The Jedi and Machismo

I like that answer, reminds me of something.

LUKE: But how am I to know the good side from the bad?
YODA: You will know. When you are calm, at peace. Passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
LUKE: But tell me why I can't ...
YODA: (interrupting) No, no, there is no why. Nothing more will I teach you today. Clear your mind of questions.

Doesn't it depend on the kind of passivity, though? I think someone like Malcolm X probably stirred up more change for greater equality in the United States than any other leader. It was he, more than MLK or JFK in my sincere opinion, that filled others with the fear of real change and the possibility of a society with much greater equality.

complete transcript

Just to be clear, Malcolm X was speaking very calmly while making this speech and he's only talking about self-defense. Things have changed since then. Now everything is about access and opportunity. Some have it and others don't. Physical violence isn't part of the equation anymore. It's all very interesting to watch; neocon and neoliberal policy competing against eachother while the leftists try to fit into globalization debate.

It's a new language and I suppose it should be fun to learn. Michael Moore is doing a pretty good job, but he gets a lot of flak considering, in five years time or so, popular opinion swings his way eventually [booed at the Oscars, unbelievable!].

No rush on this, I should probably look it up myself, but what's "a normative approach?" Hmmm, so passivity and watchfulness are hallmarks of the good? What about all those angry Marxists and feminists I love?

Hmmm, well, Qui Gon's master was the fallen jedi, Count Dooku. He was definitely walking the line. Balance in all things, as they say.

 

Doesn't it depend on the kind of passivity, though? I think someone like Malcolm X probably stirred up more change for greater equality in the United States than any other leader.

Well, there is true passivity, not the restraint, but effortless passivity. What Malcolm X did has its merits, of course, but it was not a change initiated within people, it was change initiated from without, hence the lack of success overall. There is inequality, no doubt, but the balance has been forced on the people, therefore it couldn't develop from their own transformation.

I think you'll have to go back to the likes of Jesus of Nazareth to find someone who understood that it isn't conflict that brings about the change. It isn't filling people with dread of change that will bring about the change.

Either way the ESB quote is exactly on point.

If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can't come to him with peace.

No. It will not work. Think of any war, any conflict, it always ended in oppression. There is no intergration through conflict and through answering with the same means. The basic assumption is that we all understand the language of love or else we used to understand it. On a simpler interactional scale amongst two people, any fight you have, where you simply overpower the other person, you might perceive that as a victory, but it is not. The other will plot to catch you out when your guard is down orwhatever. The result is you will feel more protective about yourself and you'll have greater fear and greater stress than you had before.
Malcolm X is right, we can still be killed, with or without spiritual resolve, and that won't go away. But it's a risk we'll have to take, not the other way around.

what's "a normative approach?"

You establish factors and generalizations about what is 'good' for a group of people. You establish a norm. And then you go by that norm. You determine who's in and out by it, who lives according to it and who doesn't.
The theme is not to go by each person individually and to derive an ideal for their life, but to have the pattern first and then ask everyone else to comply to it. (Well, what happens in the Jedi order really)
What interests me is how these ideas about 'the good life' that we have, how they are sustained but by means which absolutely not achieve them. How could that happen? how could we seperate and disintegrate so much that we are now at a point of having lost all sense of the Real and the Absolute?