Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 317: Ghosts of Mortis Discussion Thread

None of that has anything to do with SW. We're not talking about real world prophecies, we're talking about prophecies in fantasy fiction, which tend to come true. Especially prophecies in prequels which are essentially guaranteed to come true because we already know the ending.

If destroying the Sith brings balance to the Force, what does that tell you?

 

Why? To show how a person can be hypocritical and fallacious at the same time on so many videos?

 

You're not saying that's something new, are you?

 

Or for an insightful analysis of the flaws in the movies while at the same time mocking the people who nit-pick and gripe about them. In other words, he's making fun of himself as well as us too, for worrying about the details.
Sorry, I hope that wasn't too subtle.

 

Nice try, but no. He's not mocking the people who nitpick and gripe about them. He's nitpicking and griping about them. Allegedly with much "insight". Or was that a joke too?

"I was just joking" is the famous excuse used by ********** when they piss someone off.

In this case, it's an obvious ploy designed to provide cover for his lies/mistakes/whatever.

 

As long as no one's positing that we didn't know balance was brought to the Force through the eradication of the Sith before this arc ...

 

But we don't...

 

I thought Arawn_Fenn was saying that, but he didn't answer when I asked. That's all I was referring to.

 

Yeah, all those musicians are really t'd off at Weird Al and Bob Rivers.
Um, yeah, if you say so.

 

The thing is, if they knew the Force was unbalanced because of the existence of the Sith then, why are they surprised to hear that one does exist in the Phantom Menace?

 

Not all of them were surprised.

 

Let me explicate upon my own take, re "balance of the Force".

The light side is predominately outward-looking, devaluing the individual in order to emphasise the ideas of compassion and community. The dark side, OTOH, emphasises the individual at the expense of the community. Anakin pretty much spells this out in ROTS at the opera house, and everything Lucas has said on the matter only backs this up.

The hypothesis of SW is that the light side tempers our natural, more base impulses--that's where balance comes in. The dark side only reinforces those impulses, and so embracing that creates imbalance. Essentially, Force wielders must balance their own dark side temptations with the higher aspirations of the light side.

That's individual balance. IMHO, where balance comes in from a global perspective is what the prevailing paradigm is at the time. The Jedi were completely out of touch by the time of the PT and the Sith were lurking right under their noses, so already there was imbalance; then, with the Empire, balance wasn't even on the agenda.

By destroying the Emperor and sacrificing himself in the process, Anakin cleared the way for a new paradigm--that spearheaded by Luke, Leia, etc. That's how Anakin brought balance to the Force.

Qui-Gon is the key to all of this--it's his teachings that can then flourish via Luke. Qui-Gon achieved individual balance, and once the old order are completely gone, Luke is the torch bearer, passing on what he has learned.

 

^ Agreed with all of that, but it's not like this wasn't clear to me before Mortis. Mortis just puts it in another perspective, which unfortunately only created more confusion (or so it seems ).

Also about Qui-Gon: he is the one who finds the balance, agreed, but Obi-Wan is the first one to 'perfect the process', so to speak.

 

Force ghosting and balance are unrelated.

Ghosting is more lightsided than balanced. An example of something requiring balance to achieve would be (Revan spoiler)Revan's "yin-yang" power.

It is Anakin's destiny to bring balance.

 

I agree that what I wrote is all laid out in the films. I honestly just like the idea of Mortis as a myth within a myth--telling the same story in different ways can be illuminating.

By putting the Mortis arc in the context of the saga, you essentially end up with "The Star Wars Manifesto", per Lucas. However, mythic language, like surrealism in general, is inherently subjective. There's never going to be fan consensus on such things, and I'm OK with that.

What's your source for this?

 

Yeah, but like everyone else, you're assuming.

 

Ever hear the phrase "you can't prove a negative"?

What's your source for the claim that they are related?

 

^ I must agree that that particular part of our discussion isn't literally established anywhere, and that it is a matter of interpretation. The other things were pretty much clear to me from the PT.

 

"Individual balance" is largely a fan invention. It's never mentioned in the films. It did come up in relation to Anakin during the Mortis arc, but it was not in the context of ghosting. It was basically used as a way of saying "Anakin has to get his **** together before he can bring balance to the Force".

 

Firstly, I prefaced my comments with a qualification "my own take"--I'm not saying it's the final word. Secondly, in a universe where we literally have the "Word of God" as well as canon at our disposal, absolutely you can "prove a negative".

Example:

Claim: Luke's father was not Yoda.

Proof: Luke's father was Anakin, per statements made in ROTS, ESB and ROTJ, as well as by Lucas himself.

Simple.

Now, my source for my own personal interpretation, i.e. that individuals should seek balance, is (for example) the following:

Lucas: "[The Phantom Menace] is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. And we all have those two sides of us and then we have to make sure those two sides of us are in balance." (Source: The Mythology of Star Wars)

Lucas: "You've got the dark side and the light side. One is selfless. One is selfish. You want to keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance..." (Source: Blu-rays, disc 8)

Note that Lucas is specifically talking about the individual: this supports the idea of individual balance. Note also that he only discusses going out of balance in relation to falling to the dark side--I may be on more shaky ground here, but ISTM that embracing the light side is achieving individual balance.

There are no ties linking the achievement of balance with joining with the Force (i.e. Force-ghosting). However, what I was getting at in my earlier post was that moving towards the light side is the path to balance, since the dark side is always pulling the individual in the opposite direction. So if you buy that embracing the light side (i.e. compassion, etc.) is the way of achieving balance, and Qui-Gon explicitly instructs Yoda that joining with the Force "comes through compassion, not greed" and "the release of the self" (ROTS novelisation) then it seems fairly straightforward to use the following syllogism:

1. achieving individual balance involves embracing the light side
2. the light side is equated with selflessness and compassion
3. joining with the Force comes through selflessness and compassion
4. therefore, joining with the Force comes through the achievement of individual balance.

QED. I admit 1. here is shaky, but I don't think it's unfounded.

 

You're theory doesn't make sense. According to the movies, the whole imbalance of the Force thing isn't just one individual's problem. It's something that's effecting all Jedi at that time, which I assume wasn't the case before.

 

Well, I did discuss global balance and paradigms. But as the dark side is increasing its influence via the ascension of Sidious, the Force is falling out of balance. And, indeed, the Jedi, in their arrogance, are out of balance as well. Both the Jedi and the Sith are contributing to this.

This is not about one person's balance--it's about how we as individuals make choices that have larger effects collectively.

 

I agree on some of the points you've listed (especially the last sentence of your post) but it's hard to believe the Jedi aren't aware that their dogmatic views and ways of using the Force is what's unbalancing it, or that the existence of the Sith, be it whatever they're doing to also cause this imbalance, isn't known to them as another reason behind it, too. Yoda does say that the Jedi at that time, including the experienced ones (I'm thinking he meant Mace Windu as one of them) seem to be acting uncharacteristicly. I can understand, to some extent, that these overconfident fools would not conceive of such a thing as them being the root cause of the Force's imbalance. But, if these were the reasons, then it seems that no one knows how to fix the problem themselves, nevermind what it would take for them to restore balance. My point being; this was not explained thoroughly in the films, and so we're to assume what it means by trying to piece together all that we do know, which is not much.

 

I don't blame the Jedi for not being "aware" of that, because it's not true. It could be said that they failed to hold back the dark side enough, but that is not the same thing.

That's not what I meant when I said "you can't prove a negative". It was more a statement about the burden of proof. It meant that your position is speculative in nature and not expressed in any canon source that I'm aware of.

 

I see the whole thing as being steeped in irony. Lucas has often called the prequel arc a "tragedy", and it follows the classic formula of the protagonists' hubris being the instrument of their own destruction. It's not really that vague, IMHO, if you view it through the right lens, i.e. the template set by the Greeks.