[/QUOTE]
If I'm thinking of the same character, she wasn't gong to literally kill it but create a situation in which the entire galaxy would become "deaf" to the Force and unable to "hear" it.
the logic of the Star Wars cosmos
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
- Start date
If I'm thinking of the same character, she wasn't gong to literally kill it but create a situation in which the entire galaxy would become "deaf" to the Force and unable to "hear" it.
the Force isn't solely limited to the SW Galaxy. in the NJO novels, the galaxy is invaded by an extragalactic race who have no Force presence or abilities, which is revealed to have been the work of the sentient world which they originally lived on. it blocked their connection to the Force.
So the Force has evolved the ability to feel the Light Side as something good (food?) and the Dark Side as something bad (heat that hurts?) How would this have happened since the Force is not a species but a single entity? And the Force doesn't prefer the Light Side to the Dark Side, so really the thing that hurts it is the sense of imbalance. But again, what selection pressures could have applied to a single entity to have this instinct evolve? Only species evolve.
The Force is more like gravity or electromagnetism. How could something like that ever develop in a way parallel to how instincts evolve in species?
And since it's just some big nebulous energy thing, how would it have the same ideas of 'good' and 'evil' that we do? It would just sense that sometimes some folk use its power to shoot lightning while others who use it don't. All it should be aware of is that it is being used by some people for a variety of things.
Kasdan did not come up with the idea of the Force nor did he develop it too much. Lucas has always been the driving force (no pun intended) behind it and has talked about its influences. However, at the end of the day the Force works however well the plot wants it to work. Which is how it should be.
I didn't say Kasdan did but the idea of the Force changed alittle after the first movie. And I agree it works the way the plot wants it to and you can't define it by science.
Not saying it feels the light side as good and the dark side as bad - just saying it feels the intent in the people reaching out to it. If say, Light use is cold, and Dark use is hot, Jedi or Sith would be entities capable of changing the temperature of the force, individually changing their own by force of will and as a group drawing changing the temperature of the force as a whole to a freeze or a boil. That also explains how the "dark side clouds everything." If you want to change the temperature from its natural state, you must apply energy, which explains why one needs to concentrate to use the force, and casts the force's "will" as the metaphysical equivalent of entropy.
If the Force evolved to perceive an imbalance between the good and evil activities in the cosmos as "bad" the way an ameoba perceives something hot as "bad," then the Force might act to repair the imbalance by doing something to increase the amount of evil in the cosmos.
This is different from the Force not liking evil; the Force does "like" evil, when it perceives there's too little of it. (What it actually perceives is the imbalance.) So that solves the problem of the Force having moral judgments but no consciousness. The Force really doesn't understand the difference between good and evil, or that evil is bad for most of those little critters scuttering around the universe.
I still question how the Force could evolve like an ameoba. There's no selection pressure and natural selection for something that's not a species, so how did this situation come about? That's why I think the Force must have "always been this way."
It's a strange and implausible coincidence that the Force just happens to respond to something that corresponds to human notions of morality. The more plausible solution is that the situation is really the reverse - human notions of morality evolved because of the Force.
Think of good and evil as neutral, "A" and "B." People's life force comes from the Force, so everyone is influenced by A and B as the extremes that govern their behavior. Only in the context of human behavior and society do "A" and "B" translate to "good" and "evil."
How the Force shaped the extremes of behavior is another question, but maybe there's an evolutionary advantage to "lining up" with the Force like that. There's a survival advantage to being on the good side when there's too much evil in the world, and vice versa, but average everything out and a species gets no net advantage for playing the Force's game.
That may be the "right" answer, but it's not the fun one.
So the writer didn't know anything about stories or thermodynamics. Awesome!
Because I can totally lift an X-wing with the biological friction of a ten-pound muppet. Just need an invisible heat pump.
Christ, this is worse than when they try to explain Superman's powers in some sort of scientific fashion. You can't even acknowledge the source of Superman's powers without being bedazzled by how dumb they are, but this is worse. The Force is a thermodynamic-busting magical scheme. That's okay. The Force is stupid. That's okay. So are all mythologies which rely on superpowers, with some really, really narrow exceptions.
But anyway, I always considered the Force more or less a deity, a sort of galaxy-wide Eywa, which moved in mysterious ways. If one wished to ascribe a comprehensible moral direction to it, you can make the argument that the galaxy under the New Republic was better than under the Old Republic, and the Force brought the Empire into existence in order to mobilize people to create that better system; but it could just as easily have a totally incomprehensible motivation.
DWF said:
So the Force is just, like, gravity? Oh, ohh... I see, he was being poetic there.
Last edited:
I like the idea that the Force is intelligent in a way that is so far beyond human consciousness that mere mortals can't recognize it as such. For it to be intelligent and actively manipulating mortal events - which drags the Force too far down to a mortal level in its goals and interests - is too reductive and not fun. For it to be completely unintelligent, and for everything to have a science-y explanation devoid of mystery and magic is also not fun. The Force has some agenda, but mere mortals are too stupid, delusional and stubbornly set on their own petty agendas to understand what the Force is trying to tell them.
I think it's comprehensible - the goal of life is not good or evil but balance - but since mortals are squabbling, petty, always angling for advantage, and convinced of their own rightness, that message will never be heard.
The Jedi are as much to blame as the Sith. Neither really understands what the Force wants of them. By taking the side of only half of the Force, the Jedi act against it, since they are continually striving for imbalance, and they ignore the clear messages the Force is trying to send because they are wrapped in a cloak of their own self-righteousness. The more I try to work all this out, the more I side with the Sith. At least they've ditched the self-righteous part.
But everyone, in the end, is WRONG!On the Force as the creation of life: Life is chemistry. Nonsense.
On the Force as God: The point is that it isn't God. Trying to interpret it as God is missing the point.
On the Force's light side and dark side and balance: These are moral concepts developed in using the Force.
On the mystery and magic of the Force: Being mysterious and magical is only fun if your philosophy rejects mundane reality as boring. Freaking out over midichlorians is like confessing to wanting to believe in magic.
Star Wars was always, from the moment Luke got over his adoptive parents' death within minutes in the first movie, rather low level scifi. The Force was nonsense from the beginning. It was a threadbare excuse for an exuberant, extravagant wish fulfilment story about Luke Skywalker.
On the Force as God: The point is that it isn't God. Trying to interpret it as God is missing the point.
On the Force's light side and dark side and balance: These are moral concepts developed in using the Force.
On the mystery and magic of the Force: Being mysterious and magical is only fun if your philosophy rejects mundane reality as boring. Freaking out over midichlorians is like confessing to wanting to believe in magic.
Star Wars was always, from the moment Luke got over his adoptive parents' death within minutes in the first movie, rather low level scifi. The Force was nonsense from the beginning. It was a threadbare excuse for an exuberant, extravagant wish fulfilment story about Luke Skywalker.
One thing I never understood- when they found little annikan they said he was the one who would bring balance to the force.
If i am one of hundreds/thousands of jedi and there are no sith that i am aware of - balance is the last thing i would be looking for. I think i won. Or if there are sith- balance would mean they gain and I lose.
Balance is bad, not good. Defeating the Sith is not balance, bringing down the Jedi would be.
Seems like a really bad idea to me....
If i am one of hundreds/thousands of jedi and there are no sith that i am aware of - balance is the last thing i would be looking for. I think i won. Or if there are sith- balance would mean they gain and I lose.
Balance is bad, not good. Defeating the Sith is not balance, bringing down the Jedi would be.
Seems like a really bad idea to me....
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
In part, this was why Lucas changed the concept of 'balance' from being a taoist-like equilibrium between good-evil to meaning only 'good', light side with no 'bad', dark side.
Of course, in this reinterpretation, too, the 'bring balance' prophecy makes little sense - if there are thousands of jedi and no known sith, the force (as far as the jedi know, at least), IS in balance. It's pointless to bring 'balance' to something already in balance.
It's safe to say Lucas didn't think the 'bring balance to the force' prophecy out - beyond it sounding cool, that is.
Of course, in this reinterpretation, too, the 'bring balance' prophecy makes little sense - if there are thousands of jedi and no known sith, the force (as far as the jedi know, at least), IS in balance. It's pointless to bring 'balance' to something already in balance.
It's safe to say Lucas didn't think the 'bring balance to the force' prophecy out - beyond it sounding cool, that is.
Which just goes to show that, for the Jedi at least, balance didn't mean a balance the light side and the dark side, but rather that the light side was itself a balance between dark side extremes.
The spectrum isn't "light - dark" it's "dark- light- dark"
In real terms of real emotion this would be a balance between fear and recklessness, chaos and stagnation, hate and obsession, anger and apathy, etc.
But the Jedi before the Clone Wars would have been aware that the Force was out of balance even if they didn't know that the Sith were the source of the imbalance. They just need to see the effect not the cause for the prophecy to make sense, and they could see the effect in the state of the Force itself.
Last edited:
And yet members of the Council (Yoda and Mace Windu, for example) acknowledged that the Dark Side "cloud[ed] everything" and that their ability to use the Force was diminished. They may have believed the Sith were still extinct, but they knew something was wrong with the Force (or their interpretation of the Force, at any rate).
It does seem odd, however, that the Council didn't suspect -- even if they wouldn't want to widely share this view with the larger Order -- the continued existence of the Sith, based on those issues with their ability to use the Force. A failure of imagination or perhaps even arrogance on their part; either way, the blindness of the Jedi certainly worked to Sidious's advantage.
The creation of the Sith brought the Force out of balance an in killing off t he last of the Sith, Anakin brought the Force back into balance.
There are easier ways.
