Saga That's not how the Force Works

With talk of the light and dark side of the Force as well as balance it makes you think that the force is similar to Ying and Yang, but this is not the case at all.
According to George Lucas there is the force and the dark side is like a cancer in the force that needs be removed in order for balance in the force to be restored.
So look at it this way, the force is a living thing like your body, let's say your body is perfectly healthy, everything is running as it should, it is in perfect balance. Then suddenly some let's call them Sith Cells stop performing their designed function and start doing something else. Let's call it their own will. So these Sith cells are doing their own will which is causing problems/sickness in your body. The way to restore your body, health and balance, isn't to make more Sith Cells or to kill all the good healthy cells, the only way to restore the balance is to remove the Sith Cells. These Sith cells can cause damage to your body if they are not removed quickly enough, which is why there are the caves full of dark side energy and nexuses of dark side energy, they are damaged parts of the force, that could not be repaired.

The Jedi train to be able to discern and carry out the will of the force, while the Sith bend the force to their will. The light and the dark side do not coexist as two separate powers, the dark side is the force itself that has been bent to another being's will.
This is what creates the clouding effect of the dark side, the Jedi are shown the will of the force, but the force can not show the Jedi what it doesn't know, namely the will of the being bending it.
Rey's 1st lesson in The Last Jedi actually gives a pretty good description of the lightside,
she reaches out and touches the force, and describes the light and the dark, life, death, growth decay, the force itself is balance. She is not feeling or touching the dark side, she just feeling the force. She doesn't feel the dark side until she feels the cave. Luke's comment powerful light, powerful darkness was still directed at the force, as he is not touching the force when Rey first mentions the cave, but Luke figures it out very quickly and changes and becomes more desperate as Rey continues to go closer to the cave.
Life and death are natural parts of the force life isn't the light side death isn't the dark side. Instead what determines the "light" side from the dark is whether or not it is within the will of the force (the light side) or the will of the being using it (the dark side).
Fear, anger, hatred are not the dark side, but pathways to it, because unless you are fully intune with the force these emotions could lead you to override the will of the force and substitute your own. The dark side is more seductive, because once you start bending the power of the universe with your will, it becomes more and more difficult to submit to that will or the will of anyone else. Which is why Sith Lords, become so arrogant.
That is how the force works.

 

Yeah, we all know what's George's view about the Force. The thing is, it's boring, at least for me. So I much prefer to head-canon stuff in order to make it more interesting.

 

I like that take on it, @Love SW2012 . It aligns well with my thoughts on the dark side and its powers:

So-called dark side powers like Force lightning and choke are used to destroy life. But life creates the Force and makes it grow, so using the Force to take life turns it against its own source. That is not a sustainable cycle; it's like a starving snake trying to survive by eating its own tail and is ultimately self-destructive. That kind of perversion of the Force causes reverberations back against the user, slowly draining their own life, which is why Sith look old, sick, and decrepit.

 

I like this. The dark side is perversion of nature. It is to force those around you to your will. Never been a big fan of the idea of gray Jedi.

 

“Fear, anger, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they”

The dark side is a natural part of the Force which, if indulged in, will dominate you and you will fall to it. It’s that simple.

 

Not fond of you just being a servant, even to something like nature (which also feels a bit unconvincing, that nature or life overall would have a will), that being presented as the ideal, and pretty offput by those alternatives being presented as the only options or outcomes.

 

I have to throw in with the dark side is a part of nature. A volcano is a part nature, powerful and destructive. It the release valve for the planet we live on. Having Light without Dark is not balanced.

In the PT, the Jedi think Anakin is to bring balance to the Force. Didn't he do just that? The Jedi, the Light, had been the driving force of Galaxy. Wouldn't the Sith, the Dark, bring balance after millennium of the Light?

 

Bringing balance was destroying the Sith. It's not a yin-yang thing where you need to counter equal light with equal dark and the battle between them is recycling over and over, as the ST seems to treat it. It's destroying the Sith, bringing an end to their evil, and it's a positive thing for the galaxy. Which Anakin did, and which should've been left alone.

 

Right, the Sith unbalance everything with their greed and lust for power. Jedi maintain balance by working for justice and peace.

 

it is a yin yang thing where light and dark have to be equally balanced. That’s exactly how George described it. Palpatine made the universe “70% dark, 30% light”, and Luke and Anakin restored it to equilibrium

the term balance is used because it means equal scales

“too much light or dark could be the undoing of life as you know it” - The Father

“I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there.” - GL

 

In an interview from 1999, George intriguingly said “the mystery is which side of the force needs to be balanced.”

 

Is there some explanation that Lucas gives that the dark side and light side of the force are not part of the same force? If Lucas says it, it must mean something. If we are to see the force not as a whole, then I've never understood anything in the SW universe. Wouldn't the character say dark and light instead of dark side and light side. How could a force wielder go from Jedi to Sith? They just jump from one force to another? We all want a galaxy where the light side rules, but there is always darkness, even if it is not in evident.

 

Lucas has always described the dark and light as being two sides of one whole, not separate (except maybe very early on when their was an evil “para-force”). But when discussing the final films he describes the two sides as aspects of the one Force

 

In over thinking this, a question comes to mind. In the PT, there are 10,000 Jedi all over the galaxy. Exactly what was Anakin supposed to balance? These Jedi have spent millennium bring peace to the galaxy. If the Jedi think the Sith are no more, then exactly what outcome did they expect?

 

As early as Attack of the Clones, Mace says Anakin is the only one who can “restore balance”. He and Yoda discuss how their ability to use the Force has been diminished for some time. So even though the council arrogantly dismissed the possibility of the Sith returning, I think even by The Phantom Menace they knew the force was out of whack.

In the Mortis arc were told that the imbalance on that plane will have effects on the galaxy. Increasing war and suffering. So maybe the cause of the imbalance was the corruption and evil being done under the surface of the Republic

 

I'm not taking into account the Mortis episodes because I liken them to fanfic acid trip insanity, and they don't explain anything anyway.

I don't think bringing balance means making the light and dark equal. If it is, it doesn't make much sense (granted a lot of this stuff seems open to interpretation, probably intentionally), but having the goal be "we can have Jedi around, but not Sith" doesn't sounds like making things balanced like yin and yang. Then again maybe the dark side just has a more intense affect on the Force due to the greedy and corrupting nature of it?... Who knows.

To me bringing balance, while being mysterious, is also pretty simple: Destroy the Sith. Yes the dark side is part of the Force, you can't get rid of it, but you can get rid of the powerful people making the galaxy suffer.

 

I agree, the dark side was reasserting itself. As far as the PT Jedi council goes, as I posted earlier, they are so tied up in their arrogance that they talk about it but do nothing to find out why. Why are they so sure the Sith can't be rising again? Just as they should have investigated the magical appearance of the clone army, after millennium they should know how to research the Force. They sure knew a lot about midi-chlorians.

 

I've had a similar view for a long time, essentially that the Force is nature in its natural state, balanced. The Dark Side is the unnatural. It's not that the Sith are evil that's the problem. There are lots of evil people. If a trillion people in the galaxy got angry all at once, would the balance shift? No. Anger is natural. The issue with the Sith is that they use the Force to do things that go against the natural order. They try to cheat death, manipulate the future, twist nature to suit their own goals as opposed to operating in concert with nature. There will always be people who fall to the Dark Side but the knowledge of the Sith and the use of that knowledge to twist nature isn't something ever Dark Side user is going to know. The Sith spent centuries learning to twist the Force.

 

Justice certainly is, to an extent even how to get peace and its value relative to other considerations is.

There is something to that, the Jedi were able to win the conflict, end the Sith tyranny, without then becoming the new rulers/tyrants, letting there be Republic again rather than Empire rather than specifically a Jedi Republic/government (although pretty much everyone did interpret that in the new Republic Leia would be running it, and Jedi leader Luke would have big influence).

He has said a lot at different times but I think he has more often said or suggested that the Dark Side is unavoidably a part of everyone but it should be suppressed and/or minimized, that it's so powerful, influential that if not minimized it would probably take over.

 

Balance, in this context, does not mean equal, as in 50/50. It means the appropriate or correct amount of each.

The Sith are the cause of this imbalance and have to be stopped/destroyed for the balance to return. This is supported by Lucas’ films and TCW.

The ST doesn’t change this conception either. All it does is bring the Force back out of balance, for it to be restored again. The ST doesn’t suggest ‘even’ dark and light.

 

"The overriding philosophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil."

-George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999


"In each of us we have to balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything."

-George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 2002


"The idea of positive and negative, that there are two sides to an entity, a push and a pull, a yin and a yang, and the struggle between the two sides are issues of nature that I wanted to include in the film."

-George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays


"The Force has two sides. It is not a malevolent or a benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and hope."

-George Lucas, Times Magazine, 1980


"I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil—everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in 'Star Wars.'"

-George Lucas, Times Magazine, 2002

 

So how does erradicating the Sith forever bring balance?

 

It doesn’t necessarily forever bring balance. It restores the balance which the Sith disrupted. It may have occurred in the past previously, and it could happen again in the future.