"Our ability to use the Force has diminished." What did Mace mean?

He told Yoda that and Yoda said "Only the dark Lord of the Sith knows of that."

Dose he mean there use of the Force is slipping or does it mean there powers of using the Force has weakned over the years?

 

Mace ment that because the dark side is starting to be revealed more and more, it means that their abilities to use the force is starting to get more and more clouded by the dark side.

 

"The Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is."

 

Yeah, that and the Jedi are getting overconfident.

 

remember that this line came becuase they were unable to perceive the creation of the clone army.it means that the darkness is starting to take over and of course the jedi's ablitieswere practicly crippled(remember that none of them could sense that palps was the sith master,wich means that palps is enormously powerful in the dark side,so powerful that he evn clouds master yoda's vision).

 

It's easy to understand.
"[Their] abilty to use the force has diminished [to see into the future, the curtain of time]."

 

It means that their ability to use the force has decrease.

dey can't be using da force like dey usta could

 

They talk about this in the new visual guide for the entire star wars saga. according to it, palpatine was using a sith technique to obstruct the jedi's access to the force.

 

I sort of thought it was because the Jedi had been setting on their well-coushined
hind-ends for a thousand generations instead of being an active force in the, well,
er, force. The become sedentary and compliant the distant from the force.
The sith continually maintain their connectivity to the force because they
actively manipulate it.

 

I think that is a fairly original way to look at it.

 

I kind of like that idea, TheCRZA(sp?). I didn't really like the idea that Palpatine could screw up the Jedi enough, especially the really powerful ones like Yoda, that they couldn't use the Force worth a lick. It sort of contradicted Yoda's comment in ESB

Luke: Master Yoda, is the Dark Side stronger?
Yoda: No, more seductive.

I think a combination of Palpatine clouding the Jedi's ability and TheCRZA's(sp?) theory works about right.

 

As the dark side was gaining ascendancy to dominance, those who used the light side could not command the force to aid them as they once could.

 

Events beyond the Jedi's vision are starting to have a major influence on the galaxy.

The archives are representative of what's happening. We see the old, proud Jedi librarian, who seems to think that her archives are perfect, and that if there's a planet missing from them then it doesn't exist. However, when it is revealed that there is a mistake in the archives, the only explanation can be that the archives have been tampered with. This means that the integrity of the whole of the archives is called into question- or to put it another way, the Jedi's ability to use the archives has been diminished. Not because the Jedi can't see the archives anymore, but because the archives can no longer be relied upon.

Likewise, the Jedi only discover that something is wrong when they discover the existence of a clone army (on the "missing" planet, of course), which they were unaware of. If they didn't see that through the Force, then what else are they missing?

Think of the Force and the future as a ball. If it's moving, then you can tell where it's going to roll, what it's going to bounce off, and where it's going to end up. If I kick it, then it's still possible for me to predict exactly where it's going to roll, what it will bounce off etc. If it's a special ball that, for some reason, nobody else can kick, then I can be absolutely certain that I know exactly where it's going to go. I can even exercise complete control over where it's going to go. But if just one other person is able to kick this special ball, then my predictions suddenly become a whole lot less accurate; not because I've changed, or my kicking skills havbe changed, and not because anything to do with the ball has changed, but because there's another factor involved that completely changes the game.

 

I think that by saying that, Mace was saying that if the Jedi let this go on so long without sensing it, they we're losing their ability and they couldn't be of any more use to the Republic.

 

This is one of the more straight-forward lines in the PT.

Mace means what he says. They can't use the force as well as they could earlier.

Dictionaries are good!

This is almost a Ric Ollie line!