fact in harmony with the will of the Force, counteracting the Sith's earlier breach. But do two wrongs make a right? You can go around and around in circles with the logic. The will of the Force - if it even has a will - is not clear or simple. Carnage04 posted:I am of the opinion that the force wills nothing. It simply Is. It has no mind of it's own to push things in one direction or the other. Sentient beings are the ones that do that. If this is the truth, Wolf's statement means little more than "I don't want you to do that." While I think you're right that there are problems with talking about the will of the Force in such clear-cut terms, I would not go so far as to say it is totally without direction. If the Force just is, and has no preference, then what was questionable about Cade's action in the first place? What would be wrong with all Sith ideas? Sith are practically defined by their desire to bend the Force to their individual will. If the Force has no will, then all applications of Force power are morally equal, from Force storms to resurrection to telekinesis. If I may, I'd like to use a Taoist metaphor to get at the Force. In Taoist texts you often find the Tao compared to water (Sarah Allen, The Way and Other Ideas, gives multiple examples; as I'm not going into the sources I feel obligated to show where some can be found, just so you know I'm not talking out of my behind), which I think is also applicable to the Force. Water is the softest of all things, weak and movable. It always finds its way to the lowest point of any landscape and rests there, imposing on nothing and yielding to everything. It has no will and no agenda. But, of course, it ultimately wears down all obstacles, and triumphs through passivity and inaction. In the Taoist view, the Tao is similarly passive. Perhaps something similar can be said about the Force. Jedi are meant to follow the Force's natural path, and flow down that stream so to speak, while the Sith are more like to try and turn it into something hard, and divert its course. The Force resists such diversion (just as if you've ever tried to redirect a river), but after it is moved, when released from the controller's will, it will simply flow down into the low places again. Of course, I realise that metaphor doesn't actually explain anything. It might be pretty (I hope it is!), but when applied to specific situations, e.g. Cade's resurrection of Marasiah, it offers no actual guidance. We do find that neither the Jedi nor the Sith are fantastic ethicists in Star Wars. I'm still in two minds about Cade's action there. Carnage04 posted:Wolf's Motives for not wanting him to do that were very pure, no doubt. Saving the Princess at the Cost of Cade going dark is not a good trade. He could end up taking her life, as well as thousands of others down the road if he takes the wrong path. Here, then, is the question. What makes it the wrong path? Why would using Force resurrection cause Cade to go dark? What, specifically, is the problem with it? Wolf simply argues that it is imposing one's will on the Force, but as we've just seen, there are any number of problems with invoking the will of the Force as a justification. And is imposing one's will on the Force entirely wrong? Consider Force healing as a comparison. What is the moral distinction between Cade using his power to resurrect Sia and, say, Jedi healers like Cilghal or Barriss Offee using their Force healing abilities to save a different person's life. In both cases the person would have died without the use of the Force, and we can safely say that the Force wouldn't have just jumped in by itself to heal anyone. If Cade resurrecting Sia is counter to the will of the Force, then surely any use of Force healing is equally counter to the will of the Force. Yet no one complains about Jedi healers, and indeed they're usually seen as definite servants of the light side. (Darth Bane noted that he could not heal his own wounds, for example, as that was a Jedi ability, which seems oddly counter to the dark side's 'I want it and the Force will give it to me!' mindset.) So I'm confused. There may be some moral dissonance here. Evidently the morally objectionable part of Cade's action wasn't the healing itself, for normal Jedi healing is completely acceptable. Nor can we say that the problem is to do with how much Force power he used, as Jedi have used extreme amounts of Force power before with no ill effects. It seems to me that the only real place for the dark side to come in is in Cade's emotional state, with the implication that he was drawing upon anger and rage in order to obtain that much power. The power itself would be completely acceptable, but for the fact that Cade can only muster sufficient Force power to use it when fuelled by dark side emotions. Presumably if he could draw that much power while in a state of Jedi calm, resurrection would be commendable. Does that answer the quandary? The power itself is not problematic; it's merely a matter of emotional state? But would that lead us into saying that, for example, a Force storm could be morally acceptable if summoned in a state of peace and calmness, and that conventional Jedi healing would be evil if brought about by anger and hate? Or is it just that a person simply cannot summon a Force storm while calm or a healing trance while hate-filled because of the aggressive and defensive natures of the powers themselves? And then how are we to factor the problem of attachment into it? Is it wrong for Cade to use Force resurrection because it implies attachment and an inability to let a person go? But surely that same objection applies to conventional Force healing, especially if a person will die without that Force healing? There's a fine line between non-attachment and apathy to the welfare of others. Is it a matter of motivation again? Force healing and resurrection are fine when motivated by compassion and universal love but wrong when motivated by attachment and fear, the beginnings of the path to the dark side? If so, where does Cade's motivation, roughly 'no one else will die on my behalf', fit in? Compassion or fear? I really don't have an answer. I wish I did, but it's very difficult and I can't make a judgement.
Arawn_Fenn posted: There are plenty of other books, such as Shadow Hunter, Shadows of the Empire, and Rule of Two, which portray the dark side in the "traditional" fashion -- and that is inconsistent with Vergere.
Arawn_Fenn posted:Bane's view, expressed in PoD/RoT, is that healing is of the light side, or to put it another way, the dark side is bad at it. I don't think I agree; IMO this is the fantasy video-game viewpoint ported over from KOTOR. However, I'm not sure whether this is the author's view or merely the view held by the Bane-era Sith. I think that ROTS and Legacy present a different view.
Ulicus posted:Vergere's view of what the Force "is" works perfectly well with the "traditional view". It can quite easily be seen *as* the traditional view, expressed in different terms so as to highlight a point.
sabarte posted:I do also think there -should- be exclusive light side powers that the dark side can't provide or even imitate.
Sabarte posted:I also think dark side healing should innately be Sionish.
Arawn_Fenn posted:I don't see how.
Arawn_Fenn posted:Did Lucas, upon reading Traitor, actually convert to Vergere's view? We'll never know. As I said, I see no specific evidence of this. However, Traitor is a book, and is only one among many. There are plenty of other books, such as Shadow Hunter, Shadows of the Empire, and Rule of Two, which portray the dark side in the "traditional" fashion -- and that is inconsistent with Vergere.
Dark Empire sourcebook posted:I have learned that Anger and Will, joined together, are the greatest Power. I have learned to meditate upon Anger and Will with clarity and precision, and I have learned to open the hidden reservoirs of Dark Side Power. Anger concentrated by Will in the vital center of the body creates a portal through which vast energies are released — the energies of the Dark Side of the Force. Standing watch with the mind, in my meditation of Anger, I have slain my enemies from great distances, through the Dark Side Power that permeates the Galaxy. I have created lightning, and unleashed its destructive fire. Using this knowledge, I can unleash the Dark Side energies that are all around us, even to shatter the fabric of space itself. In this way, I have created storms. — Palpatine From The Book of Anger
Darth-Ghost posted:We can carry this over to my thread, if you want to, since it's a slightly different question than who is what about the Force and more like if The Force is natural and if the will of the Force is even to be followed or not.
2Irandrura posted:I'm afraid it's been a while since I read Shadow Hunter or Shadows of the Empire, but what in Rule of Two contradicted the teachings in Traitor, exactly?
2Irandrura posted:That's why I take issue with Lumiya's claims about Vergere in Betrayal: because Vergere wasn't experimenting with new and unusual views of the Force. Her view is an evolution of the traditional Jedi view.
