Balance of the Force

Once again, my apologies for the delayed answer ...

Again, whether you're wrong or not depends on whether the society you're living in judges it wrong or not. See, by including the term "actually" in your argument you're already implying that there is something like an absolute value judgement on the examples you've provided. Much as I personally agree with your assessment that the examples you mentioned are wrong according my moral standards, I'm not the universe's or even humankind's supreme authority who's entitled to deliver some kind of final verdict and impose my standards upon other societies.

Again, by referring to "our everyday lives" you're applying our current (western) societies as a standard of judgement. Other people's everyday lives, in history or in other cultural frameworks, may differ very significantly from this.

I cannot agree on that it has never been accepted since I know far to little about human history and anthropology to sign a statement as general as this. I don't know about any society that has accepted random killing but this doesn't mean that it has never been accepted in any society throughout human history.

I agree - I think the point of the exercise was to assess whether she actually was a hero in the sense of the archetype, or rather a hero only by assessment of her own delusions, like Sebastian aka "Jack the Ripper" himself ("how do you know the chosen ones?").

I think that is one important point where she differs from Sebastian - taking account of the possibility that she might be wrong. Yet, I think the willingness to die for her cause without becoming a martyr and being made immortal hereby is another important distinction.

 

No problem, I just looked for your response this evening, so I was delayed as well.

So if a society decides that something is right, then it is? And what if you personally disagree with your society?

One of the things I just don't get is that she was given this inquisition, but she did not seem to have many delusions.

I found this development (of the final battle with the Shadows and Vorlons) to cheapen everything that had come before. Quite a bit of B5 and Star Wars involves characters we care about. If it just comes down to a struggle between "order" and "chaos" then the lives lost are meaningless. I don't think this is true because of the way I feel about the characters, to me they have meaning, and they are just fiction. Imagine if the lives were real! And this is part of my disagreement with your philosophy. No matter what I or my society tries to believe, a life has value. No one believing otherwise in any time or culture can change that. I can't make myself feel it is ok that someone is killed, even if I tell myself that it is ok to kill. And this is a human trait. This does not mean I think there is never a time that life must be taken, but that there is something inside me that hates the taking of life and wants to see it done as little as possible. B5 was oversimplistic in that the Vorlons were obviously not the epitome of "order and obedience" and "chaos and evolution" was not the effect of the Shadow's destructive behavior. Both showed a disregard for life to a certain extent. Another aspect that was unfulfilling for me was that when faced with who they were, neither had remorse for what they had done.

 

Then you are having the problem referred to in this episode:

Sebastian: And if the world says otherwise?
Delenn: Then the world is wrong!
Sebastian: And Delenn is right? Perhaps the world is right and Delenn is wrong! Have you ever considered that? HAVE YOU?

I thought that's just precisely what Kosh wanted to find out for sure - whether she was doing things for the right reasons ("Ambassador Kosh has doubts.").

Well the dinosaur society might have thought the same about the lives lost due to the meteor impaction that extinguished their race - and still, if not for those lives lost, there probably wouldn't be any humans today. The reluctance to take lives of the own species (and those closely related) is a means of ensuring the survival of this species and thus an evolutionary trait. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. I don't think B5 was oversimplistic at all, quite the contrary. To me it just showed how very different matters can appear if one looks at them from a different perspective and also that the human (or humanoid) POV is but one and a limited perspective. The development in the final Vorlon-Shadow battle came as a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. It's also part of a mythological pattern - the "heroes" are growing up and start questioning their mentors and looking at them more critically. Same development of a child going through puberty.

 

Then you are having the problem referred to in this episode:

Sebastian: And if the world says otherwise?
Delenn: Then the world is wrong!
Sebastian: And Delenn is right? Perhaps the world is right and Delenn is wrong! Have you ever considered that? HAVE YOU?

I would have a problem if Sebastian implied that society makes right. Sebastian does not come from the perspective that a society determines what is right and what is wrong. But I was asking what you thought.

Why would Kosh need to find out for sure? He could just look inside her and know. It was for her own benefit that she know she was the right person at the right time in the right place.

Certainly the mythological pattern of a hero has a time when he or she questions their mentor(s). This by no means suggests that the last thought in a movie or series is the best thought, or the correct thought, or even the most mature thought. The beings left after the Shadows and the Vorlons (humanoids) by no means left that experience with a morally reletivistic outlook.

I think that if we were essentially morally reletivistic beings then good/evil conflict stories would not mean so much to us because we would have no frame of reference with which to enjoy them. Vader was evil, the Shadows were evil, and this creates good drama that appeals to something deep down.

 

The Sith and the darkside are anger, hate and aggression. That is not balance. The light side is the Force as it is meant. As a teacher not a weapon. Eliminating the 2 most powerful users of the darkside leaves just the wielders of the light side. Thus balance of the true use of the Force is achieved.

 

Knight,
How do you see balance? In the prequels the Jedi were dominant, and even before the Sith's influence was discovered, they were in a state of over-busy imbalance. Then in the OT the Sith's dominance obviously did not have a balancing influence. None of the Jedi were ever perfectly balanced, either.

 

Balance of the Force is when good and evil are equal. It's not about even numbers of Jedi and Sith, but about keeping the feild level. Good and evil cannot have the advantage beyond the scaled balance. Picture the type of scale where you have to have an equal amount of weight on both sides. Now, if you put too much weight on one side, the scales tip. That is what happens when the Sith take over the Republic like they did. What Anakin did was take that extra weight off the scale and it became perfectly balanced once again.

 

Interesting thread. Some good posts all around, surprisingly excellent just to think about, not just in relevance to Star Wars but to our own worlds miasma of colorful and not so colorful philosophies and religions.

I didn't really see this as being pointed out.

Despite what GL says I don't believe the Force is an idea you can attach polar concepts to be that from the light through the gray and into the dark or backwards. It just so happened that the Sith and Jedi orders grew from the discovery of themselves. That is to say that anyone in the star wars universe that uses the light side isn't necessarily a Jedi, and anyone using the dark side isn't necessarily a Sith. These are both merely Orders that have their own Dogma's and philosophies.

Jedi and Sith are merely incidental of the Force and therefore their clash is merely incident. So for example you take someone of Anakin's sensitivity to the force and just let them ride through life without the corruption of either of the orders philosophies no doubt you would definitely see actions of both the light and darkside, but without necessarily trying to be evil, or trying to be good either way (presumably).

Further (and I was surprised not to see this mentioned at all) but we are introduced to the notion of "the will of the force" by Qui Gon, when he rationalised lucking into Anakin on Tattooine. From there we have to follow a train of thought that leads to the idea that the destruction of the Jedi Order was also the will of the force. (Anakin born of the force [not created by Plagueis for the love of ...]) therefore being an instrument of the force in destroying the Jedi Order and then finally the Sith Order. From there we have to wonder why the will of the Force necessitated the destruction of both orders to maintain balance. (I happen to be one that doesn't believe the Jedi tradition was truly resurrected in Luke, he just happens to use the light side and have "skills" [feeble or not]) But he's also known to use the dark side as well.

Clearly this question is never actually answered throughout the saga. However I do see it as killing the Good vs Evil balance issue, and indeed catering to the more Taoist idea of "pacifism" wherein one strives not to affect the universe in any of it's many dimensions (to exceedlingly paraphrase). Which actually becomes the beauty of the saga, as more than anything (especially the whole religion parallel's thing ugh) the Star Wars mythos is about how we try to understand our place in the universe and how we come to assume that the universe needs us to make it run smoothly when all along it's us that needs the universe and that we needn't do anything to influence the cosmic flow of things. The Force is merely tying a sort of catalytic sentience to the universe and is the grand decider of how it itself "feels", and then allows the events to happen that allow it to come back into balance, thus the "Will of the Force".

Hopefully I got my idea across but it's late and I'm still wishing I saw this post earlier.

 

I think that in this instance you are facing a dilemma and you have to consider very carefully how valid your values are compared to those of society, and whether you truely feel justified, and not only because to an ego trip thing, that you are the "chosen one" who knows better than them.

Possibly. Not sure about Vorlon's abilities to look inside Minbari minds, though.

I would disagree on the notion that humans being relativistic beings would mean that they have no frame of reference with respect to good or evil. It only means that there may be more than one frame of reference, depending on the historical period we're living in, and on our society. And of course, this still is argueing from a purely human perspective. It might be entirely different judged with reference to taoist cosmology.

 

In the B5 episode a couple after the one we've been discussing Sheridan is riding the monorail to go the garden and officially apologize for blowing up the Centari warship that threatens to do the same to B5 and the Narn ship they gave sanctuary to. He noticed the bomb and leapt out of the car, saving himself from the blast. He was in the artifical atmosphere and was going to crash, when Kosh left his encounter suit to save him. To your way of thinking, how is it possible that everyone but Londo saw Kosh as an enlightened being?

 

To your way of thinking, how is it possible that everyone but Londo saw Kosh as an enlightened being?

It could be viewed from several perspectives:

-Due to his own collaboration with darkness, Londo failed to see Kosh as an enlightened being.

-Or as Sheridan had commented later, the Vorlons have been manipulating the other races to view them as enlightened beings so that they will accept their viewpoint of the universe.

Suspicion regarding the Vorlons' true agenda had been around as far back as B5's Season 1 episode, "Deathwalker".

 

Mandragora comes from a morally reletivistic viewpoint, so I suspect that your first option is out, as there really is no such thing as darkness as far as good and evil go. If your society says your 'darkness' is not dark, then it isn't...which does not provide a coherent reason for Londo seeing nothing.

Could be the second, I suppose, but manipulating or not, there clearly was awe at the wonder of the being of Kosh - and my response to this is to ask if we are then to accept Sheridan's viewpoint as credible?

I would like to see what mandragora says, as it will help me understand where she is coming from better.

 

Probably because the Vorlons had been around many of the younger races before; it need not have been actual manipulation, maybe the Vorlons had indeed been perceived as something like "angels" by those races in ancient times. Perhaps the Vorlons hadn't visited Centauri Prime - maybe this planet had been under the influence of the Shadows even back then? Anyway, it is clear to me from what we have seen of Kosh II and what we have learnt about their actions in Season IV and V that they have not been not designed to represent an epitome of absolute good or a race of enlightened beings in any sense.

 

Could be the second, I suppose, but manipulating or not, there clearly was awe at the wonder of the being of Kosh - and my response to this is to ask if we are then to accept Sheridan's viewpoint as credible?

Why not? Both Sinclair and Garabaldi had similar views of the Vorlon, after the Deathwalker incident in S1. And as events unfolded, Sheridan, Sinclair and Garabaldi's suspicions proved to be true.

I have to be honest. I don't really believe that any one person is either absolutely good or evil. I feel that there is potential for both light and darkness, not only in every person, but in every living being. As to how each being has control of either nature or both . . . is merely speculative.

 

mandragora, you are right, they are not meant to be angels. Everyone related to them as such, though, and Londo did not. The whole point they were trying to make is that everyone was in need of spiritual encouragement against the darkness, not darkness as their races had come to perceive it, but darkness as in evil, as in good versus. Kosh's appearance encouraged them to stick together in standing up for life. Londo was depressed because his not seeing anything symbolized the darkness, the emptyness of his soul for the evil he had done, was doing, etc. Nothing about his condition could be explained away, he felt bad, perhaps even remorseful, and why would he feel that way if destruction were simply another way of being? His people were proudly committed to their killing, as were the shadows they were no doubt influenced by, and he was not a man against his culture or society in this regard. He came to be somewhat good through the show, but at that moment he understood that there was a difference in right and wrong, good and evil, and he was wrong and evil.

ramred, why would the humans be more credible than the first ones?

 

i know you didn't ask me but which first ones do you mean?

Lorien described both the vorlons and shadows as having lost their way, in essence neither was being honest with themselves or anyone else as to what their mission and purpose was.

I don't think we can believe either the vorlons or the shadows to be credible, but i would believe an outside first one, like those that were willing to go into battle against both and side with the humans who are at least honest about wanting to live free.

 

Doesn't matter which first ones, really. Some were portrayed as more credible, others less. My point was basically that the way it was filmed, directed, produced, etc...the way B5 was made did come from a moralistic POV. We were to understand things in terms of good and evil, and part of the drama was the confusion of the details and the sins of those we thought to be perfect or at least 'good.' At the end of the day, at the end of the series, regardless of the ambiguity the characters felt, we knew there was still a good and a bad. Just like in Star Wars.