I’m curious on what you think balancing would actually mean. I always get get caught up on the light = good and dark = evil dichotomy. George Lucas has said you need both for the Force, but that kinda rubs me wrong way if Light and Dark are good and evil. I don’t know it’s like saying evil is necessary. I guess that why I think the Dark isn’t necessarily evil, but of darker feelings/emotions that those with evil intent like to use. -Wanderingspacedragon
Alright, so this grew into a longish meta that ended up exceeding the confines of GFFA and touching upon real world philosophy. But, I guess this is what Lucas asked for when he first came up with the force. So here goes nothin'.
Master Carl-Gus Jungobi's wisdoms
First of all, reaching to LF themselves, Brian Young defines light as the suppression of ego and dark as its amplification. So far so good. However, from jungist perspective (and a nice intruduction to how C. G. Jung fits into GFFA as well as mythology in general done by crash course can be found here) any juxtaposition like day-night, sun-moon, angel-demon, heaven-hell also quicksilver and sulphur but that's a different level of symbolism are all metaphors of conscious and unconscious. Conscious mind is a socialized, clear and immersed in the norms of the community while the unconscious is individual, animalistic and shapeless - and imo, that's rather simple to reconcile with what Young wrote on twitter. Existing only on the level of consciousness always puts the community before the individual whereas being guided only by our unconscious reduces the outside world to the level of tools to satisfy our needs. Because of that, Jung points out that unconscious has been throughout the ages identified as evil (this is why those needs had to be repressed in the first place, hence producing the shadow archetype in the unconscious), which leads us to some really intriguing topics.
Because the question of nature, cause, purpose and possible necessity of evil is nothing short of one of the most important questions of any religion and moral philosophy - and it seems well into 8th millennium we're nowhere closer to a definite answer. The statement good and evil are abstract concepts tends to cause very negative reactions, because it appears like denial of their reality, but I think it's misunderstanding of what an abstraction is. When I say numbers are abstract concepts, the matter seems clear - there is no independently existing number two, yet it exists in the sense of quantity - but no one seems to protest that I don't believe in maths or sth. There's an anecdote about Einstein's student years where he compared good and evil not to binary opposites, but rather to temperature. We simplify the issue to the point of warm and cold, but is there some absolute border between them? What is the polar opposite of -1°C, +1° or +30°? There exists an absolute zero, at which all atom movement ceases, but is there an absolute plus? But even though there is no physical impossibility of life in too hot surroundings, like there is in the case of absolute zero, yet we earthlings feel extreme warmth isn't that good either, don't we? And then there's a matter of subjective experience - someone living in Siberia has different ideas of warm and cold than someone living in the rainforest - but it doesn't change the fact that objectively speaking 20°C is warmer than 9°C and both of these people will recognize it. So regardless of whether it was Einstein who made this comparison, I think it's a pretty good metaphor.
Leaving philosophy and coming back to psychology, the basic point that Jung makes about conscious and unconscious is that individualized, integrated self needs them both in order to lead a creative, meaningful life. Either of them alone limits the person, the unconscious to the purely biological life, fulfillment of one's wants, but conscious to the self repeating sustenance. Arguably, life on the purely conscious level (in pure light, so to speak) is a safer, better choice - but it results in changelessness, in mindless recreation. Yes, it's not as selfishly destructive as that of pure unconscious, but it's an unproductive as life of Adam and Eve in Eden, arid like Tatooine and Jakku and, at worst, dogmatic like the prequel jedi. Both conscious and unconscious are infertile when kept strictly separated, hence the ever present symbols of female and male - and marriage as a metaphor of integration. Now, the important point is that the integration has to be on conditions, so to speak, of the conscious - but unconscious has to be accepted for what it is, it can't be forced to become overall conscious, only this way the shapeless mass of our imagination can keep its vital powers.
Mircea Eliade, an intellectual: holy marriage and coniunctio oppositorum; me, a fangirl: smut hut and thigh grab
Using the jungist metaphor, the general story we hitherto got in SW presents itself as follows: we start off in strict consciousness repressing the unconscious (jedi fighting siths in every form) - and so it finally got itself a psychotic flooding of the psyche with the unconscious content (a nigredo, blackening, using alchemical terminology Jung studied) in form of Anakin’s fall into his shadow persona of Darth Vader and republic becoming the empire. Jung would venture as far as to say that a psychotic episode is necessary to the growth, though I would argue that's mostly because he lived in very repressive times. Regardless, the first flooding of the unconscious is almost always depicted as violent and terrifying, with one of the most visual metaphors being a total eclipse when the moon blanks out the sun completely.
Thus, the originals are basically the painstaking process of the psyche overcoming the psychotic episode and consciousness regaining control. One might argue that the individuation process is actually completed on the individual level - Luke appears to have accepted Darth Anakin for what he is, and thus integrated his own shadow as well - which is why old EU would have Leia accept her father too, eventually, and for some the sequels are straight up redundant rehash of the originals. Far from thinking the bottom line wasn't that DLF want to make money, the apparent narration fits pretty well with the idea of re-repression: the shadow isn't integrated, ex-imperials are banished and the Skywalkers accept Anakin only by rejecting Vader - and so nigredo repeats itself, and will continue to repeat until the shadow is integrated. Additionally, it can be argued that Luke committed a mistake of thinking the individuation is a static goal and as such refused to reenter the spontaneous life (refusal to rebuild the jedi until it was really necessary). This is a frequent temptation and if it rings a bell with a difference between a buddha and a bodhisattva, bingo - buddha was considered by Jung one of the metaphors of the integrated self.
Which brings us to our current holy marriage and where they left off at the end of tlj. Viewing Rey and Ben as avatars of light (conscious, communitarian, idealistic) and dark (unconscious, individual, emotional) makes much more sense than when we view them as plain good vs. evil. Now, while no one seems to have any problems grasping the problem with Ben's actions (integration on unconsciousness’ condition is simply another nigredo), from a psychoanalytic viewpoint Rey isn't that much more in the right. She isn't willing to integrate the shadowy unconscious, only wants the unconscious to become conscious, if not downright negates the existence of the shadow (yeah, she’ll cross the galaxy to help Ben turn - only she never asked if he even wants to turn). So while most reylos want to see her as determined to wait for Ben and an/is as having given up on him completely, I would say her current state is closest to Luke's then my father is truly dead in RotJ. She isn't determined to save him in as much as do the right thing and it's likelier to mean sparing him. That being said, she needs to undergo her own violent nigredo if she is to accept him the way Luke accepted Vader by the time he threw away the ls.
*Aggressively hums Hans Zimmer's 503*
An interesting side reflection occured to me while writing this answer and thinking of how abstract ideas of good and evil get framed by different moral philosophies and religions (to get something straight: I analyze religions from a purely social/cultural sciences pov, so I'm not evaluating them in any way - and regardless, Jung saw all religions are basically metaphors of individuation. I'm also not arguing what is Lucas's preferred interpretation of the force - I'm just discussing the discourse within the trilogies). So I think the force has always had strong vibes of some form of divinity ever since it was first discussed by Obi-Wan and then by Yoda. However, it appears to me the conceptualization of it, as well as its two sides, has altered throughout the subsequent trilogies, counting OT, PT, ST.
In the originals the vibes are definitely closest to East Asia’s religions/moral philosophies, with main connotations being dao and yin-yang. There isn't much talk of force having a will of its own but rather being a general flow of reality that one can be attuned to or not - Luke's compassion for Vader isn't shown as qualitatively more correct, more of what the force wants, than Yoda's and Obi-Wan's condemnation. The prequels are much more Mediterranean/Middle East in tone, with Anakin's fall being framed as a greek tragedy but also force being shown as having a much more concrete will, definite plan for the galaxy and directly interfering in the history. This constitutes what Mircea Eliade considers the crucial feature of judeo-christian-islamic tradition: God has a will similar to human and a linear plan for humanity. And because of that I'd say the prequels are very First Testament in tone. There's absolutely no way to prove that destruction of the jedi, including the youngling massacre, wasn't a part of Anakin's purpose in bringing balance to the force - and when we look at the First Testament then we get passages like the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, egyptian plagues (including death of the first borns!) or the Book of Job. None of this disproves God's benevolence, but destruction is a frequent part of God's plan.
In contrast the sequels (and Disney era in general) got very close to the New Testament and christian theology. Light and dark are no longer equal elements of the universe, just as God and satan aren't equal opponents, there would be no evil if Lucifer hasn't rebelled, force is its light side and dark an aberration, so to speak. Rey and Kylo Ben are framed as equally powerful, but the force prefers her because of her allegiance to the light. The downsides are that trusting the force and keeping up hope (faith and hope being two of the three theological virtues) are themes brought up ad nauseam and the public plot is infuriatingly predictable - angels are going to win no matter how numerous and technologically advanced the halls of hell get. There is no Battle of Evermore in christianity, there's only the Last Judgment, so the only interesting battlefield is each individual soul. The upside is Prodigal Sons, Lost Sheep and Adulterous Women galore - as well as despair understood as loss of faith in God's mercy and possibility of one's salvation as one of the sins capable of forfeiting the soul.
But anyway, the bottom line of this prolonged rambling (what can I say, I could deliberate on the dichotomies of the force for ages) is that light and dark side symbolise conscious and unconscious and the balance means integration of the self. It definitely fits into the jungist reading and would give this trilogy a narrative value.
Though obviously, this topic wouldn't be so interesting if there was a definite answer.
