Will of the Force?

The "Will of the Force" is mentioned a great deal in discussions of the Saga in various contexts. I would love to hear what various fans think this expression means. Sometimes it refers to things that happen on screen, such as the notion of the prophecy (Anakin being the chosen one), othertimes it is used by fans off-screen to explain what some claim as plot holes. But what is this "will" of the force and where is it explained?

 

I guess I would say the will of the force is something that everyone has a different view on, depending on their unique spiritual beliefs. I would guess that a relgious person would say that the will of the force is God. Someone else may say it is predestination in the Star Wars world..

I Have a CRAZY idea of the will of the Force. People will probably make fun of me, and I don't necessarily believe it, but it is a decent thing to think about.

Every living being in the Galaxy has some midichlorians. I would say that the Midichlorians Listen to people and also suggest things to people even if they are not "Force Sensative." The midichlorians in essence exert the will of the force. I would believe that Midichlorians interact from person to person in the same way Phermones interact with Humans here on Earth. For those who aren't educated on Phermones, here is a good example of what they can do. This is some theoritical, but has some basis in fact. 2 College aged Women move into a Dorm together. They have Menstral cycles different from each other. Their phermones will interact eventually bringing their cycles closer together, as the phermones excreted by one will have an effect on the other, making her body think "It is time." It's quite a fascinating topic.

So in my theory, Midi's are like Phermones. A person's feelings spreads to people around them subtlely through Midi's. Eventually, people start feeling the same way. As of RoTS, many of these people were feeling "Palpatine is good, we want him alive, he is the only one that can help us win the war." Because the people believed that, the Midichlorians believed that. If an average person has say, 10 Midichlorians, and Yoda has say, 10,000, only 1,000 beings that disagree with yoda can overcome him in the Will of the Force. With so many average people supporting Palpatine, Billions of midichlorians are screaming for the Force to exert it's will to keep him alive. Thus the moment of Truth for Anakin and the Death of Mace Windu.

By the OT, people were starting to obey Palpatine out of fear instead of love him and believe in him. Their Midi's were screaming for the end of the Empire, and moved the Force's will to guide Luke and the Rebels.

Kind of wild, but I made it up on the fly.

Carnage

 

I'll tell you but you probably won't believe me.

In Star Wars there is a will of the Force if that's what you choose to call it. In Star Wars there is the will of the Gods if that's what you choose to call it. In Star Wars there is the will of the Great Tree if that's what you choose to call it. To understand the spiritual aspects of Star Wars is to understand George Lucas.

LUCAS: "I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out there. I remember when I was 10 years old, I asked my mother, 'If there's only one God, why are there so many religions?' I've been pondering that question ever since, and the conclusion I've come to is that all the religions are true."

"I think there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about that God, I'm not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the human race is that we've always tried to construct some kind of context for the unknown. Even the cavemen thought they had it figured out. I would say that cavemen understood on a scale of about 1. Now we've made it up to about 5. The only thing that most people don't realize is the scale goes to 1 million."

The Jedi do not know what the Force is other than an energy field created by all living things. It's an energy field that gives them super human powers, but other than that the real question is does it have sentience? Does the Force really have a will? Gungans, Ewoks, Wookies and Sandpeople are all spiritual people, however, they do not worship the Force. The Jedi and others just started a religion based on an energy that is given off by all living things, but that doesn't mean it truly has a will of its own. Like the man that created Star Wars says, "the scale goes to 1 million."

Stover's Revenge Of The Sith novel: page 232-233: Conversation between Padme and Obi-Wan.

She blinked as though he'd slapped her. "Why--that seems unlikely, doesn't it? What about this prophecy the Jedi put so much faith in? Isn't he the chosen one?"

"Very probably. But I have scanned this prophecy; it says only that a chosen one will be born and bring balance to the Force: nowhere does it say he has to be a Jedi."

She blinked harder, fighting down a surge of desperate hope that left her breathless. "He doesn't have to--?"

"My Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, believed that it was the will of the Force that Anakin should be trained as a Jedi--and we all have a certain, oh, I suppose you could call it a Jedi-centric bias. It is a Jedi prophecy, after all."

"But the will of the Force--isn't that what Jedi follow?"

"Well, yes. But you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the will of the Force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean: it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth--if any truth is ever simple--is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can never know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery."

Stover's Revenge Of The Sith novel: Conversation between Obi-Wan, Mace and Yoda.

"All I am saying is that we don't know. We don't even truly understand what it means to bring balance to the Force. We have no way of anticipating what this may involve."

"An infinite mystery is the Force," Yoda said softly. "The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know."

Brooks' The Phantom Menace novelization

Qui-Gon nodded. "A boy. His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have ever seen in a life-form." He paused. "It is possible he was conceived by midi-chlorians."

There was a shocked silence this time. Qui-Gon Jinn was suggesting the impossible, that the boy was conceived not by human contact, but by the essence of all life, by the conn

 

As posted above...


"Well, yes. But you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the will of the Force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean: it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth--if any truth is ever simple--is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can never know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery."


BEST METAPHOR EVER. I loved that part of the book. Truly excellent. Do you think that in the force ghost afterlife they understood the will of the force better?

Carnage

 

I loved that part of the book too, and after I read it is about the time I started to see Star Wars in a different light. I think that's the point of Stover's novel. It totally dubunks the idea that the Jedi understand the will of the Force. Lucas would have never let Stover write that unless that was the case. It's never mentioned in the movies except one time that the Jedi really don't understand the will of the Force or if there even is such a thing and that's when Palpatine says, "If one must understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects..."

Even when Obi-Wan was a ghost, he still didn't understand Luke's destiny. Obi-Wan just knew that one of the twins had to confront their father. Obi-Wan and Yoda just figured that much out after Padme gave birth to Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan had no idea that it was never Luke's destiny to destroy the Emperor. It was Anakin's destiny to destroy the Emperor. It was Luke's destiny to bring the good man out of his father. Obi-Wan didn't even know that Luke had to go to Bespin to begin Vader's turn. Vader's inner conflict started on Bespin. Palpatine even senses this inner conflict before Luke and Vader meet on Endor. That's why Palpatine says, "Are your feelings clear on this matter, Lord Vader?"

 

It's obvious from the films that the Will of the Force wanted the majority of the Jedi exterminated from the galaxy. Quite ironic that the Jedi serve a power that wanted and constructed their downfall through the Chosen One.

It's a bit of a dilemna why the Jedi were exterminated. Did the Will of the Force see them as having lost the very meaning of using the Force, by letting themselves get involved in politics instead of focusing on the Force itself? It could be a number of reasons, each as valid as the last. I think the only one who would know would be Mr. Lucas.

 

There is an explanation of it in either the ROTS novel or Dark Lord, but I can't seem to remember exactly what it said.

 

Well don't really think that it was the will of the Force or will of the gods or will of whatever that truly wanted the Jedi exterminated. The characters are in charge of their destinies. Think of it as a combination of a will of a higher power and the free will of the characters.

The Jedi chose to be part of cloning sentient people that were created for the singular purpose of killing and to be killed themselves. This is wrong, but the Jedi have become so detached from their emotions that they can't even see that this as a horrible crime. Mace, Yoda and Ki-Adi-Mundi are the representation of the Jedi Order. As soon as Mace and Yoda are told about the clones, Mace and Yoda should of told Obi-Wan to have the cloning stopped, because since a Jedi ordered the cloning then a Jedi could order it stopped. The clones turning on the Jedi is poetic justice. Fans seems to blame it all on Anakin but he was only doing what he was told throughout the PT and OT. Fans seems to be shocked by the killing of the younglings but they think nothing of the cloned children that have had half their lives taken from them and stripped of their free will. Remember that the clones only have the mental developement of a ten year old child when they are shipped away to fight in the Clone Wars. So basically you have cloned children killing Jedi children at the Jedi Temple.

Many fans think it's cute to see little children holding their lightsabers in Attack Of The Clones, but how would you feel about a little child training with a AK-47 here in the real world? The Jedi have fallen from grace but they don't know it. Yes it was horrible for Darth Vader to kill younglings but the Jedi never should of been taking children from their parents in the first place. Those children never should of been put in harm's way. By training children at such young ages, the Jedi made those children a target of the Sith. It just would have been another Sith, if it wasn't Vader.

It was Obi-Wan's predetermined fate to cut Darth Vader down to size to reduce his midi-chlorian count so Vader could not kill the Emperor, however, Obi-Wan didn't know this, he just thought he had to destroy the Sith and he left Vader for dead not realizing that Anakin had a predetermined fate to become Palpatine's puppet for the decades to come. Darth Vader must remain the Emperor's puppet until the people redeem themselves. The redemption of the people is represented in the battle of Hoth. The Rebel's defensive fight at the battle of Hoth is the antithesis of the Republic's offensive fight at the battle of Geonosis.

Luke is the balance.

He chooses to become a warrior when one can truly make the decision for one's own self. He has emotions like love and anger but he is able to control his emotions so they don't consume him, just like Leia. The Jedi Code is flawed but the Jedi don't realize it.

 

Many fans think it's cute to see little children holding their lightsabers in Attack Of The Clones, but how would you feel about a little child training with a AK-47 here in the real world? The Jedi have fallen from grace but they don't know it. Yes it was horrible for Darth Vader to kill younglings but the Jedi never should of been taking children from their parents in the first place. Those children never should of been put in harm's way. By training children at such young ages, the Jedi made those children a target of the Sith. It just would have been another Sith, if it wasn't Vader.

This is one reason I get confused by people saying "OH MY GOD, ANAKIN KILLED YOUNGLINGS." It seems bad at the surface, but these kids were being trained for BATTLE at a young age. The younglings were being brought up to be Aggressive soldier, not gaurdians of peace and Justice.

 

The younglings were being brought up to be Aggressive soldier, not gaurdians of peace and Justice.


For the Jedi, this was the same thing.

The Jedi regretfully entered the war.
And if there is a way to use a sword non-aggresively,
please explain it to me.
If you're discipline is centered around using a blade,
then you'd best be prepared to use it.
And the children doing velocities in AOTC
aren't learning how to kill kill kill,
but how to stretch out with their feelings
and allow the force flow through them.

 

So far as I know, the only Jedi who specifically speaks of the "will" of the Force is Qui-Gon. I've assumed that's because he holds a belief that the Force is not simply an energy field with positive & negative sides, as Ben and Yoda teach. Rather, he seems to believe that the Force is, in some way, a being in and of itself. Not a god, as we would understand the term, but a being of some sort with a "will" for how things should work.
Further, in TPM, Qui-Gon tells Ani about how the Force "communicates" with beings via the midichlorians. That seems to assume a being who can and does communicate when it wishes to, not an impersonal "force".

I've wondered if this, perhaps, is one reason he is thought of as a rebel by the other Jedi: his view of the Force is basically different from their's.

 

I know it's not popular to judge the Jedi. I know we cannot judge but you know when Jedi steal children from their parents and order cloned people to kill and be killed. Then you know what? I'm going to judge.

 

I wouldn't begrudge you your judgment.
I think it's best to look at life with a critical eye.
Just offering a different perspective.

I don't think the Jedi steal children...
I think children are given up to the Jedi by parents,
which says as much about the parents as it does the Jedi.
The Jedi are the ones who gave uniqe names to the clones,
so it's not as if they viewed them only as a near-endless
supply of cannon fodder.
Without the clones, the Separatists could have struck a gash
of killing across the entire galaxy unimpeded.

 

Whilst I agree with the majority of your statement, I think you underplay the role that the Force had in their downfall. The reason why Anakin turned to the dark side was the vision that he had in the beginning of RotS. Were he not to have the premonition of Padme dying in child birth, Anakin may have attempted to kill Palpatine when he revealed himself to him. And he certainly would not have interfered in the duel with Mace and Palpatine. Here, the Will of the Force manipulated the characters into their actions. It was the same with the slaughter of the Tusken Camp, the start of Anakin's downfall. Things may have turned out much differently were it not for the interference of the visions.

 

So if Anakin was guided to the dark side then there must have been reason for it. What do you think that reason was?

 

Manipulation.
He was guided by Palpatine since he was a child.
Being a Jedi is like his business life.
Going toward the darkside is his private life.
In the end, he chosen private concerns over business concerns,
in a manner of speaking.