Age old Question: Does the Dark Side Fry your Brain?

You know.

Is it BECAUSE you're Evil, that you use the Dark Side.

Or is it because you use the Dark Side that you go both?

Or does the Dark Side make Bad People, Badder?

Or some combination of the three?

 

It might fry some brains, but not all..

As to your other questions, Maybe. I never really gave it much thought.

 

Dark Side use makes people, eventually, evil. But you don't have to be evil to start using the Dark Side, just to give in to negative thoughts. I think it's the same as drug addiction. But brain damage? Who knows.

 

Short Answer: HELL YES!



Slightly Longer Answer:

We know that Dark Side usage decays the body. The more you draw into yourself, the more your body decays (ie. Palps loosing the Lightning on Windu in ROTS). It would unbalance you. No question of it. And if Dark Side energy is enough to ruin a pretty face, imagine what it does to your brain.

Either that, or looking at your wrinkly and scarred face every morning in the mirror is what does it.

 

I agree.

 

I agree with the above statements..

 

I agree as well.

 

I can't blame the dark side on them or I can't blame the dark side for them? I realize they're not Force users so I can't blame the dark side for them, but I tend to blame the existence of the dark side on the likes of them and Tarkin as much as I do Sith Lords and the negative tendencies of every sentient being in the galaxy.

Make sense?

I think people tend to choose the dark side as a result of fundamentally twisted thinking, but the dark side tends to warp you further. People think they can use the power of the dark side, but the dark side ends up using them. Anakin wanted to save his wife, but the dark side wanted him to cause as much pain and suffering as possible - thus warping him into a person even more self-absorbed and paranoid than he already was, fully capable of strangling that same wife to preserve his own life. Remember Jacen's reasons for turning? And now he barely even remembers Allana exists...

 

I tend to think that the Dark Side is basically anthropomorphic evil in the universe.

Unlike the Devil in RL religion, The Dark Side is created and strengthened by the Evil rather than the reverse.

However, because Force Sensitives can communicate with the Force, they can become slaves to anthropomorphic Evil.

Get my point?

 

Not only do I get it, I agree with it completely.

 

Yes, you end up looking like the demon spawn of Keith Richards and Gollum. Ick.
Slavish devotion of Dark Sides and One Rings does not do good things for your appearance.

 

The "dark side" doesn't cause physical deterioration; excessive use of the Force does.

As to the rest: I continue to maintain that the existence of a literal, sapient dark side is silly and almost wholly unsupported.

People fall due to a combination of internal flaws and external influences, whether they're Force sensitive or not. That Force users tend to fall in a particularly dramatic and disastrous fashion is due not to any insidious, ethereal bogeyman: it's due to the fact that they have access to the tremendous power of the Force itself with which to act on their dark desires.

Were Anakin Skywalker an ordinary individual, he'd 'merely' have become an abusive spouse, a murderer, a belligerent drunk; since he had, instead, both extreme levels of political and Force power, he became the chief enforcer of a galactic tyrant.

Whether or not falling to one's dark side leads to insanity is, I suppose, a matter of semantics; it all depends on how one defines "insane". I suspect Charles is asking if acting on one's dark desires leads to the bat-poop crazy sort of insanity, and in that case, the answer is: it depends on the situation, the individual, and the amount of Force power one draws on on a consistent basis-- although I suspect insanity due to the latter is less a direct product of excessive Force use than it is the usual byproduct of an immoral individual with access to unlimited power.

 

The "dark side" doesn't cause physical deterioration; excessive use of the Force does.

That's been disproven.

Dark Empire doesn't say the Emperor's body decays in the Sourcebook (note, not the comic)

The Dark Side causes his deformities.

 

"Dark Side" = excessive use of the Force. In this case, though, there's also the treachery of Carnor Jax at work; the Emperor's clone bodies were decaying mostly due to a fairly mundane case of genetic tampering.

In any event, anything the DESB has to say on metaphysical matters is pure speculation; Arhul Hextrophon certainly isn't in a position to comment on such things, nor is he terribly accurate in his guesswork. (The Emperor's soul, for instance, latched on to Jeng Droga almost immediately after his death; it certainly didn't spend "over a year" drifting "formless" through space.)

 

Except, that's the rub.

The Dark Side isn't More Powerful.

As Yoda displays to Dooku, the Light side is its equal.

Somewhat true. Also Authors contradictory information doesn't help.

 

Excessive use of the Force, however, is darksided, no?

 

I disagree.

While it was probably the Dark side that killed Dorsk (he was conjuring a Force Storm), the Fallassai created a massive fleet of illusions and the Jedi created their huge WALL OF LIGHT in the end of the Sith War.

Neither were Dark Side.

 

That's because calling it the "dark side" is inherently misleading.

On a literal level, there are no sides to the Force-- dark, light, or otherwise. The Force simply is, and It does not take "sides."

(Even the above statement is misleading, since it implies that the Force possesses an awareness of the existence of either itself or the Universe-- there's no evidence that it is sapient to any extent as an individual entity.)

To answer Matt's question - it depends on the application, I'd say. In my way of thinking, those powers considered "dark" are so because they strain against the natural order of things; the various forms of "lightning" apply raw Force energy in a perverse fashion (Sith Lightning/Drain uses life to bring about death; Cade's ability does the opposite); in an objective sense, they aren't "evil" or "dark" so much as they're wrong.

 

Perhaps neither was "excessive."

I tend to see things that are "wrong" as being dark sided, sure, such as how one of the seven deadly sins is "sloth." Using the Force needlessly is as bad as overapplying it, I think, in Forcing it to do your bidding. I like the idea that Luke pulled a Palpy on Mara's ship. I also like the idea that there's a way to pull off that same stunt without tapping the dark - it's just that the dark side is more willing to give you all the power you really quickly and really easily need in exchange for a little bit of your soul.

 

But IF Anakin Skywalker was indeed the Chosen One of the Force, IF he did indeed have no biological father, IF he was created from the Force itself, does that not imply that the Force does indeed have a sentient Will?



I agree with your dark side thinking. And any person at anytime is capable of doing something wrong. Given the right stimulus. Just that when you use "darkness" to fuel you, it eats at you body, mind and soul. Turning you both physcially and mentally into someone else.

At least I think that's what I'm trying to say...Bah! I'm into my second night of on-call status, so I may not be coherent.

 

On a literal level, there are no sides to the Force-- dark, light, or otherwise. The Force simply is, and It does not take "sides."

That's Vergere's hogwash though.

Fundamentally, the Force takes sides *ALL THE KRIFFING TIME*

It's the embodiment of Destiny.

It says "Anakin/Luke Skywalker will be born."

The KOTOR game says all the ridiculous coincidences are the "Will of the Force."

Hell, everytime someone chooses to exercise their midiclorian given power, its taking sides.

The whole "The Force just is" is like saying that a person just is and doesn't have good or bad traits.

It misses the concept of internal conflict.

Because the Force is everything.

 

You can choose to be evil. Its like smoking, you wern't born smoking it was a choice. I don't think the darkside makes you evil. Its your choices, thoughts, and actions that will decise it.

If all you knew was to use the darkside, but to help people and stop crime, does it make you evil? No, it is the only meens you have to helping people. To you it is just like being a jedi.

I think that the dark side attracts more aggressive people. IT does have mostly bad people, but when bad people get that kind of power they are definatly going to become worse.

 

But once you do have an addiction - especially those addictions uglier than smoking - they tend to influence and, at times, control your behavior, and work you into a downward spiral.

Except that's not how the dark side works.

And person who's 100% pure is not going to fall in the first place...