Saga The Dark Side - Define it

So this seems to be a point of contention - the Dark Side is:

1) Destruction, Enthopy, Fear etc, etc

or

2) the fall of man... so something unnatrual...

 

I think it is a misnomer.

 

It's obviously something existential... not a state of mind...

 

I think it shows the Jedi's narrowness of understanding.

 

So it's a state of mind...

 

But it can lead to behaviour... that doesn't make it itself inherently bad...

 

"The dark side is the manifestation of nature" is a pretty good definition, if you want to define the dark side in a sentence. It's the blind cruelty of evolution, the Darwinian waste of natural selection, the constant elimination of the weakest, our biologically-ingrained natural instincts like fear and aggression and greed, etc etc.

Which is, after all, why it takes so much hard work for the Jedi to keep the light alive and hold off nature's constant entropy. Letting go and just giving in to your natural feelings of anger is the easier path, a point that Star Wars emphasizes over and over.

The old definition from the ROTS novelization works fine for me:

You can really phrase it a hundred ways, this dichotomy is as old as human existence.

In Freudian terms, the light side is the "Superego" and the dark side is the "Id". In Nietzschean terms, the light is the "Apollonian" principle and the dark is the "Dionysian" chaos. Hell, in modern neuroscience, the light side is the brain's neomammalian cortex and the dark is the reptilian brain-stem. And so on, and so on.

 

I'm surprised the original poster defines the "fall of man" as unnatural, as it is within our human nature to become selfish and corrupted.

Anyway, the darkside is allowing yourself to put your needs and wants ahead of the greater good. It's about craving power and control, and destroying whatever stands in your path. A no mercy approach, if you will.

And some Sith/ Darkside users like to be like the Joker in The Dark Knight, where chaos is just a daily routine for entertainment.

 

How can it be a belief system... when it is the Dark Side of the Force...

My mistake...

 

Two questions:

Do animals have a SuperEgo and an Id or just an Id?

Does the Dark Side of the Force exist outside of the human mind as an energy... and is it also responsible for entropy and decay in the universe... like death...?

 

The "fall" of man is the most natural thing there is. Selfishness is the norm of all natural life, it's compassion and altruism that usually take a lot of hard work.

All newborn babies are selfish greedy animals. Becoming a human being is a very gradual process.

Exactly. The dark side is a regression to your primal nature, in a lot of ways. It's not simply that the "light is good" or that the "dark is evil"; it's that the light-siders use the Force with a lot of self-imposed restrictions, while the dark-siders use the Force freely and naturally to its full extent.

The Sith would say that the light side is an unnatural thing, and they'd be right. The Jedi would say that uncontrolled nature is destructive, and they'd also be right. In the end, it's all subjective opinion.

 

I'm assuming you mean in the mind... in which case isn't altruism also a natural thing?

 

Well, "animal" is a really broad umbrella. We're animals, too.

To answer your question - all mammals have a limbic complex (the source of empathy and parental love), but most animals don't. We're the only ones with a neocortex, though.

For most mammalian species, yeah. My point was that selfish instinct, what Star Wars calls the "dark side" and Freud calls the "Id", is a lot closer to nature in many ways. After all, the unthinking reptilian brain-stem is much older than the consciously altruistic part of the mind, which didn't evolve until pretty recently.

LOL, I was speaking metaphorically.

 

Thanks, what I meant to say was 'non-persons' - although I suppose some would argue some other primates are also persons.

But that's the point - if the Force is meant to exist outside of ones self (i.e. as an energy field) does that mean that the Dark Side is also things like, say, entropy, not just the Id...

 

"Persons" is another really subjective thing. What do you define as a person? Is there any objective dividing line between a person and a non-person?

The neocortex part of the brain (which roughly corresponds to what Aristotle called "Intellect" and Freud called "Superego") only exists in hominoids yet, as far as we know. But empathy and love are generated in the limbic complex, which obviously exists all mammals. Even the stupid ones. So it's more of a continuum between two extremes than a black-or-white situation. I guess that answers your question?

Pretty much. It's a manifestation of nature's destructiveness, which takes a lot of forms. Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor dealt with a group of dark-siders who worshipped entropy and annihilation.

You really have to ask Lucas this stuff, I didn't come up with the Force.

 

Well it hasn't properlly been defined by anyone... but I think people know I mean the very highest and distinct characteristics of humans...

I agree... although it seems some people think it is purely psychological...

That's what this thread is here for

 

Is "the dark side of the Force" even a meaningful statement? Is it attached to any empirically observable thing, is it falsifiable or verifiable, or is it just a misnomer, a label created by the Jedi to give identity to their enemies, the victims of their persecution?

Death exists, but not as an anthropomorphised concept - certainly doesn't hold a scythe. Similarly, the Jedi show a very primitive understanding in viewing 'the dark side' as some kind of corrupting force or perhaps malign entity. I agree, in part, with the view of the Potentium, that there is no external dark side, there are merely actions, behavioural patterns and emotions. You could collectively link some related emotions, behaviours and actions together, e.g. "hate, being hateful of other people, and killing people," and say that is 'of the dark side,' if you wished, but that's an incredibly simplistic view that is rife with danger. 'Dark side' and 'light side' are more meaningless than 'good' or 'evil,' since you can attach labels like 'good' to empirically observable things like 'altruistic, cooperates in the Prisoner's Dilemma' vs 'selfish, defects in the Prisoner's dilemma,' or perhaps as 'optimises happiness or preference satisfaction as per utilitarianism.' I'm not advocating any particular ethical system here, by the way, even if my bias might be somewhat evident, but merely pointing out there are many abstract, yet still measurable concepts you can tie words like 'good' or 'evil' to. 'Dark side' and 'light side' is much, much fuzzier, since there's plenty of Jedi out there who think they can use the dark side for good even in the Jedi definition of good, like Ulic Qel-Droma.

I'm not going to say "there is no dark side, there is no light." I think that would be a meaningless statement as well, because I think the very terms 'light' and 'dark side' are nonsensical. They don't describe anything at all, they're incoherent, non-computable. There's only people, with different personalities, desires and actions, and a few technicalities in manifesting certain abilities (e.g. Sith magic), dependent upon one's emotional state. And at least in those terms, I'm of the opinion the Sith techniques are superior; what they've accomplished with the Force just seems to display a far greater understanding of the great mystery than their Jedi counterparts. Quite simply, they're better scientists - they've cracked the code (or at least more of the code) in terms of getting what they want out of the mysterious omnipresent energy field, just as, in real life, we are learning more and more how to get what we want out of the laws of nature. And no, I don't think the Sith techniques all come down to negative emotion, either. Dark Jedi may be creatures of anger and rage, but Sith are firmly in control of their emotions. No, they don't deny or attempt to eradicate emotion like the Jedi, but it's not as if Sith are at the mercy of their passions either. I think it's more they use their emotions as a tool to unlock the Force in its natural, wild state, and impose their will on it, rather than doing the absurd thing of trying to let a mere energy field that has no sapience, no will, control their actions.

The main argument against this sort of Potentium-esque belief is the fact that sometimes the dark side does appear to be be an actual, existent and corrupting force. There appear to be dark side planets, dark side nexuses, almost palpable dark side energy which can, for instance, ensnare rogue Jedi. However, I think this is just the residue of people - any Force user will leave a sort of footprint of Force energy. Hence you'll end up with places like Korriban, where a lot of people who were focusing on amassing immediate power, and using 'negative' emotions to do, left footprints in the Force, and this aura will be different than Dromund Kaas, with Korriban's aura actually being described as austere and arrogant in contrast to Dromund Kaas' disturbed, unsettling aura. Again, a feature of the residual mental signatures of people, with Sith on Korriban focusing on building massive, egotistical monuments, in comparison to focusing on twisted experiments on Dromund Kaas. 'Dark side energy?' Just an echo from past Force users that present day individuals can still tap into; sometimes, if it's a particularly strong concentration, the psychic footprint of so many like-minded individuals will 'rub off' on, say, a rogue Jedi, radically changing his personality and desires.

 

Interesting read... but you make the presumption that there is no 'energy field' but rather just a psychological energy.

Wouldn't this be described as 'going with the way of the world' though and how is that absurd? I mean a Jedi would say that you flow with the currents of life and not disrupting the order of it...

 

Well, no, I'd certainly think the Force is an 'energy field' in the sense Darth Plagueis describes it as. Obviously, the Force is nothing even remotely like anything what scientists would call energy - the term 'energy field' as it is conventionally used is entirely rooted in esotericism and pseudoscience - hence my reluctance to use that term overly much. Mind walking, flow walking, the importance of using 'life force' or 'souls' to empower oneself... To me, it is suggestive of the Force being a sort of stream of residual psychological information, almost a collective psyche like the Warp in Warhammer 40k, nothing more. At the same time, I don't subscribe to dualism, so I'm often tempted to dismiss this not-quite-collective-psyche as not a natural occurrence, but instead the artificial creation of the Celestials, with midichlorians serving as wetware nanotechnology that provides an interface between the user and the Force matrix... But that's going off-topic.

And what is going with the way of the world? What entails going with the flow of the currents of life, and what entails disrupting it? "There is no justice in the laws of nature, no terms for fairness in the equations of motion." The Universe simply is, and as Vergere points out in Traitor, said Universe includes an awful lot of cruel Darwinian competition, irrational pain and hatred and senseless conflict.

Whenever one begins to follow something as murky as "the currents of life," it's a recipe for disaster, because there is no logical coherence, any valid meaning, in any of it. I could intentionally attempt to destroy all life in the galaxy, and a claim that I was following the currents of life by acting as a great evolutionary filter would be just as valid as any claim a Jedi could make. The Sorcerers of Rhand are essentially this - the anti-Jedi, who don't believe in disrupting the natural order; only, of course, the natural state of things to the Sorcerers is entropy. And this is indeed rather compelling since entropy is inevitable and eternally winning, and thus anything but helping to destroy is anathema to them.

 

Oh I got you... you believe it is a psychic energy field, as opposed to, say, the cause of a volcano to erupt. If this is the case however what would the 'will' of this Force be if it were simply a network a psychic energy, unless it was the collective will of life itself...?

I would say the role of a sapient being, as we can consciously disrupt a natural system, is to step back from it as much as possible... in nature typical the natural processes happen in such a way that the system can recorrect itself, while we can disrupt it to the point of destruction... In other words we must allow nature to make the call not us.