That was a Jedi problem, not a light side problem.
Comment on In Star Wars, what would it mean "to bring balance to The Force?"
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 hours agoI think that is precisely the misreading that led to the downfall of the Jedi order. The dark side of the force isn’t inherently evil, just as the light side isn’t inherently good. The Jedi did a lot of shitty stuff under the banner of being the good guys. Balance, I think, is having all aspects of the Force (that is, all living things) in harmony.
cattywampas@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
I replied to Björn’s comment first with more detail, but I fail to see the difference. The “light side” of the force is just branding the Jedi used to claim moral authority for their own rules about who can use the Force and how.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 13 hours ago
The misreading of the Jedi was
Jedi = light side
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
What is the “light side” of the Force if not Jedi propaganda establishing themselves as the only morally correct force users in the galaxy? Who is to say which parts of the force are good and which are evil? The failing of the Jedi isn’t that they assumed they were completely on the right side, but that the force has “sides” at all. The dark side exists in all living things, because the Force exists in all living things. To deny a part of the Force is imbalance.
cattywampas@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I think you’re still looking at the Force like it’s a traditional dualistic phenomenon like we’re used to in real-world philosophy, like yin and yang, there can be no light without darkness, etc. But the sides of the Force don’t work that way despite their “light” and “dark” descriptors. The light side is the natural and balanced state. The dark side is an aberration.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
I think about it in neither way. My point is that the descriptors of “light” and “dark” are our own (or the Jedis’ own) moralizations mapped crudely onto the nature of the universe. The Jedi describing themselves as “light” and others as “dark” is a recursive definition of morality and it leads to moral rot, because people start to believe that the rules handed down by the Jedi are actually morally perfect, and above question. It is definitionally authoritarian.