Lit What Makes a Jedi/Sith?

Let's see, why does Luke do what he does in DE?

Oh yeah, to save the gruddamn galaxy from the World Devastators presently giving Mon Calamari a molecular-level hoovering!.

 

Has the fact that Savage Opress behaves more like a Massassi than like a Sith Lord been brought up in this thread?

 

The Sith are those that cause the change, they stop the universe from keeping static. The Jedi are those that keep the order.​

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Without the Sith, there will be no change, without change life would become static and so would in a sense die. However the Jedi, those that keep the order, to stop the change from destruction. To the force their is no good or evil, there is only change and the mediators of change.​

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The force is the essence of life and thus become what we call good and evil.​

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The force is Ying and Yang, Dark and Light, Order and Choas. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.​

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That, young Padawans, is the difference between the Sith and Jedi.​

 

I think the Sith are supposed to be too extreme a form of change. Certainly the dark side is necessary for balance due to that required change, but the Sith aren't necessary for balance, and in fact disrupt it.

 

So....does that mean Lando's tailor is a Sith?

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People who cause change, are not of the so-called dark side of the force but the sith practitioners are the great practitioners of the forces need to cause change as the Jedi are those that Mediate the change.

 

Maybe it would be better to say Sith are those that cause chaos, life is all about change more or less. And Jedi are protectors of life.

 

From Rinzler's The Making of The Empire Strikes Back:

"Ben will explain to Luke that he will gather all these powers, but he can't use them for evil or he will succumb to the dark side of the Force. If you use it for evil, it will start using you. It is a force for good, but the more you become addicted to it, the more it controls you and the side that controls you is the bad side."

"Vader started getting fascinated by the dark side of the Force and was lured into it. He didn't tell anybody, as he became an evil person. The evil Force was starting to take over the galaxy - it was in control of the Emperor. He began to get more power and the Senate was getting less powerful. No one knew that he had been seduced, but he went around killing all these Jedi in secret. He killed a bunch of them and trapped others in a situation where they were all destroyed; only a few escaped. One of them was Ben."

"Vader is completely consumed by the evil side of the Force. He is an instrument of the Force rather than having his own free will in terms of what he does. He really is driven by the Force. When we kill him off in the next one, we'll reveal who he really is. He wants to be human - he's still fighting in his own way the dark side of the Force. He doesn't want to be a bad man, but he is. He can't resist it. He's struggling somehow to get out of what he is, struggling with his humanity."

"In the fight, Vader is using the dark side of the Force and he's really tricking Luke. It limits Luke's ability to throw things around or use lightning bolts. If he wants to be aggressive, he has to use the dark side. So in the beginning of this fight, Luke will be shielding himself against Vader, but he'll finally get mad enough to where he starts to pick things up and throw them at Vader, which gives him the upper hand. But even as Luke gets the upper hand, Vader knows that he's winning because he's getting Luke to use the dark side of the Force. The audience would also know - it's a physical way of manifesting the idea that the more lightning bolts he shoots at Vader, the more he's succumbing to the dark side of the Force. The more he's winning, the more he's losing. It will also make a more exciting fight. You'll be rooting for Luke, because he'll be so outmatched, and the only way he can survive is to use the dark side."

 

At the same time though, I think there's something to the notion that making one bad choice can seem to compel you to make more bad choices. Once you start down the dark path, it will forever dominate your destiny, and all that. It isn't necessarily because an external force is compelling you to do so, though. The Force, its light side, its dark side--these are all metaphors, after all. The dark side represents all the destructive impulses of humanity. When you make use of the dark side, you're giving into your worst impulses as a human being--and this can lead you to despair at what you've become. But despair is a negative emotion as well, and in the end it only weakens your resistance to committing dark acts in the future. It's the suffering which results from hate, and though you'd think all your suffering might motivate you to turn your life around, it's all too often the opposite. All the pain your choices have put you through become a sort of sunk cost in your mind.

A less flawed person, like you said, might not let their despair define them like that. And there is certainly a large element of choice involved, otherwise Anakin's redemption wouldn't be so powerful. But those negative emotions can be addictive in the worst way. Luke wouldn't immediately hop over to the dark side column if he killed his father out of hatred, but it would make it a lot harder for him to resist the temptation, and Palpatine knew that. Anakin's killing of a defenseless Dooku was a defining moment for him in his final descent into evil; it's no mistake that this was chosen as the dark act that kicks off the events of Episode III. If it wasn't for the moral confusion inculcated in Anakin as a result of committing that act, he may have been able to keep a clearer head when making the choice of whether to aid Mace or Palpatine during the confrontation in the Chancellor's office. Killing Vader would have similarly weakened Luke's moral defenses.

 

But the fact that there is an external force exerting its influence certainly doesn't help. In other words, when we say that "a less flawed person" could possibly have resisted more easily, we might say something similar about a non-Force-sensitive person in analogous circumstances. Anakin's situation may be subject to forms of analysis which would be applicable in the real world, but the whole process becomes that much more perilous when the fictional construct of Force sensitivity is taken into account.

 

But I don't think there's much analytic utility in thinking of the Force's characteristics as a fictional construct. The Force is useful as a narrative conceit because it amplifies and accelerates the effects of negative emotions on a character's personality. But it doesn't fundamentally change the nature of those emotions and their effects. Star Wars is a story about humans and human emotions. The science fiction and samurai trappings give it flavor, but they're not really the point.

 

I would more say that sith are like Kajiu: chaos, destruction and suffering for a nefarious purpose. The jedi are what stands agains the kajiu, they are Jeagers

 

Agreed.

Given Obi-Wan's whole "you sense only a part of the Force, Darth" spiel in the ANH novel, I'm very inclined to see the Jedi (at least by the time the movies roll around) as people who, while they don't CALL upon the dark side, remain attuned to and appreciative of it within its proper context.

Jedi understand and appreciate that night must follow day ("Death is a natural part of Life", the Daughter's attitude in the Mortis episodes, etc) whereas the Sith are trying to usher in eternal night.

That kind of thing.

Which is why none of them go on about how they serve "the light side", even if that's the side they draw upon. They serve the Force in its totality.

 

Since this is a thread about Jedi/Sith, can someone explain this to me; how did the Republic know the "Sith species" were Sith?

My understanding is that the Dark Jedi are run out of the Republic and flee until they find Korriban where they find a slave race that some interbreed with. These are known as the Sith.

However, tales of the Sith are thought of as legends and things to scare children with according to GOLDEN AGE OF THE SITH.

So...I had originally thought the Dark Jedi were not called Sith until they found the Sith species. And once they found the Sith species they were isolated and just had their own little empire that never reached to the Republic...so how does everyone already know that the dark Jedi are now calling themselves Sith? What am I missing?

Even Wookeepedia just says that the Sith order took their name from the Sith species...so was there some war with the Republic between the Dark Jedi exile and Naga Sadow? The TOTJ comics don't suggest it, but how does everyone know that the dark Jedi are called Sith now?

 

real reason: KJA is an idiot.
retcon: Shortly after the Hundred-Year Darkness, some of the Dark Jedi returned to the Republic and were captured.

 

Did anyone ever explain what the point of the Hundred Years Darkness retcon was? I was refuse to believe it was just because of Tulak Hord's lightsaber.

 

When asked about it, Chee claimed that the Jedi Exiles' discovery of the Sith species was always supposed to have occured approx. 7000 BBY.

 

I don't know that you can pin this on KJA (also, it's all LFL approved, so I give individual authors leeway even if I'm not wild about their work) since reading the behind the scenes on Wookeepedia there was some stuff from LFL that shifted some things around and Dan Wallace listing part of Naga Sadow's past in error in the NEGTC, I but it's hard to follow the timeline of retcons and such.

Where did they establish that some Dark Jedi returned? Is this in one of the newer EG's?

I'm just trying to piece things together as I'm reading and then referring to Wookeepedia and I keep running into "Adas defeated the Ratakan Empire" and then later you have the Hundred Year's Darkness and the supposed First Contact with the Sith and the first time Dark Jedi call themselves Sith.

The simpler source, to me, is that legends remained from the Ratakan times since they would have had their slave species fight the Sith tribes for them, so somehow the legend of a tribe out there with force powers got conflated with the Jedi...but I guess there's no reason that Jedi wouldn't have come back.

I confess I don't know what the lightsaber retcon is, besides the Sith supposedly having "forcesabers" which amount to magic blades.

 

If that's the case you'd think they would have let someone know a little sooner.

It originated in The Essential Guide to the Force, I think, presumably to explain this specific gaffe, because it was a pretty pointless detail otherwise.

 

1996: Golden Age of the Sith #0, which KJA wrote, was published. It establishes that Light Jedi battled Dark Jedi for 100 years. The conflict ended with the Dark Jedi defeated and exiled beyond the known galaxy. The Dark Jedi ended up discovering the Sith Species, who willingly serve them. The ruler of the Dark Jedi, and by extension the Sith Species, gives her/himself the title, "Dark Lord of the Sith". The conflict between Light Jedi and Dark Jedi came to be known as the "First Great Schism".

2001: "The Emperor's Pawns", written by Abel G. Pena, was published. It establishes that the First Great Schism occured in 25,000 BBY.

2002: The New Essential Guide to Characters, written by Dan Wallace, says that in 7000 BBY something called the "Hundred-Year Darkness" occured. Nothing is established about whether or not this event involves Dark Jedi and/or Sith.

2005: The New Essential Chronology, also written by Dan Wallace, says that it was the Hundred-Year Darkness of 7000 BBY, not the First Great Schism of 25,000 BBY, that led to the exile of Dark Jedi.

2007: Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to The Force, written by Ryder Windham, establishes that some Dark Jedi returned.

 

IIRC, the same book also reiterates the 25,000 BBY date for the Jedi/Sith schism, maybe in the Naga Sadow entry? Also I think the term "Hundred Year Darkness" originated in TOTJ, so not sure exactly when Dan Wallace knew about the date change.