Saga Why is the light side bad? (Balance in the Force)

If there was only light, there'd be no darkness for us to become oblivious to.

 

Erkan12:
Well ,it was the daughter mistake,but taking that dagger to try to kill her brother was not actually the most light sided approach.
As for the corruption in the Senate,that was also the result of the influence of the dark side,on some members of the Senate.
And is supposed that Senator Palpatine ,Count Dooku and Darth Plagueis influenced those senators to become corrupt.
Darth Plaguies was a banker,so,he had a lot of money to try and corrupt senators.
And Count Dooku seems to have large financial results.
And Darth Plaguies and Palpatine/Sidious and Dooku are elaborating the plan to provoke corruption in the senate .
And because of corruption to have some planets unhappy and incite those planets to revolt ,after.
This is why I think was already too much dark side in the world that we are seeing presented in Star Wars,starting with Phantom Menace.
When the light side was dominant,was overall - peace,prosperity,happiness.
When the dark side was dominant,was overall - wars,people being poor,pain.
Look how poor is Anakin family,he is just a slave. And the Republic do not have any influence on the planet on which Anakin was born.
So,the planet on which Anakin was born was more under the dark side influence.
The light side - dark side balance about which the father and Master Yoda are talking is - the night,the natural process of things aging and persons aging,the natural death (which should occur after 80-90 years of healthy life),the plants raising but after dieing ,the natural storms and so on.
They are not talking about wars ,they are not talking about senators being corrupt and so on.

 

Let's compare this to another Disney-owned property: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The supervillains commit crimes, the superheroes stop the crimes. If the supervillains cause too much trouble, society will collapse and the world will fall into anarchy. Now how are the superheroes bad for the world? They are the ones to stop the crimes, something that doesn't hurt people or society!

How is having superheroes free and the supervillains behind cells a bad thing? We don't need evil to have as much of a presence as good in the world to know good.

 

What?! How?

Again, "too much light" is an oxymoron. The quote needs to be taken into context, which is: both light and dark need to exist as equals.

The light side doesn't take over the dark side, but keeps it at bay, under control. "Within the 50%" if one wants to bring numbers to the discussion. The dark side, which includes greed, selfishness, etc seeks to take over. And the Sith, by exploiting the dark side with their power and connection to the Force, brought it out of balance.

 

With being blind and with the lack of possessing the ability to judge. Jedi Council were blind and therefore they failed to see the things clearly, the all things that happening in the galaxy, the senate was already corrupt and there was no order in the galaxy.

"One of the issues in all of this is the bad guys think they’re good and Lord Sidious thinks he’s bringing peace to the galaxy because there is so much corruption and confusion and chaos going on and now he’s going to be able to straighten everything out which maybe true but the price the galaxy is going to have to pay for it is way too much."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

You're talking about selfishness and greed but can you say that you've zero selfisness and you're not thinking yourself even a little ? I highly doubt there is a person like that exist. You need to be balanced with that either, in a way that possesing both selfisness and selflessness. If you are being too much selfless then you can't see things clearly because you would lose your ability to make empathy and you can't judge things clearly. Just as Daughter was blind and she couldn't see things clearly, and she couldn't judge right about her brother in the Mortis Episodes. Being too much selfish is bad, but being too much selfless is also not good. The Father in the Mortis Episodes had both, and that is the balance.

 

That completely changes things. It seemed that Darth Sidious was using that as an excuse to gain power. If he truly did want to help the galaxy, just with a the end justifies the means approach, then who are we to say he is truly a bad guy? He would be a bad guy in the sense that the cost far outweighed the outcome.

Some people are just bad, and will do absolutely anything for power. And that's how the Emperor was portrayed as.

Also if there was that much corruption and chaos going on in the galaxy, GL did a horrible job of exploring that which is essential to understanding the balance of the Force and why both dark and light sides need to be in balance.

Just looking at this discussion at how many differing views there are on the balance of the Force is a clear indicator of GL's major shortcomings of integrating the prophecy in the saga. This needs to be touched upon in the sequel trilogy especially when the opening lines mentioned the balance in the Force again.

 

Err...We don't need any bad or dark. It's true that we need to balance out Yin and Yang but to say "too much light" is....That doesn't sound right...

I think people equate that line with "goody 2 shoes" or "Too soft".

Filoni screwed this up bad on this segment to me. It's...Making things more contrived and not quite helping the narrative, making the Jedi seem bad..

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't even have the Force and yet it has a clearer and more valid worldview than Star Wars. Superheroes are good and help the world, the supervillains need to be locked away.

Filoni said he worked off of GL's notes on the Force, but like Mace Windu said in Episode 3, the prophecy could have been misinterpreted. In real life. I think what they tried to do with the whole balance in the Force thing is to make the war less one-sided. But if you're calling a faction an agent of the light or dark side of the Force, and numerous times in Star Wars characters like Maz Kanata and Han Solo refer to the dark side as evil and light side as good, then it shouldn't be. Like you can make the Jedi Order flawed, but those flaws would be because they lost their way and fell under the cloud of the dark side, being misaligned with the light.

Filoni also said that they have explicit answers for these questions but he won't ever answer them because he feels that if he told you, he would be robbing you of the process towards solving them. I think that's a solid slap in the face, because the Mortis arc isn't clear in what it's trying to say and only confuses everything, which is what George Lucas said the Sith were doing, confusing the line between light and dark. And that is actually quite arrogant in that fans have to agree with GL or/and Filoni's views on the world.

Like Alexrd said, in Avatar and The Legend of Korra, which is also something Filoni and J.J. Abrams worked on, the Avatar is the Chosen One and brings balance when evil starts to trump over good. The good spirit doesn't take over evil, it doesn't seek to dominate, it keeps evil at bay and under control.

 

MilakeRaznus

Correction; Yoda said that the prophecy could've been misread... Not Windu.

 

True, but my point still stands.

 

You're missing the context. The Sith were born from the Jedi, who felt that using all aspects of the Force, including the dark side, was necessary in order to bring about peace. But it was peace through tyranny. The Jedi believed that freedom was the right of all sentient beings and that controlling everyone through the Force, was counterproductive to everything. Palpatine's reasons are noble, but his methods are truly horrendous. This is why he says that good is a point of view to Anakin, which is a justification for all actions taken by the Sith.

"As evil begins to take over, it pushes the Force out of balance. It's easier to succumb to evil than it is to be a hero and try to work things through on the good side. Evil is inherently more powerful—it doesn't have the burden of worrying about other people. What Luke sees in Darth Vader at the end of ROTJ is something that I thought was worth understanding: the idea that Darth actually was a very good person. Except he's slightly more powerful than other people and when you get into that situation, your ability to do evil is much easier to come by."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

"There's always this good in you. And the good part is saying 'what am I doing?'. Then the bad part kicks in and says 'I'm doing this for Padme, I'm doing this for the galaxy and so we can have a better life'. But the good part is always saying 'WHAT AM I DOING?!"

--George Lucas to Hayden Christensen, Hyperspace webdoc.

"This is the first time he actually has a chance to think about what it is that’s happened by himself and the tear here shows that he knows what he’s done, but he’s now committed himself to a path that he may not agree with but he is going to go along anyway.

It’s the one moment that says he’s self aware. He's rationalizing all his behavior. He’s doing terrible things. But in the end he really knows the truth. He knows that he’s evil now and there’s nothing he can do about it and that’s the moment where the pathos of him being stuck in that suit is real because if he had to do it over he probably wouldn’t do it, but he can't stop it now.

You know where it's going to lead. He knows it will end with a fight with Obi-wan. He knows that Padme not buy into this new reality. He made a pact with the devil and now he’s become the devil."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

"Anakin/Darth does what he does because he believes he's doing it for the good of the universe."

--Hayden Christensen, GQ Magazine.

"What drove me to make these movies is that this is a really interesting story about how people go bad. In this particular case, the premise is: Nobody thinks they're bad. They simply have different points of view. This is about a kid that's really wonderful. He has some flaws - and those flaws ultimately do him in."

--George Lucas, The Making Of ROTS; Page 53.

The chaos is the chaos of the galaxy as a whole. A government without a military force. A senate that is filled with petty and squabbling bureaucrats who care more about their self interests, than in the interests of the common good. Criminals running their own agendas. Corporations having political control. The Jedi have had a thousand years to make things right and they didn't. So the Sith are making their comeback in order to ensure peace and justice in the galaxy.

 

You make it sound as if they were the good guys which the Sith clearly are not.

I'm sure Palpatine ensured order and "peace", but at the expense of freedom and justice.

 

A government without a military force? The Republic created a huge clone army!

The films did a poor job of showing that, list some examples where the Senate is filled with bureaucrats who only care about their self-interest in the films. You need TCW to add to that context.

When did corporations have political control?

It was said that there has been peace and justice in the galaxy for a thousand years while the Republic has been running everything. The opening crawl states that the Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice.

How do the Sith comeback to ensure PEACE and JUSTICE in the galaxy? After the war between the Separatists and the Republic was over, the Sith converted the Republic into the Galactic Empire and started killing all Jedi and any potential threats. They also ruled by fear and tyranny, killed everyone who didn't do exactly as they were told, and ensured slavery. Because of that, the Rebel Alliance had to rise to fight back for their rights and lives.

The Sith's comeback absolutely did not ensure peace and justice.

 

So, it is generally established that Balance of the Force refers to the Light Side having far superior influence on the universe than the Dark Side. Right? At least that is what I hear a lot of people saying and I believe George said something along those lines once.

I never liked this idea too much. I always thought (and I continue to choose to believe so in my own canon) that Balance of the Force refers to both Light and Dark coexisting together. Since Jedi had such a dominant presence in the galaxy for over a millennial, I believe that Anakin was actually meant to destroy the Jedi and assist Sidious in 'purging' the galaxy, reshaping it in image of the Sith. Then, after doing so, he destroyed the Sith thus by destroying both, he brought back the balance.

Isn't such a concept much more intriguing and simply cooler? Clone Wars which are one of the very few canon materials touching on the subject don't really contradict this point of view. The Mortis arc, the S6 Yoda arc. Remember the Son saying the following: 'So simple you make it, light and dark, as if one can exist without the other'. Not sure if that is the exact quote but he said something very similar. Then we have Yoda meeting the Force Priestesses who told him they 'observe all that are strong with the force in the universe' meaning they probably are very aware of who Palpatine is and what is he planning. They probably knew about it for a very long time, dating back to other Rule of Two Sith.

This leads me to believe that they don't really think of Sith as enemies. Nor allies for that matter. Same applies to the Jedi though. They simply observe all beings strong in the force and try to preserve balance of the universe. Since they knew in advance that Sith would be victorious, they aided Yoda. At least that is how I interpret it.

What do you guys think?

 

What's established is that the true definition of balance in the Force has never been established

Seriously, we don't know... yet!

 

Good is a point of view. So, yes, the Sith are good. Just as they are evil. Just as the Jedi are both good and evil from a point of view. Remember that in the Sith point of view, the Jedi are the ones responsible for letting the chaos and disharmony continue. They refused to do anything but placate a crumbling government. The Sith have everyone's interest at heart, while meeting out their own interests.

No, they didn't. The Sith did that for themselves, not for the Republic. The Senate didn't authorize the creation of a Clone Army, because they were debating about passing a bill that would allow for the creation of an army. Not the Clone Army. Ten years ago, the Sith manipulated Sifo-Dyas and killed him, in order to create the Clone Army so that when the time came, they could start their war and use the clones to win it. Prior to then, there was only the Jedi and they weren't doing a very good job. The Clone Army only existed to fight in a fake war.

Not really. As noted in TPM, many in the Senate were hesitant to get involved in the Naboo crisis. Complete with Senator Aks Moe calling for a committee to investigate Padme's claims, which were deemed slanderous and were without merit. And as Palpatine pointed out, the Chancellor was weak and surrounded by scandal which eliminated his effectiveness. The bureaucrats were in control, not the Chancellor.

The Trade Federation, the Techno Union and the Intergalactic Banking Clan all had seats in the Senate. That's like Microsoft, BP Oil and Ford having seats in Congress.

There was no true peace in the Republic. Hence slavery existed while the Jedi did. The Hutts and Black Sun ran free to cause problems. The Senate was filled with petty squabbling. Peace and justice did come because the Empire took control. They had the Imperial military, the Regional Governors, the Inquisitors and soon the Death Star. Had it not been for the few Jedi survivors and Darth Vader having a moment of weakness, the Alliance would have been crushed and peace would reign supreme. The Jedi and the Alliance undid the hard work of the Sith and the Empire, which is why the First Order and the Knights of the Ren are taking action against the New Republic and the Resistance. They've eliminated the New Republic and the new Jedi Order. Once the last Jedi is dead and the Resistance falls, peace will reign once more.

 

Whoa... we've already established that the balance in the Force requires both light and dark sides. The light side, the Jedi, the Republic, and the Rebel Alliance/Resistance being destroyed in no way shape or form will make the galaxy a better place.

Lor San Tekka said it himself. Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force.

You'll need to rethink your sense of morality if you believe that the Jedi and the Resistance are evil and the First Order and the Knights of Ren are the actual do-gooders. Anakin turned his back on the Republic and the Jedi, and decided to realign himself with light in the end.

The First Order kills anyone who poses any sign of not following exactly what they say. They blew up the entire Hosnian system. The Empire destroyed a peaceful planet of innocent people to say that they could. When did the dark side suddenly become the heroes and the Resistance become evil?

 

darth-sinister wrote

Good is a point of view. So, yes, the Sith are good. Just as they are evil. Just as the Jedi are both good and evil from a point of view. Remember that in the Sith point of view, the Jedi are the ones responsible for letting the chaos and disharmony continue. They refused to do anything but placate a crumbling government. The Sith have everyone's interest at heart, while meeting out their own interests.

Eh...you are aware that certain "in-universe" statements from fictional characters, especially from antagonists with an agenda, are supposed to be taken with a lot of salt?

Where are the Jedi evil? Just because they don't interfere with / regulate the politics of the Senate as some kind of moral majority?

There is a thing called "free will", and it's the job of the citizens of the planets / star systems to elect their political leaders. If they vote for leaders that actually do not really represent the will of the people but pursue selfish interests or don't aim for the common good, then it is their fault alone - and something most definitely the Jedi couldn't possibly be held accountable for.

The Republic as a political system with the Jedi as the guardians of peace and justice has maintained order in the galaxy for over a thousand years. It's only that the Jedi have gotten so accustomed to the status quo and become somewhat inflexible to react properly to a new and unexpected thread which ultimately leads to their demise.

 

...but we are trying: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...to-escape-it-why-mace-lost-the-duel.50011344/

 

I don't really think it was ever supposed to be about that. The general idea - and I think this works far better than any dark/light equal split - is that the force flows in some sort of natural balance. Jedi follow that balance, they let themselves by guided by the force. Sith - or any darksiders for that matter - try to twist the force to do their bidding. This isn't really a problem until a Sith succeeds in such a capacity that the natural flow gets disturbed. In other words: the existence of Sith isn't really a problem, as the dark side is also one part of what makes up the force, in small numbers or with little influence they are nothing but a drop in the bucket. But the force being twisted in a large way, like Palpatine was doing, leads to the flow being brought out of balance. This in turn leads to the force bringing itself back into balance by getting rid of the harmful influence.

The Jedi cannot bring the force out of balance, nor would a removal of Jedi lead to a return of balance. The idea that the removal of both Jedi and Sith leads to balance more or less falls flat right away. Just having Jedi with basically no Sith-influence whatsoever doesn't mean that there is only the light left, there is always the temptation of the dark side. You have to remember that the situation during the prequels wasn't a split between dark and light or Sith and Jedi. The Jedi specifically mentioned that they were significantly weakened in their use of the force, meaning the dark side was far more influential than the light at this point.

The Jedi being basically without enemy over 1000 years is all the proof you need that they cannot cause the force to become unbalanced. 1000 years are a long time, way too long for the force to accept itself to be out of balance when you consider how quickly Anakin arrived to get rid of the Sith. It also doesn't work from a different angle: if the Jedi being all alone would be an act that unbalances the force, than the rise of the Sith would be what the force wants, as it brings things back into balance. There wouldn't be a need to create a choosen one if the Sith are currently in the process of finally catching up to the Jedi in terms of influence on the force, yet that is exactly what happened.

Seeing how there are no Sith left, but most definately one Jedi in Luke (and no, I don't think of him as something like a "grey Jedi" or anything like that nonsense just because he lashed out in anger once, he very much is a Jedi) the force would have done a pretty bad job at balancing things if there was supposed to be equality between light and dark.

 

Oissan wrote

The Jedi cannot bring the force out of balance, nor would a removal of Jedi lead to a return of balance. The idea that the removal of both Jedi and Sith leads to balance more or less falls flat right away.

But didn't the prophecy require the Jedi and the Sith to disappear until only Luke was left?

The Jedi specifically mentioned that they were significantly weakened in their use of the force, meaning the dark side was far more influential than the light at this point.

On a wider scale and not just because of Palpatine (who merely used the dark side dominance to camouflage his own presence)?

 

You're missing my point. I am showing you the point of view of the Sith, the Ren, the Empire, the First Order and their supporters. Evil can view itself as good even if it is absolute evil. A realistic evil does not see itself as evil. Just look at the real world. Did Hitler think he was evil? What about Bin Laden? Charles Manson doesn't see himself as evil, but as a saint who wants to free people. Cartoon evil is evil like Freddy Krueger, Skeletor and Cobra Commander. Real evil is something else.

You're looking at good and evil as absolutes. Black and white. It is not that way in real life and it is the kind of thing that really needs to be examined in a more critical way. Different viewpoints is why we have radical, extremist terrorists who view America as evil. Different viewpoints is why Kim Jong Un thinks America is evil and would love to nuke us into oblivion.

You and I are raised to think in the terms that we do. Other people have different views based on how they were raised.

 

Pardon my saying but one of the reasons the young George Lucas made Star Wars was to give young people a moral compass during an outspoken "grey" period, which is the job, in a manner of speaking, of any great mythological work.

The two examples you are using for a different point of view is essentially what Anakin brought himself to believe ("The Jedi are evil"), but it's a belief that's essentially due to ignorance, lack of information / education and a lot of spin-doctoring of people that have a certain agenda to create hatred.

 

It helps to understand when we get to the heart of the real issue here. The 'light side' is really more like selfless wisdom, while the 'dark side' is really more like selfish passion. The Force amplifies whatever is within you (I do not believe the Force literally has sides, but experientially it does because we have sides). And through you, The Force can either distort or clarify your lens. In this way, the issue is sort of like that in Buddhism, a significant influence on Star Wars -- in Buddhism, there is a lot of talk of the need for balance between wisdom and compassion. Too much wisdom without involved emotional compassion, and you become simply detached. Too much passion (or compassion) without wisdom, and you either become over-giving (think: codependent) or overly selfish (think: narcissistic; both codependence and narcissism stem from problematic views of the self coupled with boundary issues. You can see this in regular users of the dark side.).

The healthiest attitude is a balance between passion (compassion) and wisdom. This is embodied in Luke, but Luke was not created from the Force, and nor did he spend a lot of time using the dark side (or even the light). Anakin was all of that, and he was also the person who was really the galaxy's tipping point at many important moments. He is the Chosen One, not only because he defeats both the dogma of the Jedi and Sith ("once you go bad you never come back"), a breakthrough for him that is both transformative and transcendent, but he also makes the crucial choice the restores to the galaxy peace and freedom. He also brought it chaos and evil before. If you think about it, the Chosen One idea really works amazingly, it's just that few people really think it out to its logical conclusion.

So, coming back to your question and the Buddhism analogy, it would be sort of like if we asked, "what is wrong with wisdom?" Well, nothing is wrong with wisdom. But if you use only that without any larger inclusion of its companion (passion/compassion), you will become imbalanced. Like the Jedi did in the PT. On the flip side, if you only use passion (or compassion) without wisdom, you will likely cause much suffering through giving too much to the universe or giving too little and taking the rest for yourself. In other words, it can distort your mind. That's the dark side. The reason it is so dark, though, is that it is used without wisdom and reflection of that kind, without a larger view. So the Sith have the same problem the Jedi have but in reverse. The balance is exactly that: not having half of each, but having the whole picture in such a way that you transcend definitional limits. In a way, that is enlightenment.

 

Right, that's the point. The Sith have a different view which is why they think that they are the good guys in this scenario. Lucas was showing us that our points of view are what define us. They can be easily misconstrued and used to sell someone on an ideal that is fundamentally wrong, but will also seem right.

"What drove me to make these movies is that this is a really interesting story about how people go bad. In this particular case, the premise is; Nobody thinks they're bad. They simply have different points of view."

--George Lucas, The Making Of ROTS; Page 53.

Remember, Lucas is telling us that the villains don't see themselves as the villains.

OBI-WAN: "Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"

ANAKIN: "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."