Midichlorians - Does Size Matter?

That true. A Jedi/Sith doesn't need arms to use their telekinetic abilities.

 

It's not that he's less powerful because, without arms, he's unable to do lightning and telekenesis. Hell, we know he CAN do telekenesis because, we'll...he does, all throughout the OT. (Mostly in TESB) He can't do Force Lightning, not because he can't muster the ability, but because it'd blow his mechanical arms. Vader is less powerful after quadruple amputation because he's less of a living being. He's more machine than alive, and the Force works through living things. Midichlorians suffice for me, because that's the official answer, but if you don't believe in them, then I think the whole "more machine now than man" thing works anyway.

 

Luke: "The Force?"

Obi-Wan: "The force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all LIVING things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together."

At first, I too was one of those people who thought it made absolutely no sense that Vader would never reach his potential once he became "more machine than man," because, of course, you wouldn't lose your midichlorian count by losing limbs and flesh ... I believe suited Vader has the SAME MIDICHLORIAN count he had Before the Suit, however, because he isn't totally a living thing anymore, he has lost his connection to the force ... and besides, i don't think it's as simple as who ever has the highest midi count is the most powerful, it's just a conclusion the jedi have drawn ---> typically, those with higher midi counts have a stronger connection to the force ... it was simply a way Qui-Gon could tell the council he had the potential to be the Chosen One

No size doesn't matter, Yoda just isn't 60-70% non-living

 

I imagine that since midi-clorians live in cells and that one cell from Yoda and one cell from Anakin, if they had the same amount of midi-cloriens, they would be exactly equally strong with the Force. They would have the same proportion. It's not a matter of TOTAL midi-cloriens, it's how many you have per cell. The amount of midicloriens you have per cell determines how well you communicate with the Force, which is why midi-cloriens didn't ruin the mystery of the Force for me, it just gave an explanation why some people are genetically stronger with the Force than others.

I also wonder if midi-cloriens are like a virus that you can catch from being exposed to them. Did Annakin's mother "catch" midi-cloriens? Science is now looking into viruses that are beneficial... even viruses that attack cancer cells. Wouldn't it be something if there was a virus that caused people to have ESP?

It's not known, however, whether viruses are alive... are midi-cloriens alive? Yoda says that life creates the Force (ESB) and makes it grow. Was he talking about midi-cloriens? I doubt it, since GL probably hadn't made them up at that point. But for the sake of the story, maybe.

 

Actually, it's not the Jedi that draw the conclusion. It's Lucas. Everyone is born with Midichlorians and in the case of Shmi, they just multiplied to create Anakin. Though we don't know if the Force was doing it or Palpatine.

 

Midichlorians are alive, as are mitochondria, but I don't think that's what Yoda meant. Midichlorians do not create the Force, they merely connect life to it. The presence of life strengthens the Force.

The aspect I don't like about midichlorians is what you've stated above: can someone be given midichlorians? THAT's what demystifies the Force for me, THAT's what makes the Jedi not special: a blood transfusion could make any schlub, in theory, a powerful Jedi.

But it DOES make Grievous cooler...Sifo-Dyas blood....love that comic...

 

Perhaps midichlorians are incompatible with schlub blood. Or, if someone gets a transfusion of them, they die off too quickly to be of any use, as the new environment is not supportive of them. Maybe having a high midichlorian count is like being slightly more evolved than most other beings. Like, a Neanderthal wouldn't become more intelligent even if you transfused him with **** sapiens blood.

 

Gosh...the first four letters of homosapiens were edited out of my last post.

 

Yeah, I hate automated censors, but this one isn't as bad as the ones that replace bad words with other ones. My favorite censor screw ups are #1) when I was writing about starfighters once, a sentence turned out to include the phrase "Luke was sitting in the chickenpit" and #2) I wa talking about an assassination, and the word got changed to "buttbuttination."

Anyhow, the neanderthal thing doesn't work, as blood has nothing to do with intelligence, but midichlorians seem to have everything to do with Force sensitivity.

Now, I had a theory a while back, and I don't know if this holds water anymore, but what if high midichlorian counts are an effect of Force sensitivity and not a direct cause? That is to say, the body of one who is Force sensitive will produce more midichlorians to support attunement to the Force, creating a sort of inescapable relationship: a person is Force sensitive because of the high level of midichlorians in their blood, and there are high levels of midichlorians in their blood because they are Force sensitive. Remove one and the other topples. The cells of a non-Force sensitive will not support high levels of midichlorians, and if you strip a Force sensitive of midichlorians, they lose their connection to the Force...mostly. (Look at Ulic Qel-Droma: even after losing his ability to touch the Force the Force still seemed to support him, and took in his spirit when he died.)

It's like mitochondria once again: a cell will only support as many as it needs to function at top efficiency. Cells in our bodies that need more energy carry more mitochondria. Cells in beings that require a more intimate connection to the Force carry more midichlorians.