Lit Stepping Into A Larger World: A Metaphysical and Philosophical Discussion of the Force

You'd feel icky too if someone made a copy of you that hated you.

 

She never says that. She says the opposite, that what you do is far more important than your attitude or intentions while doing it. It's Jacen and Luke that came up with what you're saying, that they can use any powers they want as long as it's for good.

The non-existence of an external dark side would, in fact, put more responsibility on the Force user not to use techniques like choke or lightning. There might not be an evil force out there waiting to corrupt you if you choke someone, but that certainly isn't a go-ahead to do it.

 

It's still a conflict between light and dark which emphasizes luminous beings over crude matter. Nothing in the PT has changed that. Certain EU authors may have seemingly "outgrown" the dark side, but that doesn't mean Lucas necessarily followed suit. I don't see the cancer analogy as being contradictory to the original framework. Especially since there seems to be widespread agreement on some kind of external dark side. Is it possible Lucas' views on the dark side have changed radically in the last 5 years ( motivated, perhaps, by revisionist EU )? Yes, anything's possible, but he has made no open statements to that effect AFAIK, and even if his viewpoint has changed, history shows that it can always change back.

 

Actually, it seems pretty clear it would be no different than a lightsaber.

 

I think you're misunderstanding what Dawud is saying. Lucas started out with the light and dark side as yin and yang, existing as opposed but balanced energies, antagonistic but necessary to one another and to the universe. He's gotten over that.

Which, to be fair, could be read as Vergere making an argument for total pacifism.

 

It's assumed that he's "gotten over that", but I don't see any proof. With "cancer" correlated to negative energy and "symbiosis" correlated to positive, the above still holds even if we take the cancer analogy as the final word on the subject. Balancing the Force does not mean that the dark side ceases to exist, while balancing the force of creation with an equally charged force of destruction means nothing can grow. There must be a stable level of entropy.

 

The dark side as a foreign, parasitic entity - a sickness within the Force, a corruption within the Force - is not a manichean duality.

 

Lightsabers don't pump electricity through you or crush your trachea. The fact that the dark side powers are more brutal and torturous than light methods of combat should be reason enough to show why they're different. You don't need the specter of the dark side to say "That's a horrific act and shouldn't be done," and if the only thing keeping you (generic, IU you) from breaking another man's windpipe with your mind is belief that a spiritual boogeyman will get you, I'd question just how much you understand what's wrong with the act.

 

The sickness analogy breaks down at some point. You can cut out cancer but you can never completely cut out the dark side. There is darkness in sentience and therefore the dark side is an intrinsic part of the Force.

 

Dude, you're not getting the point... and maybe you're not understanding what Luke was saying in TUF that echoes what real world religion says of ancient mankind. Firstly, it should be pointed out that sentience doesn't necessarily mean what our consciousness is. Cows, chickens, goats, fish etc all are sentient. What they are not, is sapient. Sapience is the more correct word for what we are talking about. Sapience brings with it a certain kind of dualistic thinking and it is via sapience that mankind... according to the Abrahamic narrative(though each tend to have a different interpretation than the other of the so-called "fall" with Judaism and Islam being more similar in their take than Christianity)... first went against the will of God. On the same token, Taoism has a similar explanation for sapience though worded a bit different. That when people lost Tao there arose the sort of distinctions and judgements that we associate with sapience. It is the goal of the esoteric traditions in the Abrahamic faiths, and of Taoism generally, to return to the state of a newborn babe... a state where one has transcended the distinctions we are talking about. That's not to say we are talking about moral relativism, but that the goal is to return to a natural oneness of thought and deed with the Source.

Luke Skywalker echoes these stories about what happened in time immemorial that gave rise to sapience and the making of distinctions and thus the falling out of harmony with the will of the Force. Sentience does not necessitate the dark side, sapience might. What Luke is doing is saying that when people stopped living in harmony with the Force they created within themselves a certain corruption of thoughts, deeds and energies and that projected out into the Force(for ease of conversation I'm not even really going to start getting into how saying things were "projected out" into the Force might be a bit of an erroneous statement in and of itself since the Force is everywhere and in everything and thus not really "outside" one's self at all) creating the dark side. In a sense, he's implying that the goal of the Jedi religion and spirituality is to return... or rather move forward to a superior state of pure harmony or submission to the will of the Force. Which really could be said to come back to how the Jedi view their position in relation to being justice keepers... which I submit is not entirely or even primarily having to do with social justice, but justice understood metaphysically. That is... metaphysic is the science of studying the Real or reality, and justice concieved metaphysically has to do with living in accordance with the Real/reality. Which, I think, is partially why the Jedi Order continues to endeavor for justice despite it not being realized generation after generation after generation. They have a fundamentally spiritual motivation for justice, not one based upon society and its whims. Ultimately, however, in order to realize this goal of justice the Jedi are going to have to find a way to spread their spirituality to more than just other Force-sensitives... that's the only way people can potentially return to a state of harmony with the will of the Force.

Only on the level of sapient beings, and indeed within sapient beings, is there any sort of Manichean struggle of light and dark. Just as I would say from a Muslim perspective that only within the human heart is there a struggle between God and Satan... because cosmically Satan is just as powerless as you or I. Cosmically the dark side is powerless, which is why it takes a Republic full of corrupt Senators, business beings and a populace full of resentme

 

This is where I start to get into the DNT being a metaphor for Force philosophy, with the Killik Hive Mind operating as analogous to the Force.

Anyway, for ease of understanding, perhaps you want to explain Yin-Yang/Manichean duality. With none of my useful books available at the moment, I'm kind of at a disadvantage.

 

Actually, cutting a man in half with a burning hot piece of plasma ranks up with the "Most Awful Ways to Die" that I can think of. Especially, if you're not instantly killed in the experience. Having your throat crushed is pretty much preferrable to the fate that Darth Maul endures.

Likewise, if you have an Instant-Kill Force Power then it's going to be Dark Side even if you use it defend innocents because it's not how the Force is meant to be used.

 

Well that's two seperate explanations Matt!

We'll start with yin-yang. It's complimentarity, not opposition. There is night, and there is day. Neither is good or bad. There is the shadowed side of the mountain, and there is the one in full sunlight. Male, female... both necessary for life to exist. Even in plants you've got the pistol and the stamen. Positive and negative, necessary or natural polarities. That's just scratching the surface. All necessary, and each carrying a bit of the other within. It governs literally everything that we know. This was the position of the old Dark Empire sourcebook and it was apparently held as canon. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Manichean duality... Mani; a Middle Eastern "prophet" between Jesus and Muhammad who was probably mostly influenced by Zoroastrianism but had alot of other influences including Kabbalah, Gnosticism and Hermeticism; held and promoted the belief that there were two powerful beings over the world and they were equal. God, the Deity of Light and Goodness, was not all-powerful and his opposite was Ahriman(well, that's the Middle Persian term used for the Devil or Darkness in Zoroastrianism) who was basically his powerful opposite. Life is an endless struggle between these two polarities and their various minions/servants. For Mani there is no supreme Good. This is not true of the things which influence Mani, and he was declared a heretic by Zoroastrian preists. Hermetics believe in the All as the Supreme Good beyond the polarities of good and bad... thus the Supreme Light beyond the polarities of light and dark. There interesting thing about Mani's ideas is they were essentially offshoots of Zurvanite Zoroastrianism, which was essentially a divergent cult wtihin Zoroastrianism that subjected Ahura Mazda(the Creator and Lord of Light of Zoroastrianism) to Zurvan or Time, and made Ahura Mazda equal-but-opposite of Angra Mainyu or Ahriman as twin brothers that had existed for all time. Also, the essential proposition of Mani is that the body is evil... it is darkness. While Yoda says "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" he isn't positing the evils of the body and Jedi asceticism is largely pragmatic rather than of moral origins. The Jedi did not ban marriage because they believed sex and love were "evil" but because that tie could keep a person from doing his duty. Yoda's saying is pointing out that there is more to us than what we see, not that the dark side is of the flesh. The Jedi would likely see the body as being just as spiritual as the ethereal spirit body.

I have to go with a more Zoroastrian model for the Force, honestly, with the Unifying Force being the transcendental Ahura Mazda that Zoroaster/Zarathustra taught in the Avesta and the Yasna. The Force in immanent in the Living Force and that has within it the light and dark sides... I'm following Luke Skywalker's explanation for where the dark side came from and that's "outside" the Force in a certain sense meaning... it's not inherent or natural to the Force. It came as a result of the ill will that came about from sapient beings falling out of harmony with the will of the Force. So, you get this dark side which is like Angra Mainyu(literally Destructive Principle)/Ahriman and his/its forces of darkness or demons... and the light side which is like the Spenta Mainyu(Bounteous Principle) who are essentially manifest as angels and figure hugely in Zoroastrian angelology; which has been of big influence on the angelology of Judaism, Christianity and Islam(especially in the Islamic philosophical school called the school of Illumination[al-Ishraq] that was formuated by Persian philosophe

 

True, but the relevant thing they have in common is that the forces of the universe are light and dark, and this light and dark are equal and eternal and necessary for one another's existence and for balance.

 

^To a certain degree. Still, the Manichean model is pretty different from the Taoist/Chinese. Yin and yang are used so widely in Chinese thought, and most of it not along the lines of "this is good and this is bad." Not so the Manichean.

 

No, it isn't possible in theory, and not just because the task outlined above is literally impossible. This is what I mean by taking the cancer analogy too far. You can't "cut it out", because you're not going to be able to remove all negative energy. Negative energy is a part of the act of living.

The dark side is inherent to the Force because whenever you have sentience (Luke's word) you have the dark side. We should not expect a utopian period to have existed during which there was no dark side. Living things have a natural tendency to generate darkness.

 

Getting sorta medical in here, but:

http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston/understanding_cancer_and_cancer_cells.html

Cancer, like the dark side, is continually present. It's when it gets out of control that it becomes an issue-just like the dark side.

 

Really? I'd bet he'd be in shock, unconscious and then dead within the order of minutes, at most.

Contrariwise Force Lightning is supposed to be a power that purposely tortures people with intense pain until they actually die of the pain. Which is why Palpatine can torture Luke for several seconds at a time with no obvious ill effects on him afterwards -- Vader doesn't die of the lightning itself so much as the lightning's side effect of destroying his bionics.

I don't know that it's a "How the Force is meant to be used" thing. I'd argue it's because a Force power isn't just a piece of technology that you "use"; the "weapon" isn't a weapon external to yourself, it's *you*. "Using a Force power" involves temporarily adopting a particular mental state. Using the Dark Side involves purposely adopting the mental state of a murderous sadistic sociopath. That's going to leave its marks on you no matter how good your initial purpose was.

 

I think that's why he says "in theory," considering the englightenment aim of most religions - sin and evil are not believed to be native to the divine condition, and are faults of sapience. Anyway, the fact remains that the idea of a ying-yang and/or manichean duality to the Force has been abanadoned.

You're right. I don't think anybody is arguing what you think they are.

 

There's still no evidence backing up that statement as far as the films are concerned. Some EU has "abandoned" it; some has not. DarthBoba's post above shows how duality can be reconciled with what has supposedly supplanted it. Also, the connection between the Force and Taoism remains true in the PT, at least if we take Greg Bear's word for it.

 

I think we cannot generalise the latest works as a new course of thinking. why? because mostly the portrayal of the Force is the authorial perspective and understanding of the Force, not necessarily that of the editors or GL or EU in general.

Yet to create continuity we have to take all sources into account despite the differences and deduce some generalised aspect. sure the NJO seems like a change, but I think it is just a different pov on the matter and might in universe be new, but not out of universe.


well, aside from the previous talk about the Force and philosophies, can we list individual influential Jedi and their special pov on the Force? like Yoda, Luke, QuiGon, Obi Wan, Vergere, Caboth etc. and where they agree and disagree? that might help establish different schools of thought, courses and paths. also looking upon the portrayal and understanding of the Force over the time of a beings life might be important: Young jedi are mostly Guardians, later turn more into either Sentinels or Diplomats, etc. the young tend to have an easier view and are more risky, pushing and less thinking while the old Masters discuss and rethink nearly every action. (best example Luke) the young might be overreacting and overconfident that "fighting" for the Light is right, yet the older Jedi also have flaws in their way of thinking. They tend to go so deep into philosophical details and aspects that they forget the general picture and the lightness of the younger generation. as well as other flaws that might turn them too strict like forbidding marriage and attachement. a middle path might be best, like Luke proposed: Have your families, but keep the Order and duty first. difficult sure but possible. extremist views often tend to turn to bad outcomes later.

 

The implications of the dark side being a cancer are:

1) It is not native to the divine/spiritual/natural state, but rather exists as a consequence of the flaws of sentience/sapience.
2) The Will of the Force is the dominant, pervading force of destiny and events, but sentients/sapients sometimes choose the dark side, subverting the Force's Will. Evil, then, is not the Force's doing, and is not a necessary and natural part of the world. This allows, of course, for the Light Side to be stronger.
3) In a perfect world, sentients/sapients would always choose to follow the Will of the Force, rather than choose evil and sin.
4) The Force will find ways to make the evil that men do result in good.

Yes, the dark side exists as a major, powerful competing Force, but the implications of its description as a cancer are not the same, cosmologically, as its former description as an equal and natural part of the metaphysics of Star Wars. In a Manichean or a Yin-Yang-esque duality, balance is both sides continuing to exist. In our new, "cancer" model, balance is the light side transcendant over the dark.

 

The Sith are the cancer.

I think evil is obviously the doing of evildoers.

The dark side is as natural as freedom. Evil goes hand in hand with sentience.

This has no practical meaning, since there will never be a completely darkless Force.

 

Which is not, if I remember correctly, what George Lucas said. And your definition of freedom wouldn't square with a number of religious philosophers', nor what the dark side seems to do to its servants.

The dark side may be nearly inevitable, but that doesn't mean it's a native and natural part of the Force.

Unless you continue to propose a Manichean duality for the Force.

Which is not to say it shouldn't be kept in check or even that attempts shouldn't be made to eradicate it.

And again, you're not addressing what's being said, and in so doing are quibbling about something Dawud and I aren't even disagreeing with you on.

But it gives direction to religion and morality. Star Wars isn't friendly to nihilists.

 

I think that is what he said. And I'm using the dictionary definition of freedom. Unless you replace the actual sentients with brainwashed robots incapable of negative thoughts and emotions, you're going to have a dark side.

When did I say it shouldn't be kept in check?

Evildoers are, by definition, the doers of evil, regardless of what I propose.

Irrelevant speculation about an impossible world with a darkless Force in which all sentients are perfect? This is me not caring.

Darkness is a native and natural part of living things. Living things generate the Force. Ergo...