Are Jedi or Sith more natural, is the Force and being natural even good?

I guess the Force likes conflict and eternal war, then. And the Jedi still want to serve it...because...?

 

Mmm, yeah. Given the thousand-year cycles of Jedi/Sith conflict...seems the Force just stirs things up every one in a while.

 

Well then more people would arise. Except, maybe they'd be called X-men and Brotherhood of Mutants.

It's like the Prophecy of the Light and the Dark in the Belgariad.

Both sides anoint Champions to serve their well.

You have to accept the Conflict between the Light and the Dark is part of a much grander design than the Jedi vs. the Sith. It's a conflict between two fundamentally opposed forces of nature that use the universe as their gameboard. Of course, this accepts my theory that there's TWO wills of the Force.

The Light Side Will and the Will of the Dark Side.

Which I think explains more than the commonly accepted views.

 

Or perhaps it's the same will, just having some kind of "inner conflict," if you know what I mean? Anakin Skywalker is supposed to be the Chosen One, created by the will of the Force. Perhaps he was a reflection of the Force's inner turmoil? My theory on what bringing "balance" to the Force for a while has been that the Force was undecided on which path to stay with, dark or light, so it recreated itself in human form. Whatever path that living incarnation of itself would choose during its lifetime would be the choice the will of the Force would then choose. That's why the Jedi wanted Anakin on their side, and Plaptine wanted Anakin on his side. In the end, he chose to die in the light. So the will of the Force has chosen the light, but it will take a while to purge itself of all its darkness, just like it took Anakin/Vader a long time in the dark before finally expelling it. Which explains how Anakin brought balance to the Force, but there are still Sith afterwards and even more chaos. His choice means the light will have victory in the end, and the Force will one day become a all-benevolent energy, but that day is far off enough that there will still be plenty of time for thousands of stories to still be told until then! That's my theory, anyways.

Going back to my 5 options: #5 is against movie canon and impossible, and #3 and #4 go against everything we know and are then extremely unlikely. That leaves options #1 and #2, either the Force is conflicted or the Force is apathetic and has no will. But if we remember the fact of Anakin Skywalker's existence, then the Force must have a will. That leaves option #1, the will of the Force is (currently) both light and dark. Which is like saying it has a dark will and a light will, but the way you were saying it makes it soud like there are two different forces. But we know that isn't true, there is only "the Force," which means it must be conflicted between the light and the darkness that the lifeforms generating it has given it.

But the question remains of when the will of the Force should be followed, and when it should be refused, because this means the Jedi definitely can't follow the will of the Force unquestioningly because it could lead them into darkness. Is the difference between the light and the dark solely based on the emotional state of the user? Is it okay to kill a trillion people as long as you are at peace and calm while doing it? Or is there more to determining what is dark and what is light? In the Legacy comics the ghost of Luke Skywalker tells Cade that saving people's lives is wrong when he draws on the dark side, but if he could find a way to do it when he's calm and at peace it would be fine. Also, the normal Jedi healers are never told what they're doing is wrong or dark. Luke and the other Jedi have also used the Force to an extreme before, to do remarkable feats, but it isn't always said to be of the dark side, only when the person is using it in negative emotion or for selfish ends. Then there is Darth Caedus, who seems to fall out of selflessness and love for Luke, the galaxy, and his daughter.

What exactly is the line between lig

 

That's not really true.

 

Yeah, despite what Mace says, animals are social creatures just the same as anyone else.

Aside from Jackals, there's also Bunnies.

 

It's half true. Nature has a bad side as much as a good side. Along with other evidence I've already mentioned here, that means the will of the Force naturally has a dark side too. Which means a Jedi cannot fully serve the will of the Force without going to the dark side, and must sometimes impose its will on the Force to stay in the light.

 

It really is. Animals only care about passing on their genes. Altruism, which the Jedi philosophy is based on, doesn't really exist among non-sapient beings.

It really depends on how "natural" is defined. If the animal kingdom is considered the "natural world" the Sith are definitely more in line with natural tendencies.

 

It depends on how you define altruism.

There's no real benefit to raising children.

Humans take the next step than from animals but saying there's no social instinct in animals is a bit odd.

 

Sure there is. If you don't, your genetic line dies out. There's serious benefit to raising children.

 

And that is the problem. Can we reject that definition, considering the direct support of it in canonical material? Or must we admit that the Force does have a will, or at least, a preference?

Aye. The idea that's in all the emotional state does seem broadly consistent with what we've seen of the Jedi and Sith (plus I like it because it's exactly how the Warp works in Warhammer 40,000, another hobby of mine), with their respective viewpoints boiling down to peace and desire. A Jedi would surely argue that peace and acceptance are natural in a way that dark side emotions are not. To return to 'nature', does a lion feel angry at or hate the gazelle that it kills? Does a lion seek revenge for the death of one of its pride? There is an argument to be made that the Jedi view is more natural - it's just not natural for intelligent creatures. After all, Luke tells us that the dark side springs from intelligence.

One could also draw a line regarding obsession. The lion might feel fear in a dangerous situation and run away. That's perfectly natural. But the lion will at no point obsess over its fear, or become angry at the thing that made it run (for fear leads to anger...). Perhaps the Jedi ideal should be acceptance of emotion; such that a Jedi would be able to say 'yes, I am afraid' or 'yes, I am angry', but would simply accept that emotion for what it is and act on it. The distinction between that and the Sith approach would be grasping. A Jedi has the emotion, but simply lets it pass naturally. A Sith grasps it and focuses it. I don't know if anyone will know the idea, but there's a principle in Zen meditation along these lines, though it's to do with thinking, not emotion. In that tradition, a meditating monk is not supposed to try not to think. They can have thoughts, indeed, they must have thoughts, because the opposite would be total brain death. What they will do is have thoughts and then the thoughts will just go. The mind is not blank. They have thoughts without thinking anything about those thoughts - it's the difference between seeing a tree and registering the tree in your mind and nothing more, and seeing a tree and starting to think about what it looks like, what sort of tree it is, how tall it is, and so on. The meditating monk will be aware that the leaves on the tree are falling, but he will not think 'that's because it's autumn' and so on like that. They have thoughts without connecting those thoughts to anything. And they can still take action - there's a dialogue between a student and the master Hui-chung where the student asks what Hui-chung would do if he became hungry while meditating. Hui-chung said he would go and get some food. The student complained that this would mean breaking meditation (for if he is aware of hunger, he is in a state of mind (Ch. yu-hsin), instead of the no-mind (Ch. wu-hsin) that you're supposed to have while meditating), but Hui-chung explained that proper meditation does not involve cutting oneself off from all thoughts.

Could Jedi emotion be considered in a similar light? Jedi are allowed to have emotions, such as fear, anger, and more positively, love and such. They are merely not allowed to grasp those emotions; they cannot be attached to their emotions. Which is, one might argue, natural. Animals don't grasp their emotions. Aren't you much better than the birds, to use a more Western religious reference. The Sith persp

 

In some sources, there's a definite line drawn between raw negative emotion and the arts of the Sith.

 

Except, there's no inherent value to that whatsoever.

At least not to unthinking creatures.

I guess my problem with that is if the Sith and Jedi are drawing from the same Force, then there's honestly no difference between them and the Death Eaters vs. The Order of the Phoenix. The whole "Dark and Light Side" description just becomes meaningless.

Well the Jedi existed before the Sith and both philosophies exist independently, it's just they choose to embrace what qualities the others deny. In the simplest terms, divorced from labels like good and evil, the Sith embrace power and individual ambition while the Jedi Knights embrace humility and service.

In a story more interested in philosophy than action, you could have non-good Jedi and non-evil Sith but Star Wars has always prided itself on a formulae of simplicity because it's fundamentally escapist fiction.

I try not to believe the Force should be sensible because it's meant to be the trappings of religion mixed with a set of Black and White Hats. It's no more ethically meaningful than being placed in Gryfindor or Slytherin.

 

The unthinking creatures who do not bother to raise offspring do not survive. The unthinking creatures that do inherit the earth.

Seriously, this is basic evolutionary biology - the genes and instinctual mindset of creatures who do not reproduce die with them.

Reproduction is immortality.

 

Except it's not.

That's a illogical argument to explain instinctually being drawn to spreading one's genes. Spreading one's genes has no value other than it feels good and you're compelled by instinct to do it. It feels good and you're compelled by instinct because nature made you that way. You're using a circular argument here.

I understand genetics, I'm just pointing out that you're trying to explain with genetics a question of philosophy.

 

Not really. The distinction merely shifts to what they do with that power - which, it seems to me, is what the main difference always was.

There are non-good Jedi. Remember that topic about whether or not the Jedi Covenant is evil? And we've had vaguely sympathetic Sith before - Vader's apprentice Starkiller looks to be an example of one, for example.

Certainly you may take that approach if you wish, but my instinct is always to try and look for more meaning than that. I think there is depth there, if you go to the trouble to look for it.

 

There are non-good Jedi. Remember that topic about whether or not the Jedi Covenant is evil? And we've had vaguely sympathetic Sith before - Vader's apprentice Starkiller looks to be an example of one, for example.


And I reject this.

You become evil as a Jedi, you become a Dark Jedi. Like a Paladin, it's like a Light Switch. Ditto being a Good Sith. It's impossible.

Certainly you may take that approach if you wish, but my instinct is always to try and look for more meaning than that. I think there is depth there, if you go to the trouble to look for it.

I also think you can ruin the story.

The moment it's Jedi = Not Good and Sith = Not evil, is the moment its no longer Star Wars but something that uses it for its own end.

 

But if reproduction has no value, then no action an organism takes has value.

There is massive real benefit to producing/raising offspring. It's much greater than the real benefit of eating. It's not altruism.

 

Sabarte, I think we're having a failure to communicate.

The only gain I recognize is gain for the individual organism. Survival. Pleasure.

Anything else is instinct.

 

That's a very shortsighted way of looking at things

 

Why do you think organisms are hardwired to pass on their genes? It certainly doesn't involve altruism at all.

Even among sapient beings like ourselves it is debatable how much altruism comes into play when understanding why we care about raising our kids.

 

What would you call the Jedi Covenant, then? I would certainly not call them Dark Jedi. There is canon precedent for evil Jedi, Charlemagne19. There's also Jorus C'baoth, if you'd like another. (The original; I admit that the mad clone may have been just a teensy bit dark side.) You need not think that's appropriate for the themes of Star Wars, but I would disagree.

May I ask you to expand on why you think that?

 

Anyway, some will of the Force quotes from Dooku's POV in Labyrinth of Evil.

Still my favorite Dooku characterization...

 

What would you call the Jedi Covenant, then? I would certainly not call them Dark Jedi. There is canon precedent for evil Jedi, Charlemagne19. There's also Jorus C'baoth, if you'd like another. (The original; I admit that the mad clone may have been just a teensy bit dark side.) You need not think that's appropriate for the themes of Star Wars, but I would disagree.


You don't call murdering innocents grounds for losing one's Jedi status? Jedi status is bestowed by following the Light Side. The moment they killed someone, they became Dark Jedi. Of course, I might call them falling as opposed to fallen which implies they've hit bottom.

Which is clear they are.

Jorus C'boath was an arrogant, controlling, **ck. I don't consider him evil though.

May I ask you to expand on why you think that?

Ultimately, because it dilutes the message. The message is "stand up for what you believe in." "there are things in this world worth dying and killing for." "There are people out there who are monsters and need to be resisted." "You can be a fighter and not be evil." "There is actual good in this world and there are people out to destroy that good." "Yay Democracy." "There are ancient traditions worth keeping alive." Also "There is a spiritual nobility to humanity and a supernatural corruption."

You may not agree with this message but its what I take from the movies (even as a pacifist).

The Jedi and Rebels don't WANT or LIKE to fight but they do because simply put, the movie asks us to accept that the Imperials and Sith are honestly better off dead (or at least death is a preferrable option to alive and operating). That's what the nature of a Justified War asks. That stopping these evils whether by capture, surrender, redemption, or death is preferrable to letting it exist.

By saying the Empire wasn't all that bad, the Sith aren't that corrupt, and so forth. You effectively are trying to dilute the message of justified war. Star Wars, by its nature, is an anti-pacifist movie and the Sith/Jedi represent the embodiments of good and evil for that work.

Though the Jedi in the Prequels also represent good becoming careless.

 

The question of whether the Jedi or Sith are more "natural" depends in large part on your view of the Force. Note that when the Jedi speak of Anakin bringing "balance" to the Force, they mean he will destroy the Sith. In other words, the dark side imbalances the Force. This is, when you think of it, in harmony with the fact that the Jedi speak mainly of the Force and the dark side - not the light side and the dark side. This is a significant wordage. It makes the counterpoint of the dark side the Force.

Again, extrapolate: This means that the Force, in its right or natural state, is light. The dark side is what is unnatural - part of the Force, and yet somehow not part of it. Think of it this way - the dark side is a cancer in the Force, a part of the Force perverted, gone bad, turned unnatural.

If this view of the Force is true, the Jedi are quite right in maintaining that they are in harmony with nature. The Sith align with the perverted Force, and the Jedi with the Force in its right state.