There is no Dark Side, there is only the Force. Yet, a Dark Side exists... elsewhere!

Right, since many debates had people still not understand, this is my next mission for truth.

"There is no Dark Side"

"The Force takes no sides"

"There is a Dark Side"

lets analyse these quotes to the core first.

If we take these 3 quotes as fact, one might think they contradict each other or one proves the other wrong. But this is wrong:

What we see here is just this:
THE FORCE has NO Dark SIDE at all. The Force is One, undivided, unified, harmonic, balanced.
No Dark Side exists WITHIN the Force. But a Dark Side exists, but it is not the Force's Dark Side. It is the Dark Side of the individual, of everyone. Fall for your own inner darkness, you can. Temptation by some outer Darkness is just an excuse by those who do not want to take responsibility for their own decisions and actions.

The Potentium did never deny a Dark Side, it just said not the Force is at fault, but everybody is him/her/itself. And viewed that way, it was right. A universal truth.

When Jacen, Vergere, Yoda, Obi Wan or others talk about the Dark Side... they mean, the bad effects emotions and other stuff can have, decisions, flaws, etc. never about force whispers telling you what to do wrong,who to hurt. The Force is an echo, a mirror. It gives you what you give it. Anger.. results in pain. Love results in love. Anger can give you power in a fight, like Jedi use it sometimes. Anger can give you hatred and pain, depending on how and why you use it and what for.

Jedi and Sith are very much alike.. both believe in absolutes and yet try to be universal, not absolutistic. (as dialogue from Episode 3 shows well)

As example I chose this: Fire and Ice

Fire burns... but Ice can burn you, too! Heat and its opposite, both can burn you and harm you, if you journey too far into one or the other's extremes. And so it is with Jedi and Sith, blinded by Light, or by Darkness.. extremes serve you not well.

to be continued... on njoe.com soon with the upcoming hosted site about Force philosophy and its own subboard on the njoe.com boards. JOIN US!!!

 

Nah, I don't quite agree. I suspect it's ultimately a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" situation. The Force is life, all of it, and thus if individuals who are within the Force have a Dark Side, so must the Force.

 

You also got to take into account that near the begining and throughout the clone wars the dark side was clouding the minds and powers of the jedi, and their ability to use the force was diminishing. If Yoda was completely lightsided as an individual, how was he effected by the dark side of the force?

 

It is a chicken and the egg situation. There are three possibilities.


1. The Force one but is an Addictive Reinforcement: A Truely neutral force still gives a feeling of elation and harmony when used. If used in an emotional vacuum then the effects of such an enlightenment and elation have little or no impact on the person or his brain chemistry. However when the force is used with strong emotion (notice that the jedi code preaches divorce from all emotion), then the elation and narcotic sense of universal harmony becomes associated with whatever emotion you are expieriecning. Combine that with the fact that you can draw MORE of the force while highly emotional and you have a manufactured darkside. A person who uses the force in anger fear or hatred draws more of it and gains a positive association with those emotions. Basically becoming addicted to that emotional state. The Jedi avoid this corruption by preaching no attachment or emotion as anything, even love leads to addiction. Furthermore strong negative emotion is far more common in battle than positive so the addictive reinforcement comes for emotions that are not family friendly more often than not. The sith charge through the emotion and teach that only by living the emotion but not being ruled by it can you be your own man.

2. The Force is One but is a Amplification Current: Whatever you feed into the force is fed back into you a hundred fold. Like the first post of this thread. If you are a dark man then the darkness returns to you and you become even darker. If you are a good man who indulges in darkness the path continues. If you are a good man that feeds it love that feeling amplifys and eventually spins out of control. The jedi thus avoid all emotion and while it is possible for a man to do dark things and not fall into such a pattern it is not common and thus for the creation of a long standing galactic order it is not efficient or wise to acknowledge even the slightest chance of utilizing the darkness within for positive goals. (Think about murder in the name of the state vs personal murder)

3. The Force is One but is a Memetic Currrent: There was no darkside in the begining but the force is a reflection of all those that touch it, and through millions of years of polar thinking and classification, the force has had our own darkness impressed on it.

 

good analysis, I see it as a combination of 2 and 3.

1 sounds too unlikely to me. the force is not addictive, it is mankinds addiction to power that is the addiction. the fear of the jedi, fear of their own dark side and addictive parts made them create their code.. but fear in itself, though careful, is of the dark side, so we have the first jedi flaw in their beginning already.

2 needs some additions.. good and bad, light and dark are just terms we ascribe to things and actions etc. everybody judges different what is light and dark, it is opinion, point of view based, though the general good/bad is what the majority of individuals see as such. but there is no natural truth per se. it is manmade good and bad based on the pov of individuals or masses. so the force reflects everything it gets.. if it is good or bad doesn´t matter for that is pov based and cannot be said neutrally / in general.

3 would then be a continuation of 1 and 2.

 

Physically addictive no. But mentally addicitve certainly. Just like excercise is addicitve because it causes an endorphin rush in your brain, just like sex is addictive because it causes a dopamine high, any expiereince that causes such a powerful feeling of completeness with the universe is addicitve no doubt.

Relative moral positions is of course an intrinsic part of all three parts. The third being a collectivization of common morality. The second supposing a survivalistic morality, the first requiring no morality only the volatility of strong emotion.

 

yub, yub and yub

good example.. I need a new dopamine flash..

 

I would recommend cocaine for your dopamine flash as it is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor and cases a long lasting powerful Dopamine surge in the synapses of your brain.

 

I prefer sex.. I am against drugs

 

Six to one.....

 

I think the canon argument leads towards number 3 in DN, which I tend to like, as it makes it your typical "original sin" myth.

 

If we are to say that the force existed before beings existed (Which it seemingly has), and that there was no Dark Side of the force, I would have to say that there was no light side either. The Force just.....Was.

But Sentients came and used the force, either for good or for ill. Those same sentients lived and died and yet more sentients came to use the force....again for both good and ill, and they lived and died.....the force always remained.

The idea of an untarnished force that was corrupted by living beings springs forth the idea that being are in a way stronger than the force. Not only are they able to use it, but to change it forever. If every person that could touch the force sat down and determined that they were going to further darken the force, the force could become so evil that it could never be brought back to the light side. After all, a "Dark Force"'s will is going to push events towards evil.

I guess my point it, I don't think that the Dark Side was created by people, the dark side had to always have been there.

Carnage

 

There's no light side. There's the Force - which we call the light side - and the dark side. The Force, and then the Force's ugly little dark tumor. The Dark Nest is a good parable for the dark side.

"It controls your actions, but it also obeys your commands."

Why?