The thing about the Gray Jedi that doesn’t work is that you can’t be 50/50, that’s not how the Force works.
The Force is an incredibly simple magic system, honestly. Good people (Jedi) gain Good People Powers through working on themselves and helping people, and bad people (Sith) gain Bad People Powers by making themselves miserable and hurting everyone around them.
You cannot be a good person and have Bad People Powers like Force Lightning or whatever because those powers literally come from causing and exploiting people’s suffering. The Gray Jedi just don’t work because the Force is a dichotomy. There is the the Dark Side and the Light Side. You cannot be both, and if you could, well, being 50% evil is not a good thing, actually.
At best, you get something like the Bendu from Rebels where he’s just like, the worst kind of bystander. He has a ton of power and strength and he refuses to use it for anything, he lets everyone else be miserable, he lets the world get worse because he refuses to pick a side in a world that demands he have one. And at worst, you get Anakin Skywalker in RotS who is flip-flopping between light and dark, killing an unarmed prisoner one moment and risking his life and the Chancellor’s to save Obi-Wan the next. You get someone desperately unstable and uncontrollable who lashes out randomly and extremely destructively, pulling himself deeper into the Dark because he refused to choose a damn side.
Being 50% evil is either a step towards being 100% evil or it’s just… nothing. Utter passivity, refusal to do anything because it disrupts the ‘balance’ that never actually existed because good and evil are not equal. There’s no real nuance there, it’s a simple magic system, but that’s because it was made for kids! Look it up, GL has said all this before.
Anyway, yeah, being half evil kind of inherently precludes you from being a good person.
So I’ve been scrolling around tumbler and I see a concept being used for Anakin that I wanted to ask you about because I think your intelligent and could help me understand.
I see people say that Anakin as a demigod isn’t beholden to the same morality as mortals. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this I think in part because God(s) is something of an abstract concept to me. What is the difference between the morality of God(s) and mortals? Why are God(s) beholden to different morals?
Hi! So first off, I am going to tag @flashbulb-memory in this because she can give you a more Greek Mythology based analysis on your questions.
But here's my take: A God's perspective is massive and spans far more than a mortal's perspective does, so the things which most mortals might find appalling or shocking in a moral sense wouldn't matter to a God who can see in the broad scope of existence and divinity how insignificant it is. In Anakin's case, I see him as being so connected to the Force he can easily discard much of the Jedi teachings and code because he 1. does not need them to connect to the Force 2. can see that they're meaningless. So for example, the concept of no attachments seems ridiculous and trivial to Anakin as I see him because he is so connected to the Force he can easily identify that we are all already attached endlessly in complex ways in the Force. Or he might find the concept of Good and Evil nonsensical because those are human terms used to describe The Force which is inherently both and neither. I can also imagine him being able to bypass other "morals" he would have no doubt internalized, like not killing people lol. He knows killing is "bad" and a path to the "dark side" but when he is accessing his power through the Force in a state of blind rage, the demi-god part of him ALSO knows all death feeds future life an death isn't the end and "bad" and "dark side" are silly meaningless human concepts. And I think he weaponizes this knowledge and justifies the atrocities he commits with it.
So maybe morality isn't even a helpful way to look at it. For the record I think all morality and ethics are subjective--there is no universal human morality, morality is a social construct which varies from culture to culture, decade to decade, etc. It's not that Gods have a DIFFERENT set of morals than people do, because people don;t even agree on a single set of morals. It's that mortals will fight religious wars and write philosophical texts and prescribe doctrine in an attempt to quantify morals--and Gods know that's pointless. There is no good or evil, there is no right or wrong, etc.
I see Anakin existing on the liminal space between these two ways of being: He is able to access a Godlike worldview and enlightenment through the Force as the Son of the Force. He can see the truth--but because he is a human raised by humans and subject to human moral codes, he cannot reconcile those two things. It comes out messily--he knows in his heart Obi-Wan should be his and all of Obi-Wan's stupid reasons for denying him this are meaningless in the grand scheme of things (age, responsibility, fatherly regard, exploitation of power...what do these things mean to a god? nothing! They are human constructions) but he is also a frustrated teenager in the Jedi Order--so he cannot explain that. It just manifests as anger and frustration.
i was reading about order 66 and how everyone felt as the Jedi died and I thought maybe whenever a powerful force user dies/is born it can be Felt in the force, so I thought about force users feeling anakin die like a terrible ripple but years later Finn is born and all force users feel it too but reversed, like the force is rejoicing and I thought "finnstansonly has to read this"
YEP EXACTLY!! THANK U ANON. SEND ME THE LINK PLZZZ IF YOU STILL HAVE IT
Sith, Grey Jedi, and Jedi: What They Teach Us About the Force pt 3
All right. We have rather exhaustively examined the black-and-white beliefs of more well-known factions within the Star Wars universe. They are not, however, the only factions. We hear of the Guardians of the Whills, people who guard the Temple of Kyber on the planet Jedha. Besides being guardians, they are also scholars of the Force; they even have their own sort of Code, though I will not go into that. There are also several factions of Dark practitioners - most notably the Nightsisters of the planet Dathomir. And in between them all are the Grey Jedi.
As I mentioned in the very beginning, the definition for ‘Grey Jedi’ varies on the individual, the era, and the practices of the time. Very broadly, a Grey Jedi is an individual who does not believe in a Light and Dark; to them, there is only the Force, and it is the intent of the individual that determines whether the action is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ - not what side the Force user may have drawn from (because there are no sides). Each Grey Jedi has essentially adopted their own Code - their own moral compass - to guide them, and as such there are several Grey Jedi Codes. For the sake of my own patience and sanity, I only chose the five which vary most in possible interpretation. The shortest of the examples I have chosen is also, somewhat ironically, the closest in structure to the Sith Code, so I would like to start there.
There is no light without the dark.
Through passion, I gain focus.
Through knowledge, I gain power.
Through serenity, I gain strength.
Through victory, I gain harmony.
There is only the Force.
This particular variation seems to strike a rather balanced dichotomy between the Sith and Jedi Codes.
“There is no light without the dark.” This seems to be very straight forward and even obvious. Light creates shadows, and the brighter the light, the darker the shadows. In the Dhammapada, the text Buddhism is based upon, there is a concept that may give us further insight. It is first important to understand, however, that in Buddhism, their very first belief - given, in fact, in the first verse - is that all that we are is made of all that we have thought. The second verse of the first chapter, the title of which is translated aptly as (The) Pairs, boils down to: if you think “pure” thoughts, happiness will follow you like a shadow. In other words, to think only of the Light will make you of the Light, and your happiness will forever be out of reach. From this we devise that the Jedi, as focused on the Light as they are, might find fulfillment in their work but never true happiness. In the black-and-white morals the Sith and Jedi often perceive the universe to be made of, ‘happiness’ is the carnal pleasures, the love, the simple worldly joys found in everyday life - the pleasure and joys the monastic Jedi eschew; these joys are their shadows, the things they leave behind but that haunt them even without their knowing as they strive to look only forward towards the Light. The Sith, on the other hand, thrive in that shadow but by their very nature twist the simplistic and perhaps innocent joys into darker wraiths, contorting and distorting that which the Jedi leave behind. What the Sith have is not happiness but lust and greed, sloth and envy, wrath and gluttony and hubris - the shadows of the shadows, the weapons of their own destruction.
“Through passion, I gain focus.” Instead of using your passion to propel you forward, you use your passion to help you stay on your chosen path. Your passion, logically, guides you. For example, if your chosen passion is art, then you would not be able to helpfully apply that passion to, say, a job as a data analyst.
“Through knowledge, I gain power.” Understanding of the situation, of the circumstances, of yourself, give you power over those things. Knowledge is power, essentially, and a Grey Jedi uses this to their advantage. Instead of viewing knowledge as enlightenment, the Grey Jedi see knowledge as a vital tool in their journey whatever it may be.
“Through serenity, I gain strength.” The danger with drawing strength from passion as the Sith do is this: passion is strong; if left unchecked, if unguided by the knowledge to utilize it as a magnifying glass focuses sunlight, passion can overpower reason. We see this with Anakin Skywalker himself in Revenge of the Sith. His passion in regard to Padme - his need to protect her, his love for her - overwhelms him when Sidious exploits the fears attached to those passions, and it results in Anakin basically going insane. He allowed his stronger emotions - not his lesser loyalty to the Order, not his platonic love for Obi-Wan as a teacher and brother - to control him, and thus is the Fall of a Jedi and the Rise of a Sith. A Grey Jedi, however, draws their strength from their serenity - the serenity that allows them to step back and review the situation, that keeps them from falling prey to their darker emotions and desires, that allows them to control themselves. The Grey Jedi accept that Darkness exists only inasmuch as their Light creates it; they counteract this by finding a way to balance themselves between the two, of welcoming emotion, of harnessing their passions, of using their knowledge, while refusing to allow their emotions to weaken their defenses, their passions to control them, and their knowledge of becoming a poisonous pride. This is demonstrated in “The Art of Happiness,” a book written by the 14th Dalai Lama, which is about ‘divorcing’ yourself from the hate and the anger - the darker emotions - so that they do not become a part of you; this is a HUGE concept in Buddhism.
“Through victory, I gain harmony.” Now, this Code does not explicitly state what they are gaining a victory over, but if we continue in the vein that the philosophies of the Grey Jedi follow more closely those found in the Dhammapada as opposed to those found in the Bhagavad Gita, then we can look to Buddhism, where control of the self is crucial. This means, then, that the Grey Jedi seek victory over themselves so that a balance might be struck within themselves. If we are the result of what we think, then harmony within ourselves will result in harmony around us. The Dhammapada likewise teaches that all things must be in moderation so that our senses may be controlled, and that balance located.
“There is only the Force.” This echoes the first tenet somewhat but emphasizes that there is no true ‘good’ or ‘bad’ except what we make of them ourselves. Where the Bhagavad Gita preaches dharma, the Dhammapada teaches us that, as Qui-Gon Jinn - considered by many of the Jedi Order of the time to be somewhat of a Grey Jedi - our focus determines our reality. Albert Einstein expresses something remarkably similar when he says, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” The Force and only the Force is the truth, the end, and the beginning, and where they go in the meantime. Actually, we had a conversation about this in my Philosophy of Eastern Religions class. When asked what the truth is, our professor said that “Truth is a pathless land.” In all ways this is true. If the Force is the truth, then being an impartial non-entity, it has no direction. The point of all this is that it is up to us to determine what we believe, what our truth is, and what path we take in this friendless wilderness.
And the Grey Jedi embody this. By walking their own paths, by each one choosing their own Code to follow, they are adhering to their beliefs as the Jedi and Sith never could. The Grey Jedi do not deny the existence of the darkness within themselves - but technically neither do the Jedi. However, instead of allowing that darkness to control them like the Sith or entirely leaving the darkness behind like the Jedi, they accept that darkness as a part of themselves and all living things. In Buddhism there is something known as the Four Noble Truths - the basis of Buddhism, in fact. The First Truth is that all life is suffering. The Second Truth is that this suffering comes from selfishness. The Third Truth is that this selfishness can be overcome. And the Fourth Truth is that only through the Eightfold Path can that selfishness be overcome. The Eightfold Path can be broken down to: Right view; right intention; right speech; right action; right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; and right concentration. As discussed, however, “Truth is a pathless land.” We forge our own paths, so the Fourth Truth essentially says that as long as we follow the path of our own making while still attempting to just be decent people, we will be okay.
There is so much that can be gleaned from these comparisons. The Sith view the Force as a tool and starting point and are, by their very nature, more susceptible to losing control of their own passions even as their Code reflects the natural state of humanity. The Jedi view the Force as a deity and ultimate destination while their Code is an ideal for humanity to reach for. The Grey Jedi view the Force as Truth, the name of whatever path they choose to walk on their way to self-mastery, and the one Code interpreted here strikes a pretty equilibrium between acknowledging the darkness of humanity but also the hope of something better – and attainable. The Jedi may be a monastic order, but their ideals are, frankly, ultimately unreachable at best and incomprehensible at worst. The Sith are corrupted by themselves even if their Code seems logically attainable. Of the three factions, only the Grey Jedi manage to walk the path any mortal can, the path of compromise, of control, of peace; only the Grey Jedi walk a path where their Light does not create more Darkness and their Darkness does not swallow the Light.
There is no true ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here. Reality is what we make of it – what we make of ourselves. If we believe our emotions are our strengths, then we must be aware of how easily manipulated we will be. Should we follow the tenets of a faith that lauds a higher power and encourages self-sacrifice, we must be aware of the things we will be expected to leave in our wake. But as long as we choose to walk our own path, to know ourselves better than those that would control us or blind us with their faith intentionally or not, as long as our Truth resonates, then we will never have to give up enough of ourselves to compromise whatever peace we seek to obtain.
I already knew the twist so I caught a lot of the foreshadowing- most of which is pretty obvious, to be honest. But somehow I didn’t notice the Bastila and the Council’s continually harping on Revan and the threat of the DARK SIDE! *gasp* was directed toward me...who’s Revan. The whole time I was like “yeah, yeah, this isn’t relevant. why do you keep bringing this up? I’m a goddamn saint! I’m not gonna be evil” Like honey no... you were very very evil. I am ridiculously oblivious I guess.
Honestly, the Council’s handling of Revan’s mindwipe & retraining is..sketchy. Like taking away someone’s memories and creating an entirely new personality so you can maybe use them to solve a mystery is kind of terrible. Like this is completely nonconsensual and traumatizing. There’s absolutely no mention of the Council trying to say recover Revan’s good side that they must have had as they once were a light-side Jedi. But no, they’re so scared and doubtful they decide to wipe our mind so they can control us- but none of what they do even slightly guarantee our cooperation. Given we can immediately start doing Dark Sider actions again demonstrates that. So placing the future of the Republic in the hands of amnesic, (temporarily) untrained force user who they can’t even know will help them is ridiculous. Their training sucks too. Like did it occur to them that continually comparing us to Revan and Malak might backfire and make us sway towards the Dark Side? Their training doesn’t really focus on how to handle dark side temptation or anything like that..just “don’t be like Revan..who was evil and bad! no, we can’t tell what specifically they did just that it was bad and we definitely won’t talk about why they fell or how/why to avoid their fate. Just. Don’t. Be. Like. Revan”.
They had a chance to do better and retrain one of the most powerful force users ever and they just retread the same ground? I know Revan had lots of different teachers...but some of them were Jedi that the Council oversaw. Like come on you have to change something here but they just ignore it. It reminds me of how they treat the Exile when she returns. They are so scared and wary of what she’s become that they send her away rather looking at themselves to see if they made mistakes teaching the Order/ instead of understanding what happened to the Exile’s force connection. If they had reflected- like the Jedi Code seems to encourage- maybe they could have prevented what happens in kotor 2.
"Let the hate flow through you" can actually be seen as good advice; it could be about letting your emotions pass through you and out of you naturally, instead of bottling/suppressing them like the Jedi. But Palpatine, ever the liar, actually meant "let the hate consume you" when he said those words.
Well, he’s a Sith after all and Sith are not just know liars they’re all about letting their passions rule them. And I wonder if the unhealthy parts of the Jedi’s philosophy wasn’t a result of fighting the Sith for so long?
If you look at the original Jedi code it is one that indicate balance in all things:
Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.
There’s nothing in this that hints that suppressing or dismissing your emotions should be part of the deal of being a Jedi. In fact it looks like the opposite, that both emotions and peace can coexist.
But then the Sith came along:
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.
This isn’t balanced in any way.
I’ve seen it said that the Sith code isn’t evil and while I agree so far, I don’t find it particularly healthy as it is based on letting your passions rule you to the elimination of all else.
And with this in mind it makes kinda sense that the Jedi Code eventually became this instead:
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
See the difference between this one and the first? That the first one accepted, even embraced, the existence of emotions in the Jedi but this one demands that only peace exists?
This isn’t so much a Jedi Code as it’s an Anti-Sith Code.
The Jedi fought so long and hard against the Sith that they forgot what they were supposed to be and became only the antithesis of their enemies. But I doubt that the original Jedi subscribed to the bottling up and suppression of emotions that the PT era Jedi did, but by the time of Yoda, Mace and Anakin, the Jedi had lost their paths and become obsessed with eliminating the Dark, instead of promoting the Light.
Question for you, given your vast Star Wars knowledge:
I was wondering, if someone dies with a Force inhibitor in place, does that mean that they can't ever become a Force Ghost? Do their souls just evanesce away since they can't connect to the Force?
Also- happy new year!
Oh this is an excellent question and as far as I know hasn't been covered in canon so and answer is whatever we want it to be! I can see it going two ways, depending on how we actually interpret a Force Inhibitor's function:
if a Force Inhibitor is an apparatus prevents a person from connecting to the Force by controlling their force sensitivity, I think dying WOULD prevent their soul's ability to connect to the living Force in Death and that their soul would just return to the Force as energy the way non Force sensitive people's do, and would lose anything which made it discrete. In this case, the connection itself is severed.
However, if a Force Inhibitor is a mechanism that blocks THE FORCE ITSELF from a place/person (I often see them written about as Force Dampening rooms), then it seems like dying would no longer limit the Force Sensitive's personhood from accessing the Force, but since their Force Sensitivity itself was not affected they'd be just as able to connect to it once they were dead as they were when they were alive.
This is actually so challenging for me to think about because I personally don't believe in mind/body dualism, meaning I don't believe our minds and bodies are separate, distinct, or in opposition to one another. People often think this means I don't believe in the soul, which is not the case: I believe in the soul, I just think that the soul is not discrete from the body and that it does not live in our minds and cannot exist without the flesh in which is is rooted. I am also an animist, which means I believe every living thing has spirit, or a conscious, energetic presence capable of connection/communication. You can call this a soul, if you want, and I don't think of it as something other than a soul--my point is, I do NOT believe there's spiritual value in viewing ourselves as separate from our bodies.
You see mind/body dualism in lot of ascetic religions and spiritualities, and it often leads to a belief that enlightenment/truth is most accessible by rejecting the flesh (which becomes demonized as it's associated with carnal, base, ugly desires like hunger and sex drive) and embracing pure energetic/cerebral thought (which becomes deified as it's associated with purity, light). I oppose this whole idea that becoming unburdened and disconnected from the flesh is the path to truth--in my experience and opinion, truth is found in grounding and embodiment. So, the literal exact opposite. You can probably see this in my stories in the way I choose to write about the Force.
That being said, based on GL's sloppy worldbuilding around the Force, I think he was a mind/body dualist even if his world buildung is shoddy and contradictory and he likely doesn't identify as one. I see this especially in the Force Ghost arc/explanations: the mere implication one can "beat death" by ascending to pure energy/the soul becoming one with The Force seems born from mind/body duality. Anyway--I choose not to see the Force this way, so I feel like my PERSONAL fun, not supported by text headcanons about this question are a little different:
3. I like the idea of a Force Inhibitor as a device which FORCES mind/body duality, ie, cuts off a Force User's connection to the Force by disembodying them/preventing them from connecting to the Force by cleaving their spirit FROM their body. (Mind/body duality as horror my beloved haha). In this case, death could go either way--if they died and then decayed, it would not cut them off from the Force forever BUT would reconnect them to it, because their body would rot back into the earth and reestablish connection to their soul without the device preventing that connection. BUT if their body was preserved somehow, frozen in stasis and prevented from rotting, then that connection could never be established. Anyway I like this version because it seems like a less "the flesh and death are bad" version of the Force Ghost concept.
WOW that was a lot of theology and philosophy for the morning!!! hahah thank you for the fun ask!
