The Frailty of Ignorance and The Revenge of the Sixth
Outside of the domain of objective morality, a definite answer to the difference between good and evil is demonstrably hard, if not impossible to answer. With no grounds left to ground morality on, sophists have a difficult time explaining moral order among cultures, religions and places to an almost universal scale (much like patriarchy) that it is impossible for morality to have been a product of any divergent opinion (nobody considers an act like rape to be of any moral goodness, however relativistic a worldview one holds). Yet, one of the many ridiculous attempts to color the nature of moral reality with a black and white picture comes in the form of the movie series, Star Wars (I shall admit that I do not see the Star Wars franchise in very good light also) where the opposing sides are painted in darkness and light, representing the forces of good at battle with evil as George Lucas seems to have forgotten the first rule of the Old Republic, one should not have judged another based on the color of the lightsaber one wields. In the Star Wars Universe, the Sith are evil and the Jedi are good. The Jedi try to bring in balance to the agency of the Force and the Sith try to push their intrinsic motives in trying to appropriate a world dependent on their own making, we are told. This superfluous difference is put to an elaborate display in the seven Star Wars movies and many novels outside of the canon universe but I shall be restricting myself to the medium of film and the intricacies therein rather than opine about the whole of the Star Wars’ fictional setting (a discussion I am righteously unworthy of.)
Star Wars revolves around the fall, the rise and the eventual redemption of Anankim Skywalker, an orphaned child who is brought up in the ways of the Jedi, who call themselves as guardians of order, truth and the light. Naturally, the Jedi distrust the evil Sith who poison themselves with passion and the chaos within, calling them hypocrites to the nature of the Force, something they believe to be a cardinal sin, resulting in the moral anarchy that pits one group against another; except there isn’t any real difference between the two sides that make one of them any less hypocritical against the other. The notion of a good Jedi is as uninspired as the notion of a bad Sith outside of a vaguely subjective ideal which you might have decided for yourself, except your feelings aren’t to be trusted. A sequential comparison between the two show a rather stark difference, difference in grade but not difference in kind.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
This is the Jedi Code and while it might appear overtly ambitious and plausibly wise, there is little to it than a colloquial tale of sorts as opposed to a fable of wisdom (or a moral plaque) that it poses itself to be. Consider the first statement that there is no emotion and I assume it does not mean that a Jedi should be an emotionless robot, but that emotions are always second tier when it comes to the realm of rationality. Traditionally you would have come across this as a commandment in the battlefield but under a code that is supposed to be your only guide, the Jedi code turns murkier under the light of reason. Why would emotion be a bad predicament is a question that has no definite answer with respect to the other statements that follow it because emotion drives empathy and empathy is the first thing you need to be a compassionate soul, empathy for the oppressed is what has always led people on the dedication to the cause of greater good even at great personal cost; passion and empathy are weapons the enemy would not share and that in itself sets a trifle of a difference between good and bad, is it not? Using the lightsaber as a weapon of force could be a great way to counter the opposing side but we are told that there is not any honor in passionately creating a lightsaber out of something; I beg to differ. The second statement on the other hand is the most dangerous and the most uninformed because knowledge as a whole is a precursor of doubt; knowledge is not a vice and to contrast, ignorance definitely is but only on a cursory glance of the statement does it stay meaningful. The Jedi do not say that knowledge is a virtue but that the pursuit of knowledge is a Jedi trait and that everything else is precisely what they discard, ignorance. The Jedi are absolutely certain that they have knowledge regarding every other order as purveyors of ignorance which if you would ask me is the height of hubris any person seeking true knowledge would avoid at any cost. Not that true knowledge in itself is less viable than any alternative but that the arrogant presupposition that the knowledge held by the Jedi is indeed the correct version of it without any application of empiricism is pure ignorance in itself. Is there no passion? For there certainly is, and passion is what drives a loving husband to die in place of his family, passion is what leads the teacher to kindle the flame of doubt in a student’s heart, passion is that what sets apart the drunkard from the warrior and passion to serve a cause is what drives a Jedi (or a Sith) to a journey that is greater than his own. No chaos seems like a delectable end but there is nothing about chaos that is unsettling in comparison to stagnancy; if there is no chaos there would also be no harmony because change is meaningful and while it can harbor for the better or for the worst, chaos is not rote because chaos in itself is a seed of hope. Instead the Jedi favor a world that is passive and permanent, dormant and stagnant when a universe of real beings with real choices to make can mess up but that is the cycle of life with the important lesson being that we emerge out of the chaos victorious instead of lamenting on the lifeless alternative that a state of rest would have brought. Again, death is a miraculous end to the cycle of life and while it might be disappointing on the short term, the greatest equalizer of every person in history is not to be ignored but to be respected. Suppression of the self, promotion of stagnancy and the irresponsible notion of knowledge does not all look like ideals to be held dear to but a lot like an oppressive regime that demands absolute surrender with no purpose at any end; is that not evil by itself?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
In stark contrast, this is the Sith Code and while it does appear malicious on the outlook, there is a dangerous precipice to itself which does not appear all that irrational. Peace could be a lie, permanent peace is a sure lie and the only way to sustain any peace is to passionately defend it (passion, not violence) through actions that reflect the statement of your heart and in this regard, the idea of being passionate about something does not seem so out of place after all. Yet the very idea of permanent peace is compelling since all violent conflict has its origins in a temporary peace; permanent peace is attained only at death and it is evident that corpses do not wage war against each other, to achieve this resonant state of illusory peace is a not an ideal goal and the Sith are wary of the delusion of peace because only rocks do not quarrel with each other. The pursuit of meaningless peace is a hard call for anybody who respects the notion of libertarian freedom. Again, it is not the destination but the journey that matters and at every point, a warrior is strongly motivated by the charm of his passion; dark or sincere is for another to decide but there is passion nonetheless. Anakin’s choice to fight for the life of his Padme was looked upon in an infuriating insult to the Jedi Code; Obi Wan displays visible anguish after he mutilated Anakin. Peace and conflict are at higher conflict; the pursuit of permanent peace is a devastating statement because no peace is permanent in itself. Passion begets strength, strength begets power and power begets victory and victory begets liberty — this is a brief picture of the natural order of a hero’s journey. Unlike the Jedi, the Sith do not consider any virtue to be inherently evil but that the motive of an action is that what defines it rather than the end in itself like replacing dogma with heart is more important than following a rule with a blind soul. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, we are told and while there is no rule that it does so, it is a deduction that follows from what is a common denominator to people in power, the entire escapade of Francis Underwood in the Netflix series, House of Cards comes to mind. Politicians are a wonderful example of people with power and the ways in which they misuse it often leads to despair in the hearts of the people; but this is not because the power they hold is somehow evil but that the misuse of power leads to drastic consequences like how democratic governments are often corrupt but it is not an innate fault of democracy itself; to make meaningful change, power is a necessary prerogative and struggles throughout history have shown it to be so because without power, change is impossible. Granting then that power is not innately evil, but merely the means by which change is effected by an individual, we get into larger discussions of individual good or evil. Is murder evil? It is so, and it remains so but it is not frowned upon likewise when murder is in self-defense when it could even be an honorable deed to do so. The last statement is obligatory but important nonetheless when the Sith believe in surrender to the Force which makes them a lot stronger than most Jedi would ever be because of the ways in which the Sith philosophy restrains itself as opposed to a tumultuous fanaticism of the Jedi. If the Force can set anyone free, it will be the Sith. Is not holding fast to the Sith doctrine the morally superior thing to do in all light; to embrace the full vitality of your humanity, to live life with passionate curiosity, to propel oneself into the most hazardous of feats with absolute courage, to love and feel and rejoice and revel and to smile and to cry and to stay brave even at the face of death; these are things only a Sith could do not because the Jedi are any less capable but to become a Jedi, one has to deny himself.
One would then wonder what action of the Sith’s had led to such vacuous filibustering of the notion of any goodness in the Dark Side, given that under the stewardship of the Jedi, the peaceful Republic before the Clone Wars achieved an unprecedented level of bureaucracy and corruption to the point where an independent entity could illegally blockade a world and the Republic could not do anything to stop it. If you thought the Jedi were representatives of total goodness, you are wrong. Can there anything that can be said about good and evil in the Star Wars Universe? I am afraid not. It is troubling how the Jedi are considered essentially good and how the story is strongly biased in their favor because if being a force of goodness entails you to be an absolutist and if you cannot stay true to the values you behold, you are not any better than the least of your enemies. This elaborate hypocrisy of the order of the Jesi is composed well in the exchange between Anakin and the Chancellor Palpatine in quite a fateful direction.
Anakin Skywalker: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.
Chancellor Palpatine: And the Jedi don’t?
Only the Sith deal in absolutes, says Obi Wan Kenobi, making a very valid absolute statement. Only the Sith show emotion we are told, as Mace Windu turns furious at the state of the Republic in the hands of Chancellor Palpatine. If being one with the Force is retracting from embracing all of it, then the Jedi are worse off at yielding the Force than any Sith. There is little difference between the Jedi and the Sith at least as far as philosophy is considered because despite the fact that the Sith were not inherently evil, there is no question the Jedi saw them as their enemy. A history of the Galactic Republic would also say that the Sith did not always exist as a polar antonym of the Jedi. The Sith rose out of a revolt to a stagnant system of the Jedi, putting an end to the radical oppression of the Jedi order. The Sith genocide was a tide in search over the mastery of life itself given that control over the Force meant control over life and death. Rather than stay true to a judicial system of fascism, they reverted to an order of existence trying to cure the disease at the heart of the Republic, namely unrestricted personal liberty. While the Chancellor Palpatine kept his religion a secret from the world outside his own, in retaliation the Jedi staged a military coup, wishfully thinking of disposing the leader of a democratically elected government based on a very personal feud. Time and again, there have always been monarchs and principalities, wanting to swerve people away from things that matter and having them focus on what befits the authorities at hand, having people forget the reality of humanity to embrace a frontier of cold, indolent darkness. The Jedi are a perverse example of this ludicrous excuse for big government and if the signs of today are any reminder, the saga of the Star Wars movies could be a passionate souvenir of the things to come. Because if yesterday was the Jedi call for the Force being with you, today is the Sith call for revenge; today is the Revenge of the Sixth.
Endnote
Star Wars philosophy is best left as it is — an amalgam of cartoonish characters fighting a larger than life battle when constant forces of at opposition to each other fight for victory; good and evil are definitely not just points of view. There are evil causes and good ones even when convolutions of a hostile nature try to nurture corruption. A definite teaching of the nature of morality is essential before the moment and I apologize for predefining one; I shall do so in one of the days to come. In the meantime, if you are a fan of Indian music, consider listening to a tribute to the Star Wars musical.
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