Lit Clone Wars Continuity Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

I-5YQ.

EDIT: I think it's certainly true to say that the orthodox Jedi position is that droids do not have "souls" ("If droids could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?" - Obi-Wan) but, like I said, this is an opinion that I sincerely hope will be both challenged and overturned at some point.

This soul business is bizarre. As Mia said (stupid tags not working with spaces), what is a soul, exactly? It seems a foreign concept imposed on Star Wars. I don't think I've seen much of a discussion on it in-universe.

The Force is created by life, Yoda tells us. That involves the intermediation of midi-chlorians apparently (ugh). But being Force-sensitive and being alive aren't the same thing: you can have an entire species that hasn't had a single Force-sensitive, and yet they're clearly alive. Ysalamiri are clearly alive.

So is the remaining distinction between organic and in-organic beings? And where does that distinction blur? The Yuuzhan Vong have organic machines, whereas the GFFA has inorganic people. If we accept the former, why not the latter?

I'm not convinced it's particularly foreign at all, nor simply figurative, and would go as far as to say it's directly addressed in TESB with the "luminous beings" quote. And, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, in this kind of context one does not have a soul; one is a soul.

Also, importantly, I think it's a mistake to regard the Force -- Living or otherwise -- as some kind of "bio-field": it's metaphysical in nature. Indeed, Yoda tells Luke that the Life he's talking about has nothing to do with "crude matter", which divorces biology/organic material from the process of "Force creation" entirely -- even if midichlorians are (usually) necessary interlocutors for one to sense the Force -- and implies that capital "L" Life and the Force are, fundamentally, one and the same. I'd argue that every genuinely conscious/sapient/whatever being is a pattern in and of the Living Force.

I mean, the question of inorganic people is already settled, I think, because we have the Shards -- and the Jedi have no problem accepting them as being alive. So... I dunno, I'm fairly comfortable in thinking that the droids are just on a wavelength that has yet to register to most Jedi senses. Kinda wish they'd have explored this with Anakin Skywalker, though, as him being the sole Jedi who could feel that droids were alive would have played rather well into his obsession with saving others from death ("If I can restore a droid to life, why not a person?" etc) as well as his eventually coming to regard the Jedi as hypocrites and liars.

@Ulicus , but Yoda also says that "life creates it, makes it grow" -- so whether or not it is "between the rock, and the tree" and "between the land, and the ship," it's clear that life is part of it. You're right in that it needn't be biological life necessarily, but there's something about that. Is there a relationship between life and "luminous beings?" Was Yoda merely saying that a person's connection to the Force isn't a matter of size (relating to the contextual comments) or was he actually talking about souls? I don't know if there's enough there to be conclusive.

We do know that people's essences can live on beyond death: Force ghosts and Sith spirits come to mind. We also know that a person's pain and suffering, or even their happiness, can suffuse a place. Does that provide indirect evidence of something that can be likened to a soul? It might well serve as indicia of such.

As yet, we've not seen such of droids. We've seen droids exhibit emotions, we've seen droids develop personality, and we've seen them essentially adopt personhood. So why not the rest of it? It might be the wavelength thing you mention -- but Jedi seem to be able to detect other lifeforms and the like, it's just that they're "foreign." Why are droids -- something that Jedi are so familiar with -- different? Is it because people are conditioned to regard them as furniture or tools, so they're deadened to that kind of perception? Does the Force even work that way?

Yes, I think so. While other interpretations are surely possible, I'd insist that "Life creates it, makes it grow. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" is meant to be taken as a whole and that the life to which Yoda is referring is the luminous. And if it's not material, fleshy stuff, what can it be "made" of but the Force? And, if that's the case, Yoda's effectively saying that the Force, in the form of Life, self-engenders.

I got the same impression. Ghosting lets you anchor, but in a more flexible way than malevolent Sith spirits and all that. Other than that, you go to the afterlife which is apparently some sort of madness for darksiders and something... else for lightsiders. I don't think we need to make it terribly clear either way though, because it sounds a liiiittle too much like terran theology to me.

They transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not.

I think of a person's being or "Self" as a Force pattern, individual by virtue of its will and kept distinct by subsisting in a physical form. When the physical form dies, the will of the Self is subsumed by the will of the Force, and the pattern dissolves into the whole. The Self might want to go one way, but the Force is like "no, dude, gotta go this way", and it can't survive being pulled in so many different directions. This is what a Sith experiences as "chaos", as Plagueis outlines in Book of Sith, but what a Jedi would call harmony. There is no death, there is the Force, and all that raz.

Obi-Wan transforms into the Force too, of course, but the implication from what Qui-Gon says in the RotS novel is that he persists because by the time he dies his Self is Selflessness, so unselfish and in tune with the will of the Force that it makes no difference. His will and that of the Force are one and the same. He's not being pulled in any direction he wasn't already going.

Or, at least, that used to be the case before the CSWE turned Force Ghosts into selfish undead jackasses who deny the will of the Force.

Personally, and not factoring in the fact that we only learnt what ghosting actually entailed many years after HttE, I think he was spinning Luke a line. It is Obi-Wan, after all. But I'm also content to think that the ghosted Jedi isn't perfectly in step with the will of the Force, but rather in step enough that the process of dissolution is incredibly slowed in comparison to the typical person or Jedi.

Either way, as Qui-Gon says in the RotS novel, it can be achieved only through selflessness, not greed, and involves retaining one's influence while actually being one with the Force. Not holding off becoming one with the Force.

Kenobi had a selfless purpose, but once that selflessness was achieved (Luke becoming a Jedi) then Kenobi's reason was gone and he had to move on. I don't think he was or ever intended to babysit Luke forever. That, I think, bridges the two positions.

@GrandAdmiralJello

Sure, I'd just hesitate to rule out the possibility of his ever appearing again. Especially if there's an open bar.

@instantdeath

Denying the will of the Force is not the Jedi way. It's not "fun", it's practically blasphemous.

Midi-chlorians were inspired in part by mitochondria, and planets certainly have those, so I see no reason why they wouldn't have midis either. There's nothing about plants that excludes the possibility of having symbiotic lifeforms running around inside them.