A new way to understand the Prophecy?

I had this thought, and I was wanting some opinions on this. I could have posted this in a previous thread about the Prophecy, I suppose, but I felt this interpretation was different enough to spark a certain amount of debate. Or maybe even this has been discussed before and I just missed it.

Anyway, what I was thinking is that the Prophecy states that balance would come about because the Sith were destroyed. Some people think that the balance came about through the Jedi and the Sith being destroyed. What I'm thinking incorporates both, while even making Luke the desired outcome of the Force.

Okay, let's take it for granted that the Prophecy says that the balance of the Force means the destruction of the Sith. What's being overlooked is that the Sith are the last of the old way of the Force users, the Jedi and the Sith. Once Palpatine is dead, Vader turns and dies shortly, that's it. Obi-wan is dead, Yoda is dead (though both are Force ghosts, but not Force users in the way that we know them, though presumably they can still teach), and now the remaining Sith are dead. Luke, I realize, is considered a Jedi, but he isn't truly a Jedi by old standards. He wasn't trained like them, raised like them.

So, destruction of the Sith, yes, that was the Prophecy, but that incorporated the destruction of the Jedi, two on each side for years, then the last remaining four dying. That's true balance, without sacrificing the idea that the destruction of the Sith means balance has been achieved. It has been achieved by the destruction of the Sith, but only because they were the last to go.

Luke not being counted among this balance, per se, is that he is not truly a part of the old tradition. He was trained by Yoda, sure, but quickly and haphazardly. He wasn't a Jedi like back in the PT days, which makes him a new kind of Force user, like in the days before the Sith and the Jedi orders, a balance of the Force, without any true indoctrination or established path before him.

So, any thoughts?

 

Thats the way I've always looked at it. Well said.

 

My thoughts are I don't think The Force was that detailed in their Prophecy. I don't think they expected Anakin to turn evil ... nor did it really matter. Think about this, the Prophecy writes about the destination, not the journey. The choices Anakin makes throughout his life dictate exactly how the Prophecy is meant to play out, but ultimately (no matter what choices/path he makes) he will eventually arrive at his destination. (The Prophecy)

So again I say that I don't think the Prophecy mapped out what would happen and how it would happen, I just think it stated what was eventually going to happen and whatever happens before that point is up to the characters playing it out. If Anakin didn't turn in RotS it could've ended there and the Prophecy would still have been fulfilled.

 

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why some people are so determined to see the destruction of the Jedi as a desirable thing. These were thousands upon thousands of good, honorable beings, innocent of true evil, who had dedicated their lived to justice and democracy. But they had to be wiped out because they had gotten a little set in their ways?

Wow - the Force is a real *******, you know?

Like change can only come through brutal murder, infanticide and wholesale destruction. I hope none of you people (who see this as a good thing) see the need for change in your own society, culture or religion. Yikes.

The way I view it was Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force and the Jedi - not by wiping them out - but by letting them see a new way. He was different - that was the whole point. If he had fulfilled the prophecy w/o turning evil he could have led to a whole new way of looking at training - "Hey, we can take older pupils - it can work. Maybe there's no real age limit at all!" If he had demanded to get married (like Ki-Adi Mundi) but been willing to keep his commitment to the Jedi Order primary - he could have led to a new way of looking at that subject. And so on.

That's what Messianic figues do - they bring about seismic changes, but the process does not have to involve a Holocaust!

OW506 EDIT: Star out the whole word.

 

Just to rebuttal your post. I view it sort of like Noah's Ark. Despite the fact that the Jedi are good, they are becoming arrogant and their vision has been cloudy in many instances. Now, being The Force, I would want to wipe the slate clean and start over pure. Essentially wiping away the bad, starting over again with the good.

I'm just adding an objective opinion.

 

Even w/ Noah's Ark the people were given a chance to listen, to change weren't they? And they weren't just "clouded" - they were evil... "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

The Jedi weren't evil. They were hard working beings striving to do good, the best way they could - as they had been taught - and they get no such chance? Just, they've gotten arrogant - wipe them all out? That's too harsh a message for me to appreciate. If that's what the Saga is about - I find it unconscionable!

Sorry about the "cursing."

 

Don't worry about the cursing. You didn't really curse anyway. You had most of it starred out.

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Which brings me back to the original point that I made in this thread. The Force allows free will upon those under it. So, The Force [i](in my eyes)[/i] wrote the destination. It gave us what was going to eventually happen. Anakin being the one chosen to bring that destination to the present did so on his own choices. There might not have been an OT if Anakin was not swayed to the Dark Side. The choices he made determined the path he followed and that coupled with his free will, he was allowed to go forth and destroy whoever he saw fit. Eventually though, all the choices he made still brought him to the end of the Prophecy where, as it was written, he was destined to complete it.

 

i see you have made it to your own thread!

uhm, i agree with you, which makes it hard to debate, i guess.

the force seems not interested in what it wastes and what is destroyed, it's *above* the users and i think the jedi learn that they are not above it, let alone master it.

what puzzles me with this theory is that it reduces all the free will to nearly none. what do you make of that? everyone is going on about choices and stuff, but was there really a choice for anyone involved?

 

Yes. At a certain point fate steps it and settles the deal. But up until that point the paths and choices everyone makes is their own. Each path is different and each choice is different depending on what you decide. Only the end of the journey is written.

 

I think, in the end, Anakin still had the option to never fulfill the Prophecy. That was his free will - he could have kept saying no right up until his dying day.
He could have let Luke die. It was his choice. He made that choice knowing all that it entailed. That's Free Will.

 

hm, yeah, sort of...

i know what you're getting at but couldn't we say that the force even foresaw that little bit about anakin not being able to let his son die?

you know it put together this group of people and this boy in order to balance itself or balance the users... and then sort of figured that this would all go to hell in a handbasket anyway, the jedi being the jedi and anakin being anakin. and then it figured anakin would suffer for twenty years and would still not be able to let someone who he loves die. it's quite simple, he doesn't let people die. where's his free will? who could have refused that? and who is anakin if not the chosen one, who doesn't even have to be aware of any prophecy, it can still be interpreted as an act of personal sacrifice.

 

What do you guys think? Is The Force like The Matrix, where it can't see past the choices Anakin, or anyone else, makes? Or can The Force already see what's going to happen in the end no matter what choice Anakin makes?

 

What do you guys think?

i can't speak for everyone here, but certainly think the force could be omniscient.

Or can The Force already see what's going to happen in the end no matter what choice Anakin makes?

i think it can. and it doesn't care how it will hurt the people involved. it's cosmology, it doesn't give a toss about the humans/other kinds involved, it only cares about itself.

 

Well, for me that scene is more about Anakin finally rejecting all the evil he's done in order to save his son than him simply saving his son. Rejecting the Dark Side meant shouldering responsibility for every act of evil he had ever commited - and that was a hard, hard thing to do. I've always said I give him credit for it. To make that choice inevitable or even easy takes a lot away from what he did.

I think the Force puts things in motions - say creates a Chosen One w/ all those Midiclhlorians but every little personal decision changes things along the way. And the Force keeps adapting the plan.

Maybe the "orignal plan" was totally different. Let's say Shmi ended up in slavery due to debt. The Force had intended that some person find it in themselves to "forgive" this poor single mother's debt. And she would have found her way to the Republic and the Jedi a lot earlier. The person didn't - so suddenly Anakin's born in slavery and the plan has to adapt. And so on.

But it's always fluid - always in motion. And no one has to do what the Force, needs, wants or intends. See?

 

See I don't think the prophecy would have been fulfilled if Mace would of killed Palpatine. There were two reasons Anakin stopped Mace. One reason was to save Padme, but the other reason was because Mace should not have been so eager to kill an unarmed man. Even if Palpatine had control of the courts and senate, it didn't matter because, "It's not the Jedi way."
The way of the Jedi is how Luke handles himself in Return Of The Jedi.

This is from Kahn's Return Of The Jedi novel:

The Jedi have lost their way and so have the people of the Republic. Corruption had consumed the Republic. Anakin was given to the people to help them find their way back to the light, but the people only fall deeper into darkness because they are so corrupt. Even if Mace would of killed Palpatine, the people would of still gone on being corrupt, and it was not the place of the Jedi to kill the people's elected leader. Even Yoda says to a dark place this line thinking will take us. To a dark place and the Jedi knew it, but they still went there.

 

To make that choice inevitable or even easy takes a lot away from what he did.

i see that. which makes this argument really difficult.

And no one has to do what the Force, needs, wants or intends. See?

i certainly don't see this. what makes you think so?

 

Hmmmm...

I would tend to agree that Anakin has free will, but he's still fated to balance the Force just because of who he is. How he did it-- well, that was up to him. But whatever course he choses, he ends up allowing the Force to be balanced. Maybe he dies before that becomes a reality, maybe he's completely ignorant of what it is he's actually doing, but because of him, something happens that puts the Force back into balance. That's what I think it means that he's the Chosen One.

Now, before anyone goes to town on me, saying, "that's not free will!", think about this. We may want to fly to Mars without a spaceship, instantaneously. but that doesn't mean we can do it. The laws of nature don't seem to allow that. That doesn't mean we don't have free will, it just means our choices are limited by the physical laws and circumstances we encounter. And if Anakin was born into the universe in such a way that any choices he can make result in the Force ultimately becoming balanced... well, then, we have the Chosen One.

 

I don't view the Force as an entity who "sees" things or has a "will" in the literal sense. I see it as an energy field (the Living Force) or as an information field (the Unifying Force). Obi-Wan to Padme: "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 Stover Novel, p. 251). I like the analogy to gravity - I view the (Unifying) Force as an information field, a matrix of possibilities with different likelihoods. If you'd plot these likelihoods (or their inverses, strictly speaking), in the three dimensional case, in a coordinate system you'd get a topographical picture, resembling the ones that in books on the relativity theory illustrate the space shaping influence of the force of gravity. The "stream" of events is more likely to "flow down the "valleys" of this topography than "up the hills". It's not impossible for events to take a different course, it's just not as likely. That's what I imagine the idiom "the will of the Force" might be circumscribing.

As for the prophecy issue, we had this discussion quite a few times already on the Saga board, for example in a thread on the change in attitude of the Jedi between the PT and the OT. The Force is striving for balance and things during the Prequel times were unbalanced in more than just ?the dark side becoming stronger?. The teachings of the Jedi order had become unbalanced, they were too much focussed on the Unifying Force on the expense of the Living Force, too much focussed on thinking and meditation as opposed to feeling and acting on intuition, too much focussed on letting go off emotions on the expense of exploring them, too much focussed on caring only about others at the expense of also caring about oneself, too much focussed on preservation of the status quo on the cost of change. IMO these imbalances allowed the dark side to grow stronger in the first place. To achieve balance, apart from the Sith being destroyed, the Jedi Order had to change. Anakin was the initiator, the ?Chosen One? that appeared to bring about that change by being ?different?, not fitting into the traditional ways of the order. Had they adapted accordingly, things would have been different: Anakin would?ve been able to explore his dark side and bring balance peacefully. But they didn?t and Anakin wasn?t up to the task to live fulfil his destiny peacefully despite all the pressures and resistances he faced. So he fell, as did the Jedi Order. By the end of ROTS, Yoda realized that and with the help of Qui-Gon changed the teachings for Luke accordingly. And Luke even further transcended the teachings, thus paving the way for setting up a new Jedi order that was different from the old order as well as different from the Sith. Thus, in conclusion, I agree that for balance to be achieved both of the old ways had to go, the PT Jedi way as well as the way of the Sith.

EDIT: This is the thread I mentioned: http://boards.theforce.net/the_star_wars_saga/b10456/20441079/p1/?50

 

It's interesting how this thread is based greatly on our ... point of views.

 

Because then SW is a story about this great "puppet-master" called the Force and it loses every bit of poignancy or drama for me. If the Force can make anyone do anything it wants - why not just have the Sith reform themselves or better yet - self destruct?

If what the Force wanted was to "loosen up" the Jedi Order and eliminate the Sith, and it could manipulate people at will - then the way it chose to go about it makes as much sense as burning down your house in order to kill a spider.

I also do not agree that Anakin was "destined" to fulfill the Prophecy no matter what he did. Anyway you slice it - that takes away his free will. Yes, the Force could frantically keep trying to adapt the plan but, like I said, he was free to choose. The Force kept giving him chance after chance - but it was up to him to take one of them. And finally - he did.

 

The Jedi are not just set in their ways. They're corrupt. The Jedi above all others should of known that cloning people to be slaves is corrupt.
The Jedi couldn't change, they were too far gone. What happen to the Jedi was their predestined fate because of their unwillingness to change. The Jedi were given over ten years after finding Anakin to change. Time and time again they were given a path of rightenous to follow and time and time again they chose the path of darkness. The Jedi didn't even believe in Anakin to be the chosen one. Only one of them believed. The only reason Anakin was taken into the order is because of a dying wish made by the one who truly believed. The Jedi never had faith in the Force that's why they never believed in Anakin. Anakin was just a child, it was not his place to tell the Jedi that they need to change, and when he did speak out, he was put down by the Jedi. Anakin's life story was telling the Jedi what was wrong in the galaxy, but the Jedi didn't care. The Jedi don't care about others, because if they did they would of shut down the cloning facility on Kamino. The Jedi only care about the survival of the Jedi Order. The Jedi brought their downfall upon themselves. Yes, it was unfortunate that Jedi children were killed but why were Jedi taking children from their parents in the first place? Because the Jedi only cared about the survival of the Jedi Order. A truly caring person does not take children from their parents. Of course, the Jedi can rationalize why taking children from their parents is in everyone's best interest, but that doesn't make it a good thing to do. If the Jedi would have not taken the children, then the children would not have been there when the Sith rolled in.

Lucas is playing a head game with everyone. Lucas tells the story from the point of view of the Jedi. But the Jedi are evil too, but it's hard to see because they're supposed to be the good guys.

The Jedi being wiped out is Old Testament, wrath of God type of stuff because they're evil, and the symbolism is every where that the Jedi are evil. That's why the Jedi Council chamber floor is dirty in ROTS. That's why Jedi fly fighters that look like TIEs and Star Destroyers, but the clones fly ships that look like X-wings.

 

Well, here's one way to look at the will of the Force and free-will. The Force has a will, but is helpless without the Jedi. This is why it reached out to them in the first place and had the Jedi do what they did to establish an Order. Or perhaps it was even circumstance that the Jedi contacted this Force and it led from there, with the Jedi doing what the Force wanted to do, but it could not directly control them or circumstances. Free-will gets involved in that you can make the galaxy any way you want or make any decision and action you want, and the Force cannot directly do anything, only through a Jedi can it stop you. This is why it took a Jedi to find Anakin... though that doesn't explain how they had such a string of coincidences that led them to him.

I personally don't believe in this version, however. Too many things lined up too precisely, and the Jedi, if led to Anakin through this method, were doing it subconsciously, which negates free-will as the concept has come to be understood.

 

Because maybe the way things happened is the way they were supposed to happen, for whatever purpose. That's a whole different matter, as to why things happen the way they do. To have things happen the way they did doesn't negate that there was a purpose to the events.

 

Jolly good show!

 

I disagree here - the Jedi weren't thinking and mediatating enough. If they had - they would have seen the Republic as the dictatorship that it had become and therefore, not worth fighting for. They would have questioned losing their long-standing status as peacekeepers more. They acted hastily in taking on their role in the CLone Wars instead of thinking about and meditating on, both what was happening to the Republic, and the "return" of the Sith.

I also do not see this. If we look at Qui and Obi - (before their world fell apart) they seem to be dedicated Jedi, happy in their roles serving others. Service to others is not the dreadful life some make it out to be. Qui-gon certainly thought highly of the life he had lived - "It's a hard life but you will know who you are." Also if we look at Obi - he seems to me to have a good balance of feeling emotion yet controlling it as need be.

This I whole-heartedly agree with.

Agree again.

I hear this a lot and I just don't understand it. For me the dark side represents unrestrained self-interest and evil. No human being needs to explore these things. We're born in a state of the former and we need to continually resist the latter. Perhaps someone can explain to me how you "explore" evil w/ out becoming evil.

I agree the Order needed to change and grow - it had become stagnant. This actualy will happen to most successful societies or cultures. But I see it more as having needed reformation, rather than wholesale destruction. They needed to be more open to different ways of training and living but I think their dedication to selflessness, self-control, peace, and justice was admirable and should contine in the New Order.