/sw/ - Star Wars

>>25672

>Obviously, the lore gives us conflicting answers:

It's meant to give you conflicting answers, because the lore is generally told through in-universe stories like this anon explained.

>>25675

A novel like Plagueis wouldn't be all that immersive if I merely got Lucas' tl;dr on the subject of the dark side. Speaking of Lucas, video related: the man himself explaining the light and the dark side and what that balance is generally about. Pretty cool.

>the dark side is pleasure, biological, temporary and easy to achieve

>the light side is joy. Everlasting and difficult to achieve.

>the great challenge: must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures and overcome fear (which leads to hate)

>>25672

>This is doubly weird, seeing as Disney appears to want to get rid of everything eu and stick to the canon films as much as possible in every other respect.

>The first theory is obviously more Judeo-Christian in outlook

You answered your own question. Nu-disney, and especially nu-disney fans, instinctively recoil at anything which promotes objective good and evil and traditional values. Therefore, they'll instinctively for the low-effort New-Agey interpretation even when nostalgia suggests otherwise.

>It seems strange that George would go for the former over the later given his desire to emulate Eastern ideas.

You have to understand the difference between interest and emulation. George clearly liked certain aspects of Eastern philosophies, but he's not a weeaboo and he's certainly not a New Age hipster faggot. Eastern dualism influenced him to some degree, but his desire to create a timeless classic, combined with his desire to recreate the spirit of the old Flash Gordon serial (which was very much a tale of good and evil), are stronger than that appreciation.

In answer to your actual question, though:

I think it's a combination of the two. The dark side is definitely a corruption of the light, and not a "natural" phenomenon. You can see this both in George's answers and the way Plagueis describes using the dark side as beating the Force into submission and driving it forward like a beast of burden; the Force "fighting back" against his and Sidious' ministrations also suggests this. However, I think the very fact that the dark side of the Force is unnatural is part of the duality between the dark and the light, and if you call the dark side "natural" you undermine some of this duality. The light side is about embracing the natural way of things and succumbing to them, there's a "right" path to the whole universe and lightsiders are agents of it. The dark side is to reject that natural order, and through your strength of will to forge your own path in defiance of that. You don't "trust your feelings" and give in to the Force, you overpower it and force it in a direction of your choosing. You don't select a natural saber crystal after meditating in a happy cave or any gay shit like that, you craft your own synthetic crystal in a forge, pouring all of your hate and ambition into it yes I know there are exceptions to this like Vader's natural crystal, but the tradition as a whole is very much in keeping with Sith philosophy.

The "unnatural Force" argument aids to the duality of not just the Jedi and the Sith, but for the greater dualities in life these two represent. The desire to ignore fate, or destiny, or God, and to forge your own path, because surely you know better what is best for you is very human. In certain cases, it's even good to have that urge, just like how in certain scenarios, for the average man it's good and beneficial to give into your passion instead of staying detached.

Overall, while the light side is definitively good, and the dark side definitively evil, the idea that the two are complementary and balancing has some truth in it for the greater human condition–the "dark" aspects are part of what makes us human. The average man can't completely reject the "dark" attributes without denying his humanity, and if he did so he might become a pushover and couldn't function in everyday life. The Jedi, in fully embracing the light and only the light, have sacrificed a part of their humanity to protect the greater human body from the threats of the dark; they can do this without becoming pushovers because A) they understand the philosophy well enough to know that you don't have to be a pushover to follow it and B)they're strong enough in all other respects that the "limitations" of only being light doesn't impede them.

>>25677

That's actually very well put. But the main issue is jedi's restricting themselves in regards to love and connections. Why should that be restricted? Concepts like love, friendship and bonds should fall under light side, while lust and pleasure should fall under the dark side. So why would the jedi restrict love and whatnot? I guess out of fear that said feelings will lead to their dark side equivalent, but you might as well destroy all emotion if you fear anything might lead you down the wrong path.

I'm not questioning George's view, it makes sense, but what I do question is how the jedi enforced this view.

>>25722

>I think it's a combination of the two.

Probably the most accurate way to go about it.

>>25732

> Concepts like love, friendship and bonds should fall under light side

They do. Remember Anakin in AotC saying that the Jedi are "encouraged to love?" They're discouraged from forming attachments to those they love, however, becasue the reasoning goes that such attachments make the temptations to give in to your baser passions, such as anger or lust, all that stronger. The reasoning went that a Jedi had to be able to detach himself from the ones he loved, and it's very difficult to detach when there are earthly connections between you, such as marriage or blood. The New Jedi Order did relax those restrictions, however.

>>25732

>So why would the jedi restrict love and whatnot?

I think this stems from a fundamental ,misunderstanding of Stoicism and Buddhism on the part of George. These schools of thought don't actively look to deny or suppress emotion, rather, they try to teach ways and means of transforming negative emotions into positive ones. The problem is that the Jedi are written as outright denying certain emotions because of this essential misunderstanding on the part of George, and that is a hard pill to swallow ethically because it's an incorrect position that no real world belief system or thought process has ever actually espoused.

A Buddhist and/or a Stoic would never deny someone their right to procreate with someone whom they loved on the basis that this love would somehow invariably "lead to evil" or whatever. Rather, they would question whether or not the individual was experiencing lust or genuine love and, in the case of genuine love, they would celebrate the union. Not so with the Jedi: for the Jedi, all personal love is bad. And this is simply ridiculous. It's no wonder the EU went to the lengths it did to try to undermine George's position on this because it makes the Jedi appear out of touch and insane.

You might counter this by saying that Buddhist monks aren't allowed to love personally either; that they too must embrace a more universal approach to compassion or face expulsion like the Jedi, but you would be wrong. Monks are allowed to marry and have a family. They must leave their order to do so, but they are welcomed back, if they wish, once their children have grown and their wife accepts their decision to re-enter monastic life.

In this case, the only possible real world antecedent are Catholic priests. But this doesn't really make a great deal of sense either, seeing as priests don't take a vow of celibacy in order to free themselves from emotion. Instead, they do so in order to not be distracted from God. But the force isn't God - it is an esoteric web of energy that permeates and binds all living things in the universe.

By mixing aspects of Eastern and Western religions, and perhaps misunderstanding key tenets along the way, I feel that George has presented a broken archetype in the case of the Jedi.

>>27277

>it did to try to undermine George's position on this because it makes the Jedi appear out of touch and insane.

That's the whole point, though. The Order is supposed to be detached and out of touch in the prequels, it was a symptom of the greater rot and dysfunction that permeated through the republic itself. If the Jedi weren't detached and inflexible Anakin wouldn't have had nearly as much reason to fall.

>>27346

They're shown to be out of touch and dogmatic, certainly. But I don't feel as if the origins of their dogma are ever properly explored. Calling them corrupt and stagnant doesn't really mean anything. Why does a supposedly wise figure like Yoda cleave to the idea that personal love is necessarily evil, for example? It is never properly expounded upon aside from the fact that it "inevitably" leads to the dark side.

I guess what I'm saying is that to call the Jedi dogmatic isn't enough. I would have preferred a little more world building in relation to how they became so dogmatic in the first place. If not in the films, then at least in the EU. But we never really got that - it was only hinted at.

I also feel like you're pressing the point a little. The general audience isn't really meant to see the Jedi as dogmatic; that's more an example of Sideous' falsities. They're clearly meant to be seen as wise and reasonable. And I think George did a poor job of conveying this in the prequels.

Yoda never accepts culpability beyond the vague notion (right towards the end of film III) that he wasn't strong enough and that the Jedi were perhaps lacking in some capacity. It isn't enough. It would have been really interesting to get EU material dealing with Jedi who were not just on the run, but who were also dealing with their own personal crises of faith.

>>27347

>Why does a supposedly wise figure like Yoda cleave to the idea that personal love is necessarily evil, for example?

Does he ever say that? Like Anakin says in AotC, Jedi teachings encourage love and empathy and all of that gay stuff, it's only attachment which they discourage. Attaching yourself to one person provides a focusing point for very intense emotions, which are more difficult control, which makes you vulnerable to the dark side. Even if love is itself an ostensibly positive force, its influence can make you do crazy stuff. History's full of people abandoning their lives for the one they love, abandoning their principles in a fit of passion, even murdering in the name of love. And while the prequels don't expound on this in dialogue, you can clearly see the effects in Anakin. Love and attachment for his mother is what drove him to kill sand people in cold blood, attachment and fear for Padme is one of the factors that pushed him onto the dark path as he was terrified of her dying. The old order might have been heavy-handed in applying this policy, but the theory that "attachment=dangerous" does have truth in it.

>I would have preferred a little more world building in relation to how they became so dogmatic in the first place.

Agreed. You can infer that perhaps they had repeated instances of people becoming attached and falling in the past, but that isn't really shown explicitly. Dawn of the Jedi almost completely ignores this idea and goes for the big-brain centrist "dark and light are both needed for balance" interpretation, and even if you agree with that stance (I personally don't), it's certainly not the point of view of the Jedi.

>The general audience isn't really meant to see the Jedi as dogmatic

Admittedly, this could be a "the curtains were fucking blue" moment, and we can only speculate so far on what George wanted the audience to see. But even if John Q. Norman never saw this, I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation taken in the context of the prequels as a whole. Lucas made it clear that the Old Republic as a whole was dysfunctional and out of touch itself, and the rampant corruption was why Palpatine was able to get into power in the first place. Taken in this context, it's not unreasonable to assume that he meant for the old Jedi Order to be out of touch itself, a microcosm of the old Republic which it served.

>They're clearly meant to be seen as wise and reasonable

The two portrayals don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be wise and out of touch, and being "reasonable" can often lead to indolence. I do see what you're saying about George not being the clearest on this, however.

>Yoda never accepts culpability beyond the vague notion (right towards the end of film III) that he wasn't strong enough and that the Jedi were perhaps lacking in some capacity.

Does he really need to be? He isn't the one that recreates the Jedi Order, Luke is. If anything, making Yoda be completely aware of the old Jedi's deficiencies would diminish Luke's arc in RotJ–one of the major points in that film was that he was willing to redeem Vader when nobody, not even Yoda or Obi-Wan, was willing to give him that chance. Remember what Obi-Wan says in Heir to the Empire–"[Luke is] not the last of the old Jedi, but the first of the new." Luke, as a fresh mind untouched by the old teachings, has to be the one that recreates the Jedi without the failings of the old ways. If Yoda was able to gain full self-awareness, and realize exactly why and how the Jedi went wrong, and not just that they went wrong somewhere, somehow, it diminishes Luke's role in the whole thing. That Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't know how to fix things is precisely why Luke was trained at all, and neither of them tried to take on Sheev and Vader a second time.

>>27355

>t's only attachment which they discourage

Personal love comes under the heading of attachment. Compassion is merely love that is universal, unconditional and disembodied. The Jedi clearly favor compassion whilst scorning personal love. Naturally, personal love is not without its follies but neither is compassion. I suppose I find it hard to believe that a storied institution like the Jedi order would take such a dismissive and, ultimately, superstitious view of personal love. It would have been more compelling if they had some means of testing whether or not a love was genuine through the force and realized there was something dangerously wrong with Anakin's "love" for Padme. It would also have made more sense in-universe. The Jedi are in danger of coming across as sociopathic with that whole "we take kids from an extremely young age and teach them that they must never form attachments" angle." It doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

>Dawn of the Jedi almost completely ignores this idea

I feel like Dawn of the Jedi really confused things further. If the dark side truly is its own substance and one half of the force, then the Jedi are out and out tyrants and liars.

> it's not unreasonable to assume that he meant for the old Jedi Order to be out of touch itself

I still think this is pressing the point a little too far. Whilst the Republic is portrayed as corrupt in the films, the Jedi are universally portrayed as paragons and heroes. I don't think most audiences would come away with a nuanced interpretation of the Order, and I think that George intended for there to be little nuance in this respect. This makes the whole "no attachment" shtick seem doubly obscene.

>Does he really need to be?

To some extent, yes. I see what you mean about them stepping on Luke's toes narratively, but Yoda's and Obi-wan's constant inability to actually reflect on the order itself undermines the strength of their characterization. Reflection is the first step to wisdom, after all, and these two are meant to be extremely wise.

>>27463

>The Jedi are in danger of coming across as sociopathic with that whole "we take kids from an extremely young age and teach them that they must never form attachments" angle."

Parts of the EU, like the Baby Ludi controversy, actually take that angle and do a decent job of it. But if we're limiting ourselves to George's direct works, and we assume that he wanted the Jedi to be seen as unequivocally good, then you're correct that this comes to off as just a bit jarring.

>>27469

What ever did become of the whole Baby Ludi incident? I mean was there ever a followup story or was she killed by Anakin? And what happened to all the Jedi babies? Were they killed by Anakin too or did Palpatrips induct them into his future inquisition?

>>28375

There was never a follow up story, though it is interesting to speculate. She was transferred off world when things got too hot on Coruscant. I imagine she was either killed or inducted into the Empire at some point. There was that one episode of CW that showed Sheev collecting force sensitive infants. It's CW so the canon's a mess, but still.

I think the story itself is great. It does a lot to highlight the inherent hubris of the Jedi: they are a cult; they are backed financially by powerful institutions yet are in no way beholden to them; they can and do steal children from their parents without prior consent; they do raise those children from the earliest age possible to deny sentient nature by suppressing their emotions and any personal connection that cannot be universalized. It is no wonder that Sheev was able to wipe them out with little to no public reprisal.