Comment on In Star Wars, what would it mean "to bring balance to The Force?"
BladeFederation@piefed.social 12 hours agoYes but also no. Due to all the good Star Wars video games and the emphasis on dualism, we think of force powers as abilities unlocked on a skill tree, and you have to choose to use or not use them, or it’ll make your dark side points go up. That’s not really the case though. Everyone uses the Force for telekinesis. Force Choke is just telekinesis, except increasing the pressure specifically around the throat. Sure, you can kill someone and be “good” or Light Side, even specifically that way theoretically. But let’s be honest here: it was a way for Vader to torture or kill underlings that questioned him to assert his authority to aura farm. Not out of love, not out of any sense of “I need to do this to make the world better”. So it is a “dark side power” in practice, because of your intention. There is some debate about how Palpatine’s master (have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise?) was able to extend life. But at least one popular books says that it was by literally sucking the life energy out of someone else to extend your own life, increasingly having to kill more to extend your life by increasingly shorter periods. So yes, defying the laws of the universe of life and death, and using life itself (the Force that is a part of us all and we are all part of it) to inflict suffering, pain, and death, just to extend your own life ("you” really just being the Force too that exists for a small period of time, think Buddhism) is definitely a corruption of the Force for evil purposes. But if you were able to do this to sacrifice your own life to save multiple others, or even to save one person who can serve a greater purpose, perhaps that wouldn’t be seen as the Dark Side.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
That’s a satisfying interpretation, but it does leave open the question of why the Jedi could not see it that way. They seem more than anything else to be an object lesson against simple-minded dogmatism.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 11 hours ago
The oversimplified explanation: they are stupid/unwise/shallow. I couldn’t have said it better myself than your last sentence, that’s exactly the narrative purpose of the prequel Jedi order.
They have the correct words memorized, but they don’t understand what it actually means. Anakin is able to quote “unconditional love is encouraged, it is just attachment that is forbidden”. When he goes to Yoda after having nightmares of the future, he tells Anakin that he must learn to let go of the thing he is afraid to lose, since it is just a part of life. Is any of that wrong? Not particularly, was Yoda unconditionally loving him, or did he uncaringly spout dogma at him when he could clearly tell he was struggling. No questions of what it was about, no follow up, no kind words, no empathy, no nothing. There’s a lot more to it as well, but I’ll just touch on the clouding of the future. So, they could generally see the future before this point, and now they can’t. And they don’t think this is odd or concerning? They’re not on their toes enough to expect a trap or a feisty? Mace floats the idea of telling the senate in episode 3, many years after it started. Just because they are the ones the presuppose they are trying to do good and find the answers doesn’t mean that they will always have the answers or always be strong. Pretending otherwise led to the downfall of the free world.
I am all too familiar with the mindset as someone who was raised very Christian. Jesus himself even criticizes the practice of “tithing the mint and cumin, but ignoring thr weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.” Basically. the religious leaders of the time took the old law’s command to give a tithe (one tenth) of your income to God SO seriously that they’d dump out every slice on their spice rack into a table once a week, and carefully divide it into 10 equal pieces, and give a tenth to God. Yet they completely missed the point of religion, the concepts and real people that actually matter. Even for the small things, why did God want them to tithe their belongings? Not because he came down and grabbed it from the altar every night, but so it could go to people who needed it but couldn’t afford it. Yet the religious leaders neglected the orphans and widows in the community. They were too enthralled with the specifics (and their own additional dogma) that when God himself came, they killed him because they didn’t recognize his teachings as the same thing they “followed”. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, it is a universal truth about humanity, and unfortunately even so-called Christians have learned nothing from this.
Similar to Anakin, I left my local church of over a decade because my mom got cancer, and nobody said a thing about it to me. I called out one guy on it later, and he was basically like “yeah but she’ll go to heaven so no big deal right? I don’t know what you want me to say” Like yeah maybe, even if I fully believe that (which I’m not sure I do anymore) or in Buddhism where we all become a part of something greater, I still have emotions and it would sure be great if anyone cared enough to help me process them. If God gave us emotions, it was for a purpose, not to ignore them.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
I’ve learned that systems serve themselves, first and always. There is no better lesson of that than Christianity. The historical Jesus was basically a radical hippie, but he was buried first by Paul and then the institution of the Church, which didn’t even feel the need to purge the story of the Pharisees or the Good Samaritan from the Bible, two stories which obviously call out the negative religious impulses the Church is founded on.
Yes, emotions are there to be listened to. A big part of waking up is taking your feelings seriously instead of burying them or denying them or ignoring them. I fucking HATE Christian funerals because they spend almost all their time convincing themselves that God is Good and The Person is Happy in Heaven, and it’s absolutely a terrible way to deal with grief and maybe even anger. I went to a funeral for a woman who had been literally disemboweled by her mentally-ill son, and, yeah, you can imagine the questions about God that were not asked at the service.
By ignoring your emotions, the risk is that you either become a zombie, miserably unhappy and not sure why, or you get completely overtaken by your shadow, the parts you are trying to deny (what happened to Anakin, and what happens to all those gay evangelists caught in bathroom stalls).
I don’t know where you are on your spiritual journey, but I left Christianity to become an atheist and now I’m trying to build some spirituality back into my life to keep the suicidal nihilism at bay. Britt Hartley’s YouTube channel No Nonsense Spirituality has a lot of good ideas.
I’m sorry you lost your mom.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 10 hours ago
I agree. That’s why religion and politics don’t mix. Someone truly spiritual is bad at playing politics, a politician can rarely be genuine. So then it just becomes a self sustaining system that doesn’t do or help anyone.
I agree.
Right now I’m just done for now attending anywhere and mostly with studying anything, aside from a few things like looking into Hinduism a bit, visiting with someone to a different sect of Christianity, stuff like that. I’d be pretty surprised if there was no intelligent design or greater purpose to the world. I do believe some form of spirituality is important to the human experience. I’m not married to any idea at the moment though.
Thank you, that’s more than anyone else said :) I haven’t lost her yet, but it’s just a matter of time. A few more years at most. And mt sister has decided now is the appropriate time to say she hates me and has always hayed me and roped my adopted brother into the drama. My dad has been the opposite of helpful with that, my other sister is trying to be there for me. So I don’t know how or when I’m ever going back to visit again. It’s a whole thing.