Bring balance to the force

[Rehren]

Sorry if this has already been discussed to death. Did Anakin fulfil the prophecy by eliminating all the jedi, and Luke eliminating all the sith? is there any more back story about the sith I can read? darth maul in episiode one talks about there revenge.

Thanks

[Jayman87]

I read somewhere that George said that balance to him means elimination of the Sith. And since Vader killed Palpatine and then died himself, yes, he fulfilled the prophecy. It was once believed that balance meant between Jedi and Sith, but George said that the Sith are like an impurity and screw up the scales of balance. I can try and dig up that source if you'd like.

[Rehren]

Yeah please. I'd just to read some stories of the older sith/jedi conflicts.

[Jayman87]

Bah, George's statements on the subject used to be listed on wookieepedia. I'll have to try looking elsewhere tomorrow.

[Rehren]

Well, all good and no evil isn't balanced.

[Darth Tollo]

Here is my take on it. The sith dropped down to two. One master and one apprentice. Anakin killed all the jedi but two. In a sense, balance was achieved. Balance would not be the elimination of the sith, balace is equality on both sides. It may not have been what Lucas had in mind but that is where it ended up.

[JëÐï PãÐãWãN]

macewindu0 said:

Here is my take on it. The sith dropped down to two. One master and one apprentice. Anakin killed all the jedi but two. In a sense, balance was achieved. Balance would not be the elimination of the sith, balace is equality on both sides. It may not have been what Lucas had in mind but that is where it ended up.

i was able to find this, but i'm sure had more to say in other interviews

www.supershadow.com/starwars/lucas/

Dear G.L., in the prophecy that Anakin Skywalker would bring balance to the Force, didn't he by creating 2 Sith and 2 Jedi equals balance? In killing off all the Dark Jedi and Sith, there is no balance. It's all light side. Please elaborate on this. Thanks, Star Wars fan for life

George Lucas: Well, I know many fans are confused about the prophecy because it has all been presented so ambigously in the films. The prophecy is never explained in full. I'm not going to reveal all the facets of the prophecy because that would take countless hours and few of you would be able to comprehend the complexities of the prophecy. To be brief, the Force is brought into balance when the Sith have all been completely exterminated. The way Anakin fulfills the prophecy is by destroying Sidious and Vader. That is the only way true balance can be obtained. That's a simplistic explanation, but that's all I'm willing to profer at this point in time.

[Antonidas Vander]

Bringing Balance to the Force does mean the complete destruction of the Sith. Usually there are serveral point of views to how and what the Force is. But for the movies that is pretty much it. I do believe the Old Jedi Archives does have information on it.

[Darth Caedus]

rehren said:

Sorry if this has already been discussed to death. Did Anakin fulfil the prophecy by eliminating all the jedi, and Luke eliminating all the sith? is there any more back story about the sith I can read? darth maul in episiode one talks about there revenge.

Thanks

Play:

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
and
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords

Read:

Star Wars: Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

- Darth Vader II

[Anikin]

I was wondering if there were any other good books that took place in the Darth Bane era besides the Darth Bane: Path of Distruction.

[Cobalt60]

its a religious message.

there are three paths; not just two.

balance of the force, is when people are "using the force" to enact the "will of the force" itself.

--> the jedi used it to enact the will of the people.

--> the sith used it to enact the will of the individual.

(re: anakin says "the jedi are selfless they think only about helping others;
the sith only think of themselves.")

BOTH sides were wrong.

why? because the "will of the people" was VERY easily corrupted by politics..
(re: "there is no regard for the common good" -senator palpatine ep1)
..and in the end the will of the people was bent to match the will of the sith

next thing you know the jedi are "using the force" to fight a never-ending war for national security driven by the people's fear.

that was contrary to the will of the force, and thats where the imbalance comes from.





the basic problem was:

the jedi were sworn to enact the laws of the senate..

and the senate was ruled by the sith..

.. so the jedi were sworn to enact the will of the sith !?

(!!IMBALANCE!!!)

--> meanwhile quigon openly defied the council, ignored the will of the people, and instead he listened to the "will of the force", (his words), even if it meant breaking rules defying the will of the senate.

he "lets the force control his actions" (instead of politics) and he was granted immortality for his trouble. (heh)




so basically, in order to restore balance, two thing had to happen :
(a) removing the sith lord from his position of power over the senate and "will of the people"
(even if it meant "destroying the sith") AND...
(b) dissolving the jedi's sworn obligation to enact this ever-changing "will of the people" in the first place
(even if it meant exterminating them ALL, including the younglings in the temple)

these two things were BOTH necessary in order to restore balance to the force.

balance was ONLY restored when the jedi council had been destroyed; when the sith had been destroyed; AND, when the only jedi left in the universe had finally resumed the practice of "listening to the will of the force" as qui-gon had done.

when the only force-user in the galaxy was taught "let go your conscious self" and "let the force control his actions" in a way that the prequel jedis NEVER DID. they were all too busy listening to the will of the people, which was easily corrupted by politics, to match the will of the sith.





-==========-

I wrote a huge mofo essay on the subject which has been posted/edited/rewitten/reposted already.. but HEY! wtf! one more time won't hurt. (heh)

afterall it HAS changed a lot since the last time I posted it. ( its a lot more coherent now. LOL) so why not?

I'll go find the .txt file and post it in the next post... stay tuned...

[to be continued]

[Cobalt60]

[continued]

(here's the essay in its entirety. enjoy)


-======-


Star Wars is a classic tale about the struggle between good and evil; dark and light; right and wrong. In other words "morality", and how it determines our actions given our own freewill.

The Jedi's ability to use "The Force" is a metaphor for Man's power to effect change over the world around him by virtue of his own decisions; a metaphor for man's freewill. It serves as both, the source of the hero's magical powers, and also an amplifier of his code of conduct, or personal morality, (the light side of the force for the "good" jedi knights, and the dark side for the "EviL" sith lords).

Our hero must choose between the two opposing "sides" of the Force, each with different powers at his disposal, each with different consequences in the world around him, and each with its own moral center which defines it and drives it. Just as man himself must choose on a daily basis to use his own freewill with consequences both evil and good, the Jedi in Star Wars must choose between two "sides" of their power: the dark or the light; the evil or the good.

In defining these two paths for our hero to choose, and in linking them to what is essentially a universal constant ("The Force"), George Lucas has thus defined a universal standard for morality for his imaginary universe. He has drawn the official line between good and evil, he calls it "..the dark side of the force", but what does this actually mean given the context of his story? ie: How does a universal standard for morality clash with the Jedi Knight's role as the sworn protector of a democratic society, with a sworn commitment to act out laws passed by a democratic senate?





To borrow a quote from star trek, "..the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one." This same theme crops up in Star Wars, and is used explicitly by Lucas to define the difference in philosophy between his "Jedi" and his "Sith"; between the Dark Side of the FOrce and the Light Side. At first glance then, Lucas' "universal standard of morality" seems to depend on selfishness.

We know from Anakin Skywalker's dialog in Episode 3 that "..the Sith think only about themselves" and "..the Jedi are selfless, they only care about helping others". (A third position is presented elsewhere in the trilogy, but I'll get to that in a minute.)* For all intents and purposes, this bipolar contrast in the philosophy of morality is presented to the audience as the fundamental difference between the Jedi and the Sith.

A Sith would argue that the concept of "morality" is defined by the individual who practices it; that any two people might have two different sets of "morals" which define right and wrong, given their individual background and history; that anything they might choose to do, or feel comfortable doing, may be morally justified, to them, as per their own "individual" moral code.

(ie: an otherwise "evil" action can still be seen to be "good", from a certain point of view, as long as it satisfies their own personal & unique sense of right and wrong).

A JEDi on the other hand would say that "morality" belongs to an entire society, NOT to the individual who lives within it. That it would be impossible for two people, living in the same society, to be operating under differing "moral codes", (in fact, it would be technically incorrect to say that an individual could even HAVE a unique and personal "moral code" of his own personal design), since the morals which define right and wrong belong to society as a whole, not to the individual personally.

(for example: storytelling. Stories are used by indigenous peoples to define their culture and identity, and to impart morals on their children, and teach them the difference between right and wrong; in the same way, the stories that we tell our children define our culture and identity and, impart morals to our children. In fact, the stories that we read to our children often state explicity at the end "...the moral of this story is...". These lessons, or morals which are taught through storytelling, belong to the entire group of people who practice them. They belong to the culture who TELLS the story; not to the individual who hears it.)





This presents a problem with the Jedi position, with respect to "universal" morality. Different cultures can have different moral codes with respect to each other, or worse, each culture's moral standards might change over time. Afterall, there was a time when our own people sacrificed virgins to make the crops grow. They thought this was for the "Good" of all involved, but now, the same culture would define that same action as "Evil".

It turns out, (any) society's sense of "Good" is always defined by "the common good"; anything contrary to the common good has been historically considered "EVIL". That is how a democratic society tends to define the line between right and wrong; by referencing the "needs of the many" (so to speak); by referencing the Common Good.

And as a result, this line between right and wrong WILL change through the ages, as the needs of the society changes through the ages, with "national security" being one of the big ones.

The point is, there can be NO universal standard for determining Good and Evil, Dark and Light, right and wrong, as defined by the democratic needs of ANY society. When using the "Common Good" as a measuring stick for morality, the line between Good and Evil can never be written in stone for all time, like the proverbial "dark side of the force".

This seems to raise a problem for Lucas, given the writer's underlying concept of "Dark side" vs. "Light side" in the Star Wars saga.






So what's a Jedi to do? "..how will I know the good side from the bad?" -Luke Skywalker

By virtue of the Jedi Council's political position in episodes #1-#3 (being bound by law to take orders from a democratic senate), the Jedi Council have been "using the force" to act out the "Will of the People" for thousands and thousands of years. They think only about the "Common Good", as mentioned above. And the Common Good in Star Wars is determined by democracy. So the Jedi "use the force" to act out the Will of the People, but the will of the people has been changing over time according to politics.

Meanwhile the Sith have been acting out the Will of the Individual; they think only about themselves, as mentioned above. They derive their sense of right and wrong from their own needs, and at the time of The Phantom Menace (episode #1), they have successfully corrupted the entire democratic senate to the point where the will of the people is no longer being represented anymore. The will of the people has been bent, through politics, to match up with the Will of the Individual (the will of the SIth).

When the will of the people became identical to the will of the Sith, then the jedi found themselves suddenly bound by law to enact the will of the Sith. This is what sent the force out of "balance", and caused the prophecy of the "chosen one" to come into being: the fact that the sith had taken over the senate.





Think of it this way: the "balance of the force" is like the "balance of Nature". The Sith are like corporations/industry: they TAKE from nature, without giving anything back. From their POV, "the force" exists only to serve THEM (not vice versa). They do NOT live "in balance with nature", by any stretch of the imagination. (The do not replant the forest after they clear-cut the trees, so to speak.)

The Jedi then, are like native americans: they lived in balance with nature for thousands of years. They were the Caretakers of "the force", for generations. They took from the natural world, only what they needed.They lived in perfect harmony with Nature (so to speak), as if nature itself was a living thing, with a spirit of its own. They were conscious of the "will" of this spirit, and acted it out in the real world.

(And this was NOT dependant on "how many" indians walked the forests, at any time in history, by the way. This was dependant on HOW they lived, not "how many". Population had very little to do with it; it was the WAY they lived, which maintained the "balance of nature").

In the context of Star Wars, this natural "balance of nature" was upset by the sith, who were using the force in ways that were considered "unnatural".

For example, according to Obi-Wan Kenobi in episode 4, the force is (supposed to be) "an enery field CREATED BY all living things", NOT vice versa; the force is supposed to draw its energy from "life" itself.

But in the third episode we learn that the Sith had found a way to draw energy FROM the force, which they had then used to create/prolong "life" itself. This was their stated goal: to use the force to achieve their own immortality. In essence, what they were doing, was using the force "in reverse", so to speak. That contributed to the "imbalance" referred to in the prophecy.
(So the Sith agenda needed to be stopped, in order to fulfill the prophecy and restore balance to the force.)

Meanwhile, being bound by law to enact the will of the democratic senate, which had become identical to the Will of the Sith by way of politics, the Jedi were (indirectly) acting out the Sith agenda as well.

They were taking their orders from the galactic senate and its new leader, who was secretly the Sith Lord (Palpatine). So the Jedi were part of the problem, so to speak, not the solution. They had an agenda, to follow the senate wherever it might lead them. Even if it led them into darkness.
(So the Jedi agenda needed to be stopped too, in order fulfill the prophecy and restore balance).

BOTH sides were part of the problem; jedi and sith alike. Both sides, in concert, caused the "imbalance" in the prophecy.





Thats because, for thousand of years, before the republic was even formed, the "balance" of the force had come from the fact that the Jedi had existed for the sole purpose of acting out the "will" of the living force in the macroscopic world. They existed as "symbiotes" with it, in Qui-gon's words; they were its servants as much as its master. The Jedi listened to the "Will" of the force, through the voice of the midichlorians, and they acted it out on a macroscopic level.

They used the force, to enact the will of the force; this was "Balance".

But then, thousands of years before episode one, something drastic happened which set the universe on its ear: the Jedi became sworn to serve the republic, and to enact the laws of the galactic senate. The Will of the People took over, and usurped the Will of the Force. The Common Good replaced the Universal Good as the source of the Jedi's morality.

By the time of the Phantom Menace (episode #1 where our story begins), the Jedi are NO LONGER acting on the will of the force anymore, as they had done for thousands of years. Instead they are using the force, to enact the will of the senate (which was corrupt). THIS is where the "imbalance" starts: the influence of politics on morality, and the Jedi's sworn relationship to the senate.

Quote: (Obiwan) "..we will do EXACTLY as the council has instructed!"

note: at this point, in Episode #2, the jedi do not listen to their own instincts anymore, which are (supposed to be) attuned to the "will of the force". Instead they only listen to the will of the People, which has been corrupted by the politics of Fear.

The "Imbalance" of the prophecy came from the fact that the Jedi had allowed themselves to become bound by law to act out the will of the galactic senate, in the first place. They had become bound by law, to "use the force", to enact the Will of the People. That was the very root of the problem.

And before long, the problem grew. By the time of 'Revenge of the Sith' (episode 3), the Sith had taken complete control of the senate, and the Jedi were tied to the senate's laws; they were bound by democracy to enact the Sith agenda, until, before long, the Jedi found themselves fighting a never-ending war for national security, driven by the people's fear.





And by the time the Jedi finally "woke up" and realised that this was EVEN happening...

(ie: by the time Mace Windu finally decided to "go against democracy", so to speak, and made the decision to assassinate the duly elected leader of a democratic government)

..it was too late. They were all destroyed except yoda and obiwan, who were then forced into exile. But notice: even THAT didn't restore "balance" to the force, at the end of the first trilogy. Thats because this idea of "Balance" had nothing to do with "numbers", or "population" of Jedi vs. Sith; it had nothing to do with limiting both sides to a roster of just two members each. It had everything to do with HOW they each used the force on each side (not "how many" used the force on each side).

THey were BOTH using the force in a way, that was contrary to the will of the force, itself.

That is why the so called "Chosen One" was spawned BY The Force itself, (in an act of immaculate conception), to kill/destroy/neutralize EVERY SinGLE "force user" in existence, who had NOT been listening to the will of the force, through the voice of the midichlorians.

Jedi AND Sith, alike. They ALL needed to be destroyed, in order to restore the "balance" of nature. Even the innocent younglings in the temple. In the end, after six films, both the Jedi Council AND the Sith Order were completely eradicated from the universe. The only one left alive with an ability to use the force at all is Luke Skywalker, and he was given very unorthodox training. He was taught, to "let go his conscious self" and let the force "control his actions".





* The third option mentioned above, is to take your definition of right and wrong from a "higher power", so to speak. To let the force guide your actions. Enter: THE FORCE, as religion.

The third option mentioned above is to listen to the "will of the living force", and take your moral code from a universal standard, without question.

Some might call it, "faith".

To, quite literally, "let the force guide your actions", in the same way that a christian might let the bible guide his actions (for example).

This was Qui-Gon Jinn's position from the start of the very first episode: this character was presented as a bit of "rogue jedi" who listened only to the will of the force, even over the will of the Jedi Council (which of course was tied by law to the will of the people, which was bent by politics, to match the will of the Sith).

Qui-Gon was willing to openly defy the Jedi Council in order to do what he thought was "the right thing". He did not define his standard of "good and evil" by the will of the democratic senate, nor by his own ambitions; he defined good and evil by the "dark side" and "light side" of the force, itself.

He used the writer's "universal standard" of Good and Evil to define his actions.

IF we take this position as the correct one, (by virtue of the fact that this character was the only one granted "immortality" by the writer at the end of the first trilogy), then it would seem that anybody who uses the force in a way which is contrary to the "will of the force", is doomed. While anybody who uses the force to enact the will of the force, is granted immortality. The parallels to real-world religion, as a real-world source of "universal morality", are fairly obvious. It would seem that George Lucas had a religious message in mind when he orchestrated the downfall of his Jedi Knights:

In the end, like I said before, after two trilogies / six films, and a galactic civil war spanning three decades, Luke Skywalker is the only one left alive in the star wars universe with an ability to even "use the force" at all.

Luke was taught to "let go his conscious self" and "act on instinct" (unlike the entire Jedi Order who had come before him for the last thousand years, including the younglings, who were all taught to listen to the council even over their own instincts, and to follow the will of the people, even if it was driven by Fear).

Luke was taught to heed the "will" of the force itself, even over his OWN conscious will. He does NOT use the force to the enact the will of the people, or the will of the galactic senate, or anyone else for that matter, including himself.

He uses the force to enact the will of the force. He lets the Force "control his actions", in the same way that a christian might let the bible control his actions.

He uses the writer's concept of a "universal standard" for good and evil to define his actions, where the "DArk Side" and "Light side" of the force become a reference point for his morality in "using the force" to begin with.

In this way, the 'Return of the Jedi' marks a "return" to an ancient jedi practice of using "the force" as the source of their morality (a return to using the force, as religion).

[Garyn Fett™]

doozi said:

i was able to find this, but i'm sure had more to say in other interviews

www.supershadow.com/starwars/lucas/

never use Supershadow as a valid source. Mickey Tuttle is by no means a valid source for anything canon, everything he says is fanon or worse.


Anyways, I've heard it explained many ways. Yes, the Jedi were sworn to uphold the Senate, and that was a mistake. But I don't believe the will of the people is what the Jedi stood for. They did stand for the will of the Force, but even Yoda felt like they were being dragged down. If I may paraphrase him...

"A few mistakes happened. Sometimes by Jedi, sometimes by the Senate. Then the two became intermingled, and became more frequent. It was a systematic fall towards darkness..."

yada yada. Pride led to the downfall of the Jedi, as well as mistakes made over dozens of years, maybe even hundreds. The Sith were on hand to make the most of those mistakes, and even multiplied them.


To answer the original question, according to GL, yes, Anakin did fulfill the prophecy in its entirety. Luke did nothing for it, though everybody played their parts.