Is what "Balance" means in Star Wars about to be changed from what Lucas said it was?

I think there is some confusion here. The Force is linked to living things, to Nature itself, which possesses both creative and destructive aspects that are morally neutral. This corresponds to the Light and the Dark Side in the abstract. They aren't good or evil in and of themselves, they just exist. The Dark Side isn't any more evil than a forest fire that clears out dead underbrush. The Light Side isn't any more good than cancer cells that divide and grow endlessly within a tumor. Both have their place, but both can also cause harm if they get out of balance.

On the other hand, harming another person, whether with or without using the Force is evil. Helping someone in need, either with or without the Force, is good.
That's the realm of ethics and morality-and it's a completely separate matter.

As to the connection between the Dark Side and Evil, Frank Herbert put it best when he said:

" It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. "

People who want to dominate others do so simply because they are immoral, not because they were denied agency by some supernatural power.
Some of those people are drawn to the Sith religion, because much like Ayn Rand's writings, it provides a pseudo-philosophical farmwork in which they can justify their own selfishness.
The Dark Side does nothing except give these people what they want.

The Jedi religion by contrast, provides a moral and ethical framework that could be generally understood as selfless and good, although many different religions have similar teachings, and all could probably serve the same function. The only thing that really sets them apart from any number of other similar monastic orders is their strange connection to the political power structure of the Galactic Republic. This is what gave Palpatine a conduit to recruit certain corruptible individuals such as Count Dooku and later Anakin Skywalker who were frustrated with the imperfections of their faith and society at large, and who (not so) secretly craved individual power.

We don’t need evil to constantly be present in our world for us to recognize the difference between good and evil. Despite what some people might think we live in the most civilized time in human history where we value morality and the law. When crime and evil occur that is not the world being in balance it is unbalanced, which is why we try to tip the scale back. Same with the Jedi their presence is balance, while even 2 sith tips the scale out of balance.

Sounds to me like she's yet another postmodernist misunderstanding and twisting the Jungian concept of the Shadow.

The idea is to acknowledge your own "dark side" and to accept and understand those impulses, in order to better control them, rather than ignore and deny their existence, as sweeping things under the rug only makes them build up in the unconscious, which leads to lashing out.

Many misguided modern people misinterpret this idea to rationalize and justify their own bad behavior, claiming that to be balanced you must be equal parts good and evil, selfless and selfish, light and dark, etc., and that this process, which Jung called Individuation, is not just an internal exercise of integrating all aspects of the unconscious into the conscious psyche, but should be applied to external actions as well, which is simply not the case at all.

The EU toyed with the idea that the Force is more than Light and Dark.

Completely agree with you. Agter all, Anakin was born to bring 'balance to the force'.

Stories, in whatever media, are great, creative tools to teach lessons in a way that’s not completely on the nose, playful and simply more interesting than being plainly told said lesson. It doesn’t matter what genre something is, or for what age demographic a story is meant… evil is not meant to be glorified. It can be explained why someone is evil. You can want your audience to stop someone being evil, or to stop someone from committing evil, whether it be small scale pranks in a children’s show, or scheming, brutality or a thirst for revenge in more mature media. Even in more grim dark stories, where good and evil is blurred, and/or meshed within grey individuals, evil actions aren’t glorified. That doesn’t stop morally bad or questionable characters from committing acts of evil, but still…

I am a novice writer myself. Only until pretty recently have I sat down to really write down full chapters with due diligence. Before that, it was mostly quicker notes I typed down. Scenes. Ideas. And there was a lot of daydreaming (there still is). The characters are what I think about most. But the themes of my stories are important too. Some of the stories I appreciate most are ones with symbolism, where characters, setting and theme are interconnected. The characters are their own people who should be interesting as people, but they also happen to enhance the theme. And a strong setting, to me, is more than just a location or a newfound culture. It can really add narrative depth to make it congruent with a character, or theme. Now that I’m thinking about it, though the characters and their stories are what I deem to be the most important facet, all facets lead back to a theme. And those facets and the theme live in symbiosis. Characters add weight to the theme and the theme adds narrative depth to the characters. And said theme must, at the bare minimum, not be flawed. The main theme is a lesson. And you do not want to teach the audience a wrong lesson. Even though my stories and characters can, at times, get pretty dark, the main theme is not that you should act like they have, at their lowest points. They have more hopeful tones. A theme that isn’t hopeful is just a message of doom. In that case, it’s not a lesson. It’s not a request to be better. It is not an invitation to take the wisdom embedded into a story and make sure you, or someone you know doesn’t fail at similar pitfalls. And if you define Star Wars as a story of hope, such a non-lesson, a message of damnation, seems very, very anti Star Wars.

I did use to interpret balance as something akin to love. As love is what brought Anakin to the dark, but it is what brought Vader to the light. I don’t really think that’s the balance of the force anymore, but more so the balance in between two flawed orders: the Jedi and the Sith. The Jedi are compassionate but too cut off. The Sith are passionate, but too evil. And balance, in terms which force institution to pick, is to do good without the restricting dogma of the prequel Jedi, who adhere more to the concept of doing good, than doing actual good and enacting lasting change. Balance here, would be to either leave the order like Ahsoka, or to reform the order into what it is supposed to be, like Qui-Gon wanted and Dooku initially strived for. And what Luke eventually achieved.

The ‘there is no light without dark’ stuff, is one of those things that sound philosophical, but there isn’t as much meat on the bone as they’d like you to believe.

Here’s an off-topic question: What about the Jedi Order’s complacency/hubris? Did that also play a part in the imbalance? ‘Cause in my opinion, it did.

Hey Thor, I figured that the force was like a cosmic being, and it pushes and pulls grand events through extremely small acts that one might confuse with luck. It wants some sort of balance, but people have free will, so the cosmic force keeps having to course correct. Like it knew order 66 was coming and it made preparations to partially negate it. Which is why even if every jedi were killed, there would be some "champion of the light" that would eventually rise up, the dark sider's days are always numbered. This is why certain events tend to repeat themselves. Like if Sideous actually wanted an empire that lasted for a thousand years, he would need a puppet jedi order to consistently undermine/espionage the will of the force, or he would need to hold back on making the whole galaxy suffer under his rule. Maybe i read too much into kreia from Kotor 2, thinking the Cosmic Force is partially malevolent and incomprehensible. I think it was a missed opportunity for not making Luke in the sequels self aware like this, not a "kreia" like character, pervert his "hope" with that of wanting to kill the force and free everybody.

Honestly if they DO mess with How the Force Works...it won't be the Force anymore, it'll be a light/dark magic system, just like a hundred other fantasy franchises out there. RIP.

I think she meant that the Jedi becoming unbalanced are not protected. They’re going to take the power of the force for granted and lose their force prowess

Not to be a knit-picky, but they established a different concept of balance in the sequel trilogy when they explained the diad of Rey and Kylo. She may be making a secondary new concept, which makes no sense because she doesn't know what she's talking about.

To those that struggle with media this concept, think balanced ecosystem not balanced scales.. toxic waste doesn't balance an ecosystem it destroys it's balance no matter how much or little is dumped. Toxic behavior imbalances the person and the Force

Nothing exists in a vacuum, light is relevant in reference to the dark, up to down. These are judgement free concepts, the point about the Dark Side isn't its existence, its created and exists beside tragedy, pain, sickness etc, the tension comes if one taps into it. A Jedi's life is in constant relationship to this, in our world, we contemplate the shadow, the submerged, the unconscious. None of these things are evil, but darkness can réside in these places. Contemplation and awareness keeps us on top of it and freer of those influences. Ignorance of such shadows often enable us to commit to the cruellest of actions, precisely because we may believe ourselves completely good, just ask Anakin.

They're trying to justify "light" magic and "black" magic trope, a kind of yin yang , rather than good as good and evil as evil . In a way, this is a reaction to the intolerance of monotheistic religions towards outsiders or the strangers - think WH40K human xenophobia.

I always took the "without darkness, how could we recognize the light?" as being aware of your dark and primal urges and master them so they cannot control you, which I think is in line with what Yoda says to his shadow in TCW

New Disney/Lucasfilm Slogan!
“The Force is Female…& it’s that time of the Month!”

Hey Thor,
Until Disney/LucasFilm proves otherwise, we should, with every new show, all expect,
The Lore to be broken
Canon disrespect
Poor writing
Bad storytelling
Lots of filler
Wooden acting
Horrible fight choreography
Inconsistent visual quality
Recycled and/or lackluster score

Not too mention, present day Identity politics awkwardly shoved into Star Wars.

This describes >90% of what Disney/Lucasfilm has done with Star Wars.
Many shows/films have ALL these flaws, & they all have some of these flaws.
These flaws did not exist in the OT.
The Prequels only had a couple of these flaws, but excelled in the other areas.
ie. The dialogue and some acting was subpar, the overall story,fight choreography, score, etc. were all top notch brilliant!

I love these videos and my favorite videos from you are talking about the core values, themes, and morals of Star Wars, so keep it up and never stop doing what you are doing. I completely agree and understand everything you are saying and you are right. In terms of you saying that you were digging in too deep into the comment, you were not, you were just correcting what the comment said because it is flawed, and there should be no need to apologize for that. In all honesty, comments like these are what make me feel like the foundations of Star Wars will be destroyed in The Acolyte, and I know many people out there do, pretty much everybody, because articles like these and videos like these would not be made if that fear was not there. It is sad to see this is where Star Wars is going, and what was once so good and pure is being corrupted by corporate greed who do not understand Star Wars or story. Another thing I am worried about that I honestly just thought about now is this show will live on forever on Disney+, meaning that if this really does ruin the true morals and foundations of Star Wars, future generations will actually believe this Disney garbage is what Star Wars is truly all about, especially without dedicated fans who know, understand, and love true Star Wars like us. I love this community and hope you keep on doing what you are doing and that Star Wars would never fall to where it now has, but let's hope that there can still be understanding for future generations about the true lesson from Star Wars, and not the weird junk Disney is trying to shove down our throats.

So you are pretty much surrendering yourself to highher power? Oh man try getting that across over the people at lucasfilm's heads.

We NEED to nitpick. A nit is a louse egg. Un-picked, it hatches into a louse. And that is not good. So we need to nitpick to remove bad, harmful, and stupid ideas.

《the Core of the Force is George, of Course》

...sometimes when Thor is Discussing "The Fictional World of STAR WARS", my brain AutoFills with [The REAL WORLD of STAR WARS]...?

..."& no, The Force [George] doesn't kind of pick & choose who uses it [STAR WARS] the right way or not & reward those who do, you could say it [George] just Whispered its [his] Will into The Ether [Dizney] through the Midi-Chlorians [Jedi Kathleen] & it's then up to the individual [Bob] to listen to it [George] or not, & if they [Dizney] don't, it's not like The Force [George] can really do anything about it, they [George] can't cut The Sith [Darth Kathleen] off from using it [STAR WARS] or anything"...

..."i mean, The Force [George] can't directly do virtually anything about them [Dizney] even if The Sith [The Knights Of Kathleen] completely ignore its [George's] Will, which they [TKOK] of course do, they [TKOK] only care about their own Will, & if it could, if The Force [George] could just cut off their [Dizney'z] ability to use it [STAR WARS] on a Whim, or stop them [TKOK] when they're not following it's [George's] Will & stop protecting them [TKOK], i guess well if that all were the case, STAR WARS wouldn't exsist certainly not as it does now"...

👽 🖖 🤖

《Thanks Alot, Dizney!!!》

Thor is spot-on about the nature of The Force and it is interesting how close some of this thoughts are similar to C.S. Lewis' excellent theological dissertations in 'Mere Christianity' which is one of the most important Christian theological works of the 20th century. Obviously, 'The Force' is vastly different than Christianity, but the very nature of balance, the nature of evil in man and whether you can have too much good (or in SW jargon, too much of the 'light side of the Force') was addressed very intellectually and extremely logically by him. In the SW universe as anywhere, you have to have define balance. It isn't harmony between good and bad, yin and yang or anything like that. You don't want an apple to have equal parts fresh and equal parts rotten. Balance is the lack of chaos, the lack of corruption and evil and Dark Siders, no matter what they do or how hard they try, always end up -- sooner or later-- bringing the Force out of balance at some level by their selfish actions. The Dark Side of the Force is not one side of balance, like someone on a teeter-totter or a weight on one side of an old fashioned scale, the Dark Side is a crack in the wood of the teeter-totter about to break the wood or a lead weight on a scale weighing gold. It destroys balance and no one in their right mind would want an equal part of evil to counter balance good. It doesn't work and anyone who thinks about it deeply will see that this is not what Lucas meant about balance in the Force. On the other hand, you can't have too much good, or too much light side of the Force. That would be like complaining that your food is too fresh, the air is too pure, your bed is too soft or your spouse is too loving toward you.

The Sith treat the force like their slave the Jedi treated like their ally.

There are people who think that sith and Jedi are basically superheroes those are the people that think a force sensitive person can never be killed by someone who isn't forcesensitive

Hey Thor, I wanted to get your thoughts on what makes for a good redemption arc in Star Wars. More specifically, how do you do redemption in Star Wars without oveusing it? Take someone like Crosshair and Barriss Offe: why is Crosshair’s arc not considered redundant while Barris’ is?

I think I might already know the answer but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey Thor, would a better "jedi are flawed" property be the KOTOR comics from Dark Horse? I've always thought that storyline would be great for making Star Wars movies. Granted, the timeline would change based in when New Canon's mando wars takes place. But it would make a great story, with a Jedi Master as an antagonist (new ground for Star Wars movies), would have cool lightsaber fights, and could show the flaws of the Jedi without resorting to "the sith are good." What do you think?

In the effort to achieve balance we are going to start admitting Sith into the Jedi order.
Seriously now... Nobody mention any of this to Mundi.

Honestly, it is way to much overanylasing with this show.
I understand as a a content creator you have toncreate content but this is really wild speculation now.
Lets watch the show and then talk about what it actually does.

It’s very simple…bringing balance to the force meant eradicating the sith because they are evil. The Jedi are the heroes. End of story.

Star Wars fans pretending like TCW didn't already butcher this concept years ago in that horrendously bad Mortis arc.

“Those who say that they would have right without its correlate wrong, or good government without its correlate misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative principle (yin) without the positive (yang), which is clearly impossible. Yet people keep on discussing it without end. Such people must be either fools or knaves” - Chuang Tzu

That’s the great thing about fan fiction. Sometimes, you’ll find one written by a passionate fan who really knows and understands the source material, and they’ve written a story that fits into the overall narrative without making any major mistakes or contradictions with established canon, so you can freely incorporate it into your headcanon. And in the meantime, you can dismiss all the mountains of garbage you found littering the road to that one great story.

In my mind, what Disney is doing is fan fiction. Extremely expensive corporatized FF that masquerades as canon, but all the same. So I will accept the good pieces into my headcanon, and reject the garbage as the amateurish slop it is.

Kudos to you for being the passionate defender of this point. Way too many people misunderstand this about Star Wars and I'm glad you're here to clear this up!

In the Lucas video he says it’s a scale, extremes on either end are off-balance. Lucas then talks about the extreme dark as the extreme. Implied is that all light is extreme and off-balance as well. You know what’s in the middle of that scale? Something that has both. That’s balance according to the Lucas video.

This just confirms DiSSney "Star Wars" is not Star Wars. You can´t keep breaking the most basic rules of the universe and pretend it´s the same IP taking place in the same universe.
Dark side = disease, addiction. You can´t have just a little malignant tumour, you can´t be a little bit of a junkie...without consequences.
Just like NOT everyone can use the Force. Furloni already broke this rule and made it clear the DiSSney anti-fanfics should not be given any attention.
So stop giving them attention.

Hey Thor!
I was thinking about why is the dark path faster, easier to get power from? I have a theory, but I'm very interested about your take on it. I think it comes down to a similar thing about visualization, when a Jedi waves their hand to levitate something, or a darksider chokes someone with their fingers in a griplike position, it helps the mind focus on the result. Just like the X-wing in the swamp, if you don't believe it to be possibe, you will fail.
I would say, stong emotions work like this, they give a boost to the mind to get the result. And strong emotions are mostly to the benefit of the self. Fear is nothing more but a failsafe to alert the mind about danger to the body. When you have fear of height, you are more careful near cliffs. And it is easy to listen to fear, the mind gets the boost, the force responds. It results in a selfish, self preserving act. But it is hard to go against that fear, for example, when you have to sacrifice for the benefit of others, you have to fight your mind, your sefl preservation to act like a Jedi.
So what do you think about it? Is there something to it, or am I way off?

100% with you, Thor!!

Brother, your philosophy tangent proves you are actually mentally challenged from consuming all the pop culture slop. Read an actual book once in your life, try to study what the whole concept good and evil is based on, before spouting nonsense that "evil doesn't have to exist, because if people do only good, it proves they know what bad is."

Anything to do with Star Wars I don't care anymore.

It’s because there is no Leslie Headland without Weinstein - so she needs a reasoning as to why the dark side is necessary

The thing is that human beings are more than carnivorous animals with opposable thumbs. Ancient man realized that his thoughts and actions influenced beings in an invisible world who in turn influenced us. Our influence on angels and angel-like beings may result in harm or justice here. The Star Wars theme of good and evil, power or weakness centered around handling a Light Sabre or willing mind over matter at the drop of a hat misses the point about the need to influence intelligent entities that are more than an instrument of personal power. Behaving with self control, forethought and restraint is more than a pompous show of power and tradition

I admire those who still believe in the mess that SW is today and what is happening with it. For me I lost interest almost completely.

The Jedi learns that Severity must be balanced by Mercy, that Passion must be balanced by Wisdom.

What is a Sith in Star Wars? Someone who embraces Power and Passion alone without the balancing forces of Mercy and Wisdom. Vader kills officers who report failure even if the failure is due to forces beyond their control. He embraces Anger and Hate, which are useful emotions if balanced by Compassion and Love.

Jedi may fight and kill, but only when doing so protects others. Compassion for the weak and a desire to protect them is why they learn to fight. They do not take pleasure in killing.

In Buddhism and Jewish Mysticism (and elsewhere) Imbalance leads to evil and destruction. A balanced ecosystem thrives. An imbalanced ecosystem destroys itself. Balance itself is the highest Good. It is worth striving towards. The "Light Side" is the Middle Way. The "Dark Side" falls away.

Excess of Severity is cruelty and Evil. Excess of Mercy is Weakness that allows Evil to go unchecked. This is what "Balance" truly means, to walk the path between.

To bad Revan isn't canon, but if he was, he would break what GL and Disney have set up with Balance.

I am Sith ❤
I am Jedi 💜
I am one with the force 🤍

Thor, I don't think you're overstating how important this perhaps seemingly trivial or mostly inconsequential subject is. If they change the way the force works and what the force is, it ceases to be Star Wars. And that's the trouble with Disney under KK, they don't seem to understand or care at all what the Force actually is. Preach, brutha!

Most of the people in that voting block seem to have sympathy for the devil and it's just filtering down into our entertainment regardless of the cost. It appears they will die trying to deliver "The Message."

Her version of balance means the most powerful are good and evil!! She’s promoting being evil as ok.. these the people talk keep trying to cape for!!

The only balance Disney need to fix when it comes to Star Wars is balancing thier profits. Because if they carry on like this they will never recover.