PT An idea why midichlorians were unpopular

Why? Because you say so? Did you not read my entire post? I specifically pointed out the variety of things the midichlorians do not account for/explain.

Again, how does that change with the midichlorians? While the midichlorians are the Star Wars version of mitochondria (as darth-sinister stated), they still don't believe that they allow organic beings to tap into it. They still don't buy it. If they don't buy that, then it's still very much focused upon faith which basically renders your entire point moot.

 

The entire lesson that Yoda gave to Luke about pulling his ship out of the swamp was that your power was only limited by your mind ("not this crude matter"). If you're going to now say that someone like Vader is less powerful than the Emperor simply because he has less body parts therefore less midis to connect to the force, then you've completely taken away belief and power of the mind and made it physical. Those 2 concepts simply cannot coexist. By that logic, Luke should have been beaten even worse by Vader in ROTJ because he hadn't received any more training from Yoda and had one less hand which equals less midis. It's amazing that someone can propose this new definition of the force along with finding the "chosen one" by hooking him up to a machine and doing a blood test and then wonder why people think the mysticism was taken away.

 

Luke's problem is that he had the power to move the X-Wing, but lacked the belief. Vader, on the other hand, has the belief but not the power to take on Palpatine. Luke beats Vader because while they both believe, Vader is damaged goods and his power had been diminished due to his injuries. Just as Anakin beats the more experienced Dooku because he's power is greater than Dooku's.

 

Where is that established? How do we know that he didn't have the power all along? Maybe all he needed was to believe the way Luke did. The only thing that the movies show is that throughout his whole life, he was always easily impressionable and mentally weak. Which is why it took Luke's bravery to finally convince him to come back to good

Thank you, you've just confirmed the contradiction. It went from spiritual to physical which completely contradicts what was established in Yoda's lesson while also undermining one of the foundations of what a coming of age story is all about - overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and a more powerful, talented foe by believing in yourself, regardless of your physical stature or condition. Now, it's all about the midi count. It's utterly ridiculous and every explanation sounds worse than the next.

 

It's a dynamic and dialectical thing. Don't reduce it to either psychology or belief or the number of mystical microbes in your blood.

A force user with a low midi- chlorian count can maximize their potential with training, discipline, and yes belief.

An Anakin or Sidious level force user can let their talents waste or be limited by their own psychological problems.

However the lower midi count trained force user is never going to be able to contend with the upper midi count force user.

 

Lower midi count Obi-Wan beat higher midi count Anakin in their first bout. Just another example of this unnecessary change creating more problems than it solves

 

It's more complex than that, Anakin didn't think, Obi Wan's style is nearly unpenetrable, and Anakin obviously hadn't reached his full potential.

 

So now midis have nothing to do it. Why were they introduced again?

 

For one to show how the force connects to the Carnal world, to show why Anakin is the chosen one, and plainly because their awesome and that's it.

 

They're a metaphor for symbiosis which are used to explain why some individuals are more naturally talented in the Force than others, why Forces talent runs in families, and to establish Anakin's unique potential in an objective way. Anakin lost to Obi-Wan because despite possessing superior innate talent, he's immature and undisciplined in comparison to Obi-Wan. Midi-chlorians are actually used to reinforce what Yoda says about the Force in TESB, while still making sense of the fact that clearly not all individuals are adepts on the level of Luke Skywalker. It's the difference between possessing superpowers and knowing how to use them effectively. Superpowers give you an advantage, but that doesn't mean you can't get blindsided by a clever normie like Boba Fett if you let your guard down.

 

It's not reinforcing what Yoda said if you're going to say that someone instantly becomes less powerful in the force because he lost pinky and now has less midis. It's a complete contradiction.

 

That's not why he's less powerful. He's less powerful because he's less of a complete biological being, not because he simply has less physical mass. This is completely in keeping with the themes of the OT, so I don't know why people have such a problem with it. "He's more machine now than man." Don't you think that has certain implications when it comes to making use of a biological life-force?

 

It is why Lucas had GG cough so much in ROTS. Becoming a cyborg makes you weaker, Vader was weakened when he became a cyborg. Which is why in ROTJ, Palps wanted to replace Vader with a young, healthy, and mostly complete Luke because he had greater innate ability than his weakened father. Many factors determine how powerful a force user can be, midis count is just one. Without training, Anakin would be nothing more than a unusually good pilot with his sixth force sense. Even with ability and training, Vader was still defeated by Obi through his flawed ego in ROTS.

Remember in TESB, Yoda states that life makes the force grow. How do you think that affects a person who is more machine than alive like Vader?

 

Midi chlorian are indicative of a person's innate connection to the force and hence their potential. If Vader had prevailed over Obi Wan on Mustafar he would have eventually transcended Sidious as well(something Sidious had to foresee).

The less of you is flesh the more mangled and less potent is your soul.

It's really a simple concept.

 

Once again then the "problem" in inherent right from "Star Wars" in 1977 and the OT in the first place.

The Force is bound to the "material" world as the energy field surrounds and penetrates all living beings.

Luke is Anakin's son (A Jedi) right from the first movie

Exactly.

What I find odd is all these objections to things in the PT many of which are simply outgrowths of what was already outright stated in the OT or inferred or alluded to.

Obviously Vader can't defeat the Emperor by himself and needs Luke (being a machine man has made him weaker than he would be) . That the Emperor wants Luke to replace his father who isn't as powerful as he should be due to his failure against Obi-Wan (which was not actually mentioned in the OT like so many things) is also evident. That there can only be two is also quite evident. If there could be three then there is no drama.

That Lucas didn't address this outright until the PT with the Rule of Two doesn't change that the story already tells us that.

There are no problems. What I always find odd is that those who dislike midi-chlorians so much seem to want to place some spin on them that isn't actually reflected in the movies themselves while for others like myself they really don't change anything that actually happens. What they do is give perspective on why things are the way they are.

Midi-chlorians are not direct power level indicators. Is Vader more powerful than Obi-Wan on Mustafar? Yes. Was Anakin before that? Yes. The difference is time, experience and training. This is the really bizarre aspect of all of this to me.

It's only in the PT that we know that actual Jedi training is employed by the participants. Luke is 19. Gets a few pointers from Obi-Wan then self-trains for a few years then gets a few days or couple of weeks or whatever with Yoda and that's it. Let's not even go there with Rey. Now compare that to Anakin who trained as an apprentice for 10 years then was still learning after 3 years as a Jedi Knight.

So what the OT and especially the ST are saying is that training overall isn't that important as simply being a powerful Force sensitive in the first place.

I don't know why you are bringing the midi-chlorians directly into this conversation because that is side-stepping the facts that already existed in the OT before we knew about them. They don't change the events of the story that already existed but expand our understanding.

Vader IS less powerful and needs Luke to overcome the Emperor. He's more machine than man. The Emperor is whole. Luke is almost all whole save for his hand. On top of that the point is that the connector between being physically whole and therefore being able to be spiritually whole is fundamentally important.

If Yoda or Obi-Wan could overcome the Emperor then why would they be waiting for Luke? They wouldn't. So none of the 3 old guard can topple the Emperor and the Jedi waited 20 years for Luke to mature.

Yet they do. Yoda talks about life:

http://thestarwarsheresies.blogspot.ca/2012/12/why-midichlorians-matter.html


Of course, many have vehemently objected to the Force having any connection to the material, biological world at all. As Yoda waxed poetic in The Empire Strikes Back, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” Unfortunately, our little green master seemed to have momentarily forgotten that the Force is the offspring of the material world. Physical life is the very root of it, the thing that causes it to grow and expand. No biological galaxy means no luminous energy, and this has been part of Star Wars canon since the beginning.

Conveniently, there is a fabulous article in Star Wars and Philosophy that delves into this while discussing environmental ethics. Elizabeth F. Cooke of Creighton University cleverly shoots down the mind-body antagonism some have seen in the saga.

Establishing Yoda’s oft-quoted line as only part of the picture, Cooke writes how the Living Force “isn’t so much the ‘mind-over-matter’ picture as one of mind and matter interacting as two parts of a whole. A Jedi padawan’s task is to become more in touch with the physical world by being more at one with the Force – a task achieved through both physical and mental training. A Jedi must learn to ‘feel’ the Force, rather than just think about it.”

This also fundamentally ties in with the fact that every species with close, harmonious ties to the physical world, like the Gungans, Wookiees, or Ewoks, are invariably shown in a positive light. In their own way, they are as bound up in the life force as the Jedi. As Cooke explains, “They work with nature to defend nature, and nature is one with the Force.”

[/quote]
By that logic, Luke should have been beaten even worse by Vader in ROTJ because he hadn't received any more training from Yoda and had one less hand which equals less midis.[/quote]

This simply doesn't work. Anakin in TPM had more midi-chlorians than any being ever but without physical, mental and spiritual growth and over years he wouldn't have been able to achieve what he did. If anything should upset you in those terms then it has nothing to do with midi-chlorians but what was in the OT in the first place.

It's not new at all. It was there right from the start.

For those who think the mysticism was taken away then they simply aren't watching what actually is going on in TPM in the first place. Obi-Wan knew Luke was powerful in the Force because he was the son of Anakin. Qui-Gon (the most mystical Jedi ever seen in the saga) discovers Anakin through his view of the Force and connection to it not the midi-chlorians. They are just an objective test that measures Force sensitivity that he uses.

No doubt if Lucas had used the device of Qui-Gon having a Kyber crystal that lights up when a Force sensitive is near and the brighter the light the stronger the Force connection then all would be well. It still wouldn't change anything as it would still be an objective test to establish a Force connection between a physical being and the Force.

"an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together."

So again the "problem" in right there in ANH.

"For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."

So what exactly does Yoda mean by crude matter is the question as he can't be referring to physical life itself which creates the Force. It's the spirit and body together not simply the body alone.

Add to this that both Yoda and Obi-Wan physically enter the Force and their bodies disappear. They have achieved a mind and body balance.





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Did Sidious except the fact Vader would transcend him? In his duel with Yoda, Sidious seems to revel in the knowledge Vader will be more powerful than either of them? Or was that just fight banter?

As for Midi Choloria and DNA. Do we know for sure force ability is passed on genetically the same way as eye color? Or could the force have just chosen Luke and Leia and DNA had nothing to do with it? Yoda says "The Force runs strong in your family" But that's what 3 people? Four when we count Kylo Ren.

 

Yes, this quote of Yoda's must number among the most frequently misunderstood in Star Wars, especially among OT purists. What Yoda is saying is that we are not just the matter that composes our bodies. There are, in fact, two of us. We are energy temporarily inhabiting physical forms. When our physical form dies, that energy returns to the collective and ceases to be an individual. But while we are individuals, the price we pay for retaining an individual sense of self is to be slightly limited by our physical forms. The energy inhabiting our bodies is temporarily separate from the greater energy pool, and can only interface with it by interacting with the mediators between flesh and spirit which reside within our cells: midi-chlorians (which are very much akin to the concept of chakras in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism).

When we die, we transcend our physical forms, becoming pure energy and losing our sense of self, becoming more powerful than we ever were as corporeal beings at the cost of losing our sense of individual intention. Certain individuals, like Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin, discover a secret that allows them to retain their identities and return to the world of the living after death, but they are special cases, and the feat they accomplish can only be managed through a complete and utter denial of self at the moment of physical death.

If there were no limitations that came with inhabiting a corporeal form, Obi-Wan's statement to Vader that he shall die and "become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" would be utterly meaningless. Of course we are ultimately limited as temporal beings. Yoda is making a rhetorical point to Luke in the manner of a Zen master. You have to look beyond the words and arrive at a holistic understanding of what he is really saying, based on everything we know and are shown about the Force and even about life, not just on isolated statements using figurative language which many fans nonetheless take hyper-literally and without using critical thought.

 

I swear some people act like the OT was adaptations of books that exist Before George Lucas and the PT was GL opportunity to ignore the books and use its ideas

 

Just to jump back into this thread at random:

Midi-chlorians, like everything in Star Wars, are there to do or express three things; with a mysterious fourth that can always be imported and swapped-out based on a variety of abstract cogitations.

Those three things:

i) To express the power-potential of Anakin.
ii) To express the critically important, life-affirming theme of symbiosis.
iii) To sacralize life as communication; life as a sacred circle of community/communion.

The "fourth" is anything you want it to be.

Could be a "blood" theme, could be a hint that wringing the most out of Star Wars lies in understanding (or at least acknowledging) the microscopic details within the "body" of the multi-cellular text, could be to imply that the characters themselves are prisoners to something residing in their "cells"; as if each midi-chlorian were the structural reincarnation of a dead person or idea that still wants to live, etc., etc.

A further elaboration on this "fourth" thing concerns the still-somewhat heretical idea that human beings aren't that special. In Lucas' early notes on Star Wars from the 1970s, he wrote that some creatures had a more evolved understanding of the Force, or were born with a "higher awareness" of it, because "their brains are different". Seen in this light, the midi-chlorians are just a reinterpretation of this notion, and not unlike the way Gene Roddenberry was fascinated with super-beings and the idea of human transcendence; that there is more to explore, uncover, understand, and connect with in this vast cosmos than we, still a primitive species tied to a fragile, lonely planet, can possibly comprehend; or, for the moment, even conceive of.

Think of Padme telling Anakin, "To be angry is to be human", or Anakin boasting at the dinner table, "I'm the only human who can do it." Labels, bodies, and all sorts of containers are, by their nature, limiting. But at least there's a hint that we can get past the worst of ourselves. The universe presents a gloriously tantalizing set of possibilities. Via a more abstract reading, the midi-chlorians are Lucas' way, I think, of reminding us that life and existence are exquisitely fragile yet also self-organizing and imponderably vast. There are oceans of potential we are still to tap into. It's as if each of us, in our own way, has inherited an equivalent "treasure chest" (personal, social, cultural, scientific, etc.); in Anakin's case, he just happens to have all these micro-organisms powering up his body with the Force.

There is also -- pleasingly -- some acknowledgement on Lucas' part that micro-organisms are real; that life has a rich legacy and much simpler forms still exist and are extremely profligate, nearly ubiquitous once they first assert themselves. Yet some of the more intellectually-challenged parts of the American public seem to have a problem accepting this. I'm not talking about the shunning of the midi-chlorian concept, per se (although that's also fascinating to me), but people who frame their intellect around ancient dogmas about the way the world supposedly came to exist. People who have a problem with this little concept called evolution. Yet here is Star Wars, a sort of quasi-medievalist space fiction, grandly accepting that concept, absorbing it beautifully into its awesome whole. Thanks, in large part, to the prequel trilogy, and even with all the various artistic liberties (sound in space) notwithstanding, Star Wars finally does a kind of crude right by science; melding basic scientific insight into a visionary manifesto of how "to be" in this complicated world.

But the midi-chlorians also bend back into centralizing Anakin as (paradoxically) both the most human and the most alien character in Star Wars. I say that because you could take the view that Anakin is unique in experiencing the high-highs and deep torments the saga lays out for him. Other characters have their moments, but none are quite the gorgeous, messed-up symphony that Anakin is. The guy who is forever tormented by the idea he is missing some critical piece, chasing down something others can't see or refuse to let him go after and pursue. He is, in a sense, more alive, more conscious, than they are. He is infused with more of these creatures, more desires, more tensions, than they are. He is his own Millennium Falcon; or "Twenty Thousand"-Year Eagle. He wants to come in for graceful landings, swoop around like crazy, and blow up psychological Death Stars with flair to spare. He contains within him all the contortions and contradictions of the universe. His closest rival is Yoda; but he carries within him an even greater tsunami of anguish and complex matrix of lives not being lived, forks in the road not being taken. And Yoda doesn't even quite know how to contain him. "These visions you have..."

Midi-chlorians. They're awesome.

 

For me, the midichlorians themselves don't add anything, so were just unnecessary.

It's like when Qui-Gon says he's encountered a vergence centered on Anakin. He doesn't explain what a vergence is, but we get the gist that the Force is indicating that Anakin is important.

So Qui-Gon gets a blood sample from Anakin and then proceeds to talk with Obi-Wan about how his midichlorian count is higher than even Yoda's.

Right there it is conveyed that these things in his blood have basically marked him as special by the Force.

For Qui-Gon to explain to Anakin what midichlorians were after that was redundant, IMO. And they were never mentioned again until the Plagueis the Wise story.

Also I just found it weird that after it was said that Anakin's fear of loss potentially leading to Dark Side, that Anakin would not ask what the Dark Side is, or what a Sith is, or what the prophecy is.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

You guys are good. I really don't think the movies convey the concept as well as you all do, but it does help.

 

The thing is in that vein that the OT also didn't convey the concepts that "well" either. I think that they actually all do but Lucas doesn't do it in a in your face blatant way anymore than anything else in the movies. The point is that the audience can engage and take it deeper.

The crude matter is constantly misunderstood just as much as the midi-chlorians are. That they are actually linked together and part of the same thing is also not generally accepted.

This idea that there is some mind and body separation simply doesn't work.

The movies are were we are starting and ending. Sure other sources like Lucas in interviews and TCW and other people's writings help but it still comes down to the layers that are in the movie.

The number of people who I meet who are so concerned about the midi-chlorians and "science" in TPM but ignore everything else actually going on surprises me.

If anything their frustration seems to be that not enough is explained which is odd since the same is true in the OT.

As I said before the term Living Force doesn't come out of nowhere:

Vis viva (from the Latin for "living force") is a historical term used for the first (known) description of what we now call kinetic energy in an early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy.

Proposed by Gottfried Leibniz over the period 1676–1689, the theory was controversial as it seemed to oppose the theory of conservation of momentum advocated by Sir Isaac Newton and René Descartes.

The two theories are now understood to be complementary.

The theory was eventually absorbed into the modern theory of energy though the term still survives in the context of celestial mechanics through the vis viva equation.

The symbiosis theme is critical to Star Wars and expressed over and over again in the films. Adding this life helps life in conjunction with the Force element opens it up more from TPM forward.

 

There is mind and body separation it's just tied to existing lore in a haphazard and sort of meshed together we hope it sticks sort of way(even as a Legends fan it's a tough nut to handle).

 

I'll take it! Thanks.

Yes. Absolutely.

I'm sure it has already been mentioned somewhere in the thread, but Lucas expressly came out and said he had the theme of symbiosis strongly in mind when he came up with the midi-chlorian concept. Through some digging, I was able to track down the source of the original quote. I reproduce my steps below:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/origin-of-midichlorians.14010878/

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...-lucas-compare-midi-chlorians-to-mitochondria

And more specifically:

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...-midi-chlorians-to-mitochondria/152637#152637

https://web.archive.org/web/19991103105353/http://www.eonline.com/News/More/lucas5.html


Note: As the contributor on Stack Exchange pointed out, the transcription incorrectly has midi-chlorians written as "midichondrians". But I've left that "as is" to be faithful to the source piece:

I'm taking the idea of symbiotic relationships and trying to demonstrate it in a more concrete way. Midichondrians are a loose depiction of mitochondria, which are necessary components for cells to divide. They probably had something--which will come out someday--to do with the beginnings of life and how one cell decided to become two cells with a little help from this other little creature who came in, without whom life couldn't exist. And it's really a way of saying we have hundreds of little creatures who live on us, and without them, we all would die. There wouldn't be any life. They are necessary for us; we are necessary for them. Using them in the metaphor, saying society is the same way, says we all must get along with each other. The planet is the same way. We must treat the other creatures on the planet with respect, otherwise the planet will die.

Source: E! Online, May 11th 1999


That interview is actually rather fascinating as it clears up some other misconceptions that have sadly continued to the present day. At one point, for instance, the interviewer asks Lucas about the box-office expectations surrounding TPM. Lucas' answer is pretty interesting.

Anyway...

To get back to the midi-chlorian topic, I wish to present two further findings:

Firstly, here is a very neat meditation on midi-chlorians and mitochondria posted December 2015. Perhaps the relatively recent nature of this post/blog suggests that some people are becoming more confident of asserting their love for the PT and George Lucas' ideas:

http://www.abegibson.com/blog/in-defense-of-midi-chlorians/


I may be one of the only people on Earth who can say this, but I will genuinely miss the midi-chlorians. After all, they are based on one of the most beautiful theories in the entire history of science. As director George Lucas has explained in various interviews, he based the idea of midi-chlorians on Lynn Margulis‘s theory of endosymbiosis, which holds that sub-cellular organelles like mitichondria and chloroplasts were once independent, free-living organisms who merged with nucleated cells at some point in the remote history of life on Earth. (MITIchondia + CHLORoplasts = midi-chlorians.) Others had proffered similar ideas in the early twentieth century (examples here, here, and here), but their ideas were almost uniformly dismissed. Margulis was the first person to convince the scientific community that endosymbiosis was actually true. She too encountered ridicule when she first introduced the idea in 1967, but she spent the rest of her illustrious career proving the theory correct. Among the earliest to grasp the theory’s mind-bending implications was the great physician Lewis Thomas, who described the theory in his award-winning classic, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974). In the passage below (which I lifted from a chapter titled “Organelles as Organisms”), Thomas waxes philosophical about the fact that mitichondria not only inhabit the cells of all humans, but the cells of all organisms, as well. He was easily one of the best science writers of the twentieth century, and, when you read a passage like this one, you start to understand why Lucas wanted to associate the idea with “the Force.” You may even find yourself missing midi-chlorians:

“There they [mitichondria] are, moving about in my cytoplasm, breathing for my own flesh but strangers. They are much less closely related to me than to the free-living bacteria out there under the hill. They feel like strangers, but the thought comes that the same creatures, precisely the same, are out there in the cells of sea gulls, and whales, and dune grass, and seaweed, and hermit crabs, and further inland in the leaves of the beech in my backyard, and in the family of skunks beneath the back fence, and even in that fly on the window. Through them, I am connected; I have close relatives, once removed, all over the place. This a new kind of information, for me, and I regret somewhat that I cannot be in closer touch with my mitochondria. If I concentrate, I can imagine that I feel them; they do not quite squirm, but there is, from time to time, a kind of tingle. I cannot help thinking that if only I knew more about them, and how they maintain our synchrony, I would have a new way to explain music to myself.”
~ Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (Viking Press, 1974), pp. 86-87.


This one is older, but there's a neat essay about midi-chlorians on TFN. Looks like it is worth a read (not sure I've encountered it before). I found it Googling around just now, like the above. It contains a slightly cut-down version of the "symbiotic relationships" quote from the E! Online interview. Here it is:

http://www.theforce.net/midichlorians/midi-what.asp



Lastly...


So as not to leave it the "elephant in the room", here is the Wikipedia link explaining the endosymbiotic theory of life, as articulated by Konstantin Mereschkowski and developed and substantiated by Lynn Margulis:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis

 

The point is explaining what they are to Anakin is to explain why they're important to training Jedi and how they use the Force. It calls back to when Luke is told that he will know the good from the bad and when he is told to trust his instincts.

Why would they be mentioned in AOTC?

Because they didn't seem to be as important to him as the Midichlorians themselves. He doesn't ask about what a Sith is, because he makes the connection between a Sith and the guy who attacked Qui-gon. For all we know, he might have heard about the Sith the same way he's heard about the Jedi. He has a general idea of the dark side which centers around fear, anger and hate. But the Midichlorians are something that he's heard about recently, but has no idea what they were.