Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
"There is no Death, There is the Force"
"The Force is Life"
Bear with me. I've tried writing this all out before and it's just too scatter-brained to do in one take.
In Jedi "mythology", the Force is a mystical power that binds everything and is responsible for life "as we know it". It is known to have a dark and light side, though authorities differ on their natures. The dichotomy has been thought to be destruction and creation, though Palpatine's "creation" of the Galactic Empire was certainly not "light", and the killing of numerous Sith was certainly not "dark" (feel free and/or obligated to disagree).
The second dichotomy is that the light side doesn't deal with emotions and the dark side revels in them. This seems to be only a correlation, since various light-side actions were done out of love, including Darth Vader's "redemption". The Sith (under Bane's Rule of Two) were rather emotionless as well, since they felt it their duty to remain hidden and further a plan that would take nearly 1000 years.
The Force is Life. This is the key to understanding the Force and it's (many) sides. If the Force can be defined as the process maintaining and progressing life, then the light and dark sides reflect this goal. To quote from the "lore":
"Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm."
The light side is concerned with the "maintaining" aspect of life; it supports community and altruism and holds that all life is inherently valuable. The dark side would therefore be concerned with the other aspect of life. As Darth Bane states:
"The dark side will devour those who lack the power to control it. It's a fierce storm of emotion that annihilates anything in its path. It lays waste to the weak and unworthy.
"But those who are strong can ride the storm winds to unfathomable heights. They can unlock their true potential; they can sever the chains that bind them; they can dominate the world around them. Only those with the power to control the dark side can ever truly be free."
The dark side promotes self-overcoming, for the benefit of the living. Both are necessary for the continuance of life. Without the dark side there would be no development and life would become stagnant and weak (see the Old Republic) and without the light side there would be no greater achievement than the individual and possibly no reproduction.
Recently I read a novel in the Star Wars EU called Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor where a character named Cronal is introduced, with a unique twist on the nature of the Force. According to Cronal, "Only power is real, and the only real power is the power to destroy. Existence is fleeting. Destruction is eternal." Cronal believes the Force to be a small fraction of a much larger entity known as the Dark (note Dark, not dark side). The Dark is a personification of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which Cronal believes is the True Will of the universe. He even criticizes Palpatine for seeking to create a lasting Empire when the Dark had supported his efforts in eliminating both the Jedi and the Sith.
And then along comes farm-boy Luke. Luke is presented with a vision of the universe in which all the stars have burned out, all life has been snuffed, and all that remains is himself. Alone. He sees the futility in fighting this fate, but comes to an all too fitting conclusion:
"Everything in the universe is born of dying stars. Every element is created in the fusion furnace of stellar cores. Every atom that exists was once part of some long-vanished star—and that star was part of others before it, an unbroken chain of ancestry back to the single cosmic fireball that had been the birth of the universe.
"It is the death of stars that gives the universe life.
"With the idea of stars on which to hang his imagination, he could bring his situation into a kind of focus. Instead of a formless field of barely perceptible energy, he visualized himself as part of a stellar cluster, vast and dim; those alien modulations of energy became distant stars.
"Though every true star is functionally the same—a fusion furnace in space—each is also an individual. One may be larger, another hotter; one may be nearing the end of its life cycle, collapsing in upon itself or expanding to destruction, while another might be freshly forming by aggregating the dust and gases of ancient supernovae. In Luke's imagination, he could read their individual spectra the way he might recognize a human face: they looked tired, and old, and far apart, burning themselves out in the endless Dark.
"But he, too, was a star, and the light that shone from him was the Force.
"Each and every distant star on which he fixed his attention, however dim it was, instantly brightened as his light fed its own. They drew near, attracted by his energy, captured by his gravitational field, growing ever brighter as they approached, burning hotter, giving off bursts of exotic particles like gusts of delighted laughter. They fell into orbit around him, becoming a new system of infinite complexity wheeling through the Dark in joyous dance.
"Here we are, in the Dark, he thought. And it's not empty. It's not meaningless. Not with us all here. It's beautiful."
The Force has become a metaphor for syntropy or negentropy, as well as the ability of every sentient being to create worth and meaning in a nihilistic world.
"May the Force be with us all."
"The Force is Life"
Bear with me. I've tried writing this all out before and it's just too scatter-brained to do in one take.
In Jedi "mythology", the Force is a mystical power that binds everything and is responsible for life "as we know it". It is known to have a dark and light side, though authorities differ on their natures. The dichotomy has been thought to be destruction and creation, though Palpatine's "creation" of the Galactic Empire was certainly not "light", and the killing of numerous Sith was certainly not "dark" (feel free and/or obligated to disagree).
The second dichotomy is that the light side doesn't deal with emotions and the dark side revels in them. This seems to be only a correlation, since various light-side actions were done out of love, including Darth Vader's "redemption". The Sith (under Bane's Rule of Two) were rather emotionless as well, since they felt it their duty to remain hidden and further a plan that would take nearly 1000 years.
The Force is Life. This is the key to understanding the Force and it's (many) sides. If the Force can be defined as the process maintaining and progressing life, then the light and dark sides reflect this goal. To quote from the "lore":
"Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm."
The light side is concerned with the "maintaining" aspect of life; it supports community and altruism and holds that all life is inherently valuable. The dark side would therefore be concerned with the other aspect of life. As Darth Bane states:
"The dark side will devour those who lack the power to control it. It's a fierce storm of emotion that annihilates anything in its path. It lays waste to the weak and unworthy.
"But those who are strong can ride the storm winds to unfathomable heights. They can unlock their true potential; they can sever the chains that bind them; they can dominate the world around them. Only those with the power to control the dark side can ever truly be free."
The dark side promotes self-overcoming, for the benefit of the living. Both are necessary for the continuance of life. Without the dark side there would be no development and life would become stagnant and weak (see the Old Republic) and without the light side there would be no greater achievement than the individual and possibly no reproduction.
Recently I read a novel in the Star Wars EU called Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor where a character named Cronal is introduced, with a unique twist on the nature of the Force. According to Cronal, "Only power is real, and the only real power is the power to destroy. Existence is fleeting. Destruction is eternal." Cronal believes the Force to be a small fraction of a much larger entity known as the Dark (note Dark, not dark side). The Dark is a personification of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which Cronal believes is the True Will of the universe. He even criticizes Palpatine for seeking to create a lasting Empire when the Dark had supported his efforts in eliminating both the Jedi and the Sith.
And then along comes farm-boy Luke. Luke is presented with a vision of the universe in which all the stars have burned out, all life has been snuffed, and all that remains is himself. Alone. He sees the futility in fighting this fate, but comes to an all too fitting conclusion:
"Everything in the universe is born of dying stars. Every element is created in the fusion furnace of stellar cores. Every atom that exists was once part of some long-vanished star—and that star was part of others before it, an unbroken chain of ancestry back to the single cosmic fireball that had been the birth of the universe.
"It is the death of stars that gives the universe life.
"With the idea of stars on which to hang his imagination, he could bring his situation into a kind of focus. Instead of a formless field of barely perceptible energy, he visualized himself as part of a stellar cluster, vast and dim; those alien modulations of energy became distant stars.
"Though every true star is functionally the same—a fusion furnace in space—each is also an individual. One may be larger, another hotter; one may be nearing the end of its life cycle, collapsing in upon itself or expanding to destruction, while another might be freshly forming by aggregating the dust and gases of ancient supernovae. In Luke's imagination, he could read their individual spectra the way he might recognize a human face: they looked tired, and old, and far apart, burning themselves out in the endless Dark.
"But he, too, was a star, and the light that shone from him was the Force.
"Each and every distant star on which he fixed his attention, however dim it was, instantly brightened as his light fed its own. They drew near, attracted by his energy, captured by his gravitational field, growing ever brighter as they approached, burning hotter, giving off bursts of exotic particles like gusts of delighted laughter. They fell into orbit around him, becoming a new system of infinite complexity wheeling through the Dark in joyous dance.
"Here we are, in the Dark, he thought. And it's not empty. It's not meaningless. Not with us all here. It's beautiful."
The Force has become a metaphor for syntropy or negentropy, as well as the ability of every sentient being to create worth and meaning in a nihilistic world.
"May the Force be with us all."
