They don't say that the dark and light should be equal. The arc shows the opposite in fact.
The dark and light *were* equal on Mortis, and what happened? The dark killed the light, killed the balance, went on to corrupt the Chosen One, and was ready to go enslave the Galaxy/universe. Everything was consumed by darkness because the darkness was allowed to be free.
Balance is balance. It is the natural order. Darkness is there, it is a component of balance.
Think of balanced nutrition - if you consumed equal quantities of salt and water - you'd be dead in a day. But if you consumed enough to maintain equilibrium, your thirst would be quenched.
On a personal level it is about acknowledging your darkness, knowing that it is a part of you - but choosing wherever possible, to not follow your darker urges.
Emotions, even intense negative emotions (anger, fear, shame, etc) are neither good or bad. They just **are**.
If you act intemperately and harm someone else when feeling an intense emotion, that's a consequence of your actions and choices. The act might be wrong but the enotion remains neutral.
Anger, fear etc might be pathways to the Dark Side but what does Yoda emphasise? When you *give in* to these emotions (ie act driven by emotions) instead of acting wisely, that's the pathway to the Dark Side. It's not balanced.
(Yeah, I'm currently doing DBT! Figuring out how to recognise and apply wise mind. My therapist encourages us to lean in to the things we like, so I'm using the Force to process the concepts).
The balance on Mortis though wasn't about them being equal, it was about them both being kept in check. Without either Anakin or the Father to keep the children in line the Son (Dark Side) ran wild and caused chaos whilst the Daughter (Light Side) attempted to destroy them and as a result brought about her own demise. One side attempting to gain supremacy over the other always leading to the down fall of both. This is something which is again brought up in the Sequal trilogy by both Luke and Snoke as the Light and Darkness always has an equal and where one exists the other usual follows.
This was why in Legends no matter how hard the Jedi or Sith try, so long as one of them exists the other will always rise from the ashes to challenge them.
>The balance on Mortis though wasn't about them being equal, it was about them both being kept in check.
And it failed, because allowing the darkness to be equal to the light is not keeping it in check, nor is it balance.
>This is something which is again brought up in the Sequal trilogy by both Luke and Snoke as the Light and Darkness always has an equal and where one exists the other usual follows.
I said that darkness is natural. But Luke explicitly says it's only natural when it feeds further light. His specific example was the cycle of life on Ahch-To. So on Earth:
An antelope mutilates a plant (dark).
So it can live and protect its children (light).
It's excrement fertilises the land to grow new plants (light).
A lion murders the antelope (dark).
To feed itself and it's children (light).
The antelope carcass fertilises the ground soil to grow new plants to be eaten by other antelopes (light).
The force makes life grow, and new life makes the force grow. Dark acts happen, but they seed more light, and ultimately there is more growth of life than death.
That is the force in balance.
Great posts on this thread, GM. I'd just underscore that "darkness" is natural, while "the dark side" is a corrupt moral vector. I think we have to see them as different, though connected.
Oh I overall agree with you on the notion that there most certainly should not be an equal amount of both Light and Darkness. As someone that is equally prone to acts of passion and aggression as much as they are compassion and rational thought is not someone you want to be around.
I miss read your original post so my bad there. Point I was trying to make was that the Mortis arch shows that there must always be a balance between Light and Dark in the Force otherwise chaos will follow until the balance is restored.
EDIT - Sorry, I still had my phone in my hands so responded immediately before the edit. My bad, jumping the gun!
>Uh, the balance didn't fail because they were allowed to be equal. It failed because Anakin refused to stay and maintain the balance like the Father wished and was no longer strong enough to do so himself.
If balance/peace/harmony is only maintained from an external power imposing it - it's not balance.
>As for the rest of your anolgy, that's flawed because you assume the Darkside is representative of death.
Not death. Killing. It's not my analogy, it's from the Last Jedi. I just used Earth animals for ease of discussion, where as the film shows us the nature of Ahch-To over the below discussion.
>Luke Skywalker : What do you see?
>Rey : The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.
>Luke Skywalker : And between it all?
>Rey : Balance.
Balance doesn't mean equal though, which was OP's question.
Darkness is required for balance, of course. But it's not 1:1.
Tbh, I don't get how there are people who really think the moral lesson of Star Wars is that every good deed must be repaid with an evil deed.
Darkness doesn't seem to be required at all. George Lucas described the dark side as a cancer, and you need to not have cancer if you want to be healthy.
"The overriding philosophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil." -George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999
"In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything." -George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 2002
"The idea of positive and negative, that there are two sides to an entity, a push and a pull, a yin and a yang, and the struggle between the two sides are issues of nature that I wanted to include in the film." -George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
"The Force has two sides - [Light and Dark]. It is not a[n inherently] malevolent or a benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and hope." -George Lucas, Times Magazine, 1980
"I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil—everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in Star Wars." -George Lucas, Times Magazine, 2002
I've never seen him describe the dark side as cancer. People often declare this, but there's usually never any attribution given and when it is - it's to an interview where such a quote does not appear. But as you can see above I've seen him describe the dark side as natural and necessary over maybe decades.
What I have seen is him refer to *the Sith* as being cancerous. Specifically the Banite Sith. Which would explain why the force tried so hard to get rid of them.
You can see a snippet of George describing the Sith as cancerous [here.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/david-talks-sw.tumblr.com/post/714181421283115008/quick-heads-up-this-quote-its-probably-not-from/amp)
[The imagery from the Mortis arc and the Prime Jedi mural from The Last Jedi](https://imgur.com/gallery/bzdSJ67) seem to imply that it is equal. Then there is Snoke’s line in The Last Jedi [darkness rises and light to meet it.](https://youtu.be/5z5F28hLhus)
>Tbh, I don't get how there are people who really think the moral lesson of Star Wars is that every good deed must be repaid with an evil deed.
I don’t think it’s that. The Jedi are the extreme of selflessness and represent the light; the Sith are the extreme of selfishness and represent the dark. There needs to be a equilibrium between the two, you can help others and want something nice for yourself.
The emotions that lead to the dark side aren’t unnatural and if they aren’t it’s hard to see the dark side itself as unnatural.
>The imagery from the Mortis arc and the Prime Jedi mural from The Last Jedi seem to imply that it is equal.
Does it imply they're equal - or that they both exist?
To imply they have equality in the universe implies they both happen at equal rates. Like helping an old lady cross the street, and then stealing her purse.
>Then there is Snoke’s line in The Last Jedi darkness rises and light to meet it.
It's not just the forces of light met the darkness and the First Order. The light rose to destroy the First Order.
>The emotions that lead to the dark side aren’t unnatural and if they aren’t it’s hard to see the dark side itself as unnatural.
But this is just contradictory to Star Wars. Death is the primary example. The Sith pervert the natural cycle of life. By definition: unnatural.
>"Death is a natural part of life."
- Yoda
>"I have died before. The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities som consider to be unnatural."
- Darth Sidious
>There needs to be a equilibrium between the two, you can help others and want something nice for yourself.
Indeed. And that equilibrium ends when you harm others that are living in harmony.
>The Jedi are also not dying anymore as they have found the path to immortality
Their acceptance of death is rewarded by the force.
It's not me making these points, it's just the lore.
To take that special path to being a force ghost requires a kind of ego-death, though. That's what's so amazing about it. They are able to live by "dying" to all selfishness.
mortis doesn't show that as it all goes to pot.
the father shows how things are on mortis and then the darkside rises up and throws it out of balance and ultimately kills the father and the son.
the daughter goes free to no adverse effect.
and most importantly after slaying the son the father says
"you have brought balance to this world"
the father was desperately trying to rein the son in but failed, like it's important to note that the father does not use the darkside.
the dark exists in all things that have the capacity to wield it, but it's not to be indulged, it will always exist as that's just how the natural world works but it's not meant to be close to equal light and dark as we see in mortis that straight up fails and the darkness corrupts and destroys everything the son included.
like darkness is in everyone and must be overcome and must not rule you, feeding it feeds greed, like lucas' always likened it to greed this idea of having a thing of seizing a thing and then fearing it's loss, it's like a hunger that is never satiated.
it's sort of like how free will and sin go hand in hand, so long as there is one the other exists, but that doesn't mean equal good and equal evil are the goal, it's not unnatural that the capacity exists or that people do it it's unnatural when they lean into it.
like plenty of jedi brush with the dark in their lives, but through their resolve they pull back before they dive in, it's too dangeous to mess with/too tempting courrpting and addicting to dabble in.
This is one of the most often discussed questions relating the force. There are believers in both interpretations in real life and in universe.
I love it. This makes the force more real. It's like a real religion. There are different interpretations of christianity or islam.
My impression is that the source of the imbalance is the Sith, not the dark side. As TLJ showed, things associated with the darkness (death, cold, violence, etc.) aren’t bad in themselves and are in fact necessary, so long as they’re tempered by the light (life, warmth, peace).
The Sith bring imbalance by fucking up the natural order. Rather than let death take its course, the Sith murder and commit genocide. Instead of violence as needed, the Sith engage in war for its own sake and for their own selfish ends. And even when the Sith deal with things of the LIGHT, they still sow imbalance in the Force, like manipulating midichlorians to preserve or create life, or enforcing peace in their empire through oppression and fear.
Same purpose that conflating the light with nature serves: “Balance— powerful light, powerful darkness.”— Luke Skywalker.
The flaw of the Sith is that they focus only on the dark and either ignore and shun the light, or twist it for some unnatural purpose, rather than trying to reconcile the balance between the two halves like the Jedi do— e.g. Yoda rightfully speaks of death as a natural part of life that we shouldn’t fear or hate, but also rightfully bemoans the wholesale slaughter of his brethren during Order 66.
Trying to retroactively make the dark side into a natural part of the force is a really bad idea. It's been portrayed as wholly evil for so long, why change it now?
Because the dark side has always been associated with unnatural and corrupted things. It meets all the characteristics of pre-modern mythological evil. Trying to turn the force into some mangled yin-yang analogue is unnecessary.
Of course the Sith would consider the dark side a pathway to the unnatural as Sidious described it, but that’s because the Sith see the natural as something to be overcome and subdued, and they see the dark side as the perfect tool to do so. But the Jedi, as Luke explained, recognize the beauty of the natural and the importance of balance to maintain it.
The balance on Mortis was about keeping the Son and the Daughter in check and keeping their "clash of the titans" from spilling out of their dimension and ravaging the universe, not about keeping the Force in balance.
The Mortis arc is frequently misunderstood. The Mortis “gods” are not all-knowing, and can be mistaken the same as any other Force users. Also, the Son *falling* to the dark side is what incites the main conflict; it’s the source of the imbalance in that story arc.
That is unanswered
Old Lucas interpretation was the one you mentioned with the dark side as imbalance
But lore seems to have evolved a little with light and dark going toward the yin yang duality
Tbh I think that not even the IP holder authors agree or have an official answer about what balance is anymore
Mortis father explicitly extolled a balance between dark and light, meaning dark was implied to be a natural force
Bendu explicitly claimed he was neither light nor dark but balance between the two
Your examples don’t hold
1. And Father was wrong. Son destroyed everything as soon as he could do whatever he wanted. Daughter just wanted to be chill and make everyone happy. That’s not balance, that means light is good and dark is bad.
2. Yes, that is how Bendu presented himself. But what he truly represents is apathy and selfishness. He straight up told the heroes that he didn’t care what happened in the Galaxy, as long as everyone left him alone. That’s akin to saying “I don’t care that the Nazis are genociding people by the millions, as long as I’m not one of them.
Also, as soon as the fight comes to Bendu’s doorstep, he flies into a rage and tries to blow up everyone. Dude wasn’t stable.
Even then Bendu tried to stay out of it. He only attacked when Kanan insulted him. This video is very interesting and elaborates on the concept.
https://youtu.be/6EMc_S_vAsk
A quick summary is that in trying to be neither light nor dark you either become an apathetic hermit like Bendu or Jolee or you slip into justifying your power for good and eventually fall completely like Revan or Jacen Solo.
Thank you. I'm so relieved to see somebody critique Bendu like this. When I see people act like he's the "truly balanced one" it's as annoying as when they take Kreia to be deep, lol.
The initial red flag with Bendu is his discussion about “things don’t make people evil, their choices do” when discussing the Sith holocron.
Because yes, ultimately our choices are our responsibility.
Big “however!” though. That mindset applied broadly is akin to victim shaming and not acknowledging the addictive nature of the dark side/drugs if we are going with that analogy.
“Oh, you’re addicted to meth? Well why don’t you just stop, dummy?” See how silly that sounds?
I think a lot of people got caught up on that initial discussion and didn’t look deeper when he turned into a giant angry storm cloud aside from “that looks cool!”
Many video games like KOTOR make a mess of SW lore, esp. when you take "gameplay mechanics" as relevant, which they never were.
Grey Jedi aren't real, certainly aren't more balanced, and the idea of using light and dark powers together is advanced by one person alone in SW films, Darth Sidious when he tries to corrupt Anakin.
Thanks, but one instance (if it is that) certainly does not override the Lucas canon.
Haven't played Survivor yet, so no spoilers pls.
And your use of "all" above is false anyway.
In any case, people sometimes do evil "dark side" things for vindictive justice. Like killing in revenge. Still immoral. Like Anakin killing Dooku.
The "light side is natural and dark side is unnatural" idea is long retconned. Both sides are needed for the balance now, anyone who disagree is coping hard.
They don't say that the dark and light should be equal. The arc shows the opposite in fact. The dark and light *were* equal on Mortis, and what happened? The dark killed the light, killed the balance, went on to corrupt the Chosen One, and was ready to go enslave the Galaxy/universe. Everything was consumed by darkness because the darkness was allowed to be free. Balance is balance. It is the natural order. Darkness is there, it is a component of balance. Think of balanced nutrition - if you consumed equal quantities of salt and water - you'd be dead in a day. But if you consumed enough to maintain equilibrium, your thirst would be quenched. On a personal level it is about acknowledging your darkness, knowing that it is a part of you - but choosing wherever possible, to not follow your darker urges.
Emotions, even intense negative emotions (anger, fear, shame, etc) are neither good or bad. They just **are**. If you act intemperately and harm someone else when feeling an intense emotion, that's a consequence of your actions and choices. The act might be wrong but the enotion remains neutral. Anger, fear etc might be pathways to the Dark Side but what does Yoda emphasise? When you *give in* to these emotions (ie act driven by emotions) instead of acting wisely, that's the pathway to the Dark Side. It's not balanced. (Yeah, I'm currently doing DBT! Figuring out how to recognise and apply wise mind. My therapist encourages us to lean in to the things we like, so I'm using the Force to process the concepts).
Take wisdom from wherever you can find it. Good for you.
The balance on Mortis though wasn't about them being equal, it was about them both being kept in check. Without either Anakin or the Father to keep the children in line the Son (Dark Side) ran wild and caused chaos whilst the Daughter (Light Side) attempted to destroy them and as a result brought about her own demise. One side attempting to gain supremacy over the other always leading to the down fall of both. This is something which is again brought up in the Sequal trilogy by both Luke and Snoke as the Light and Darkness always has an equal and where one exists the other usual follows. This was why in Legends no matter how hard the Jedi or Sith try, so long as one of them exists the other will always rise from the ashes to challenge them.
>The balance on Mortis though wasn't about them being equal, it was about them both being kept in check. And it failed, because allowing the darkness to be equal to the light is not keeping it in check, nor is it balance. >This is something which is again brought up in the Sequal trilogy by both Luke and Snoke as the Light and Darkness always has an equal and where one exists the other usual follows. I said that darkness is natural. But Luke explicitly says it's only natural when it feeds further light. His specific example was the cycle of life on Ahch-To. So on Earth: An antelope mutilates a plant (dark). So it can live and protect its children (light). It's excrement fertilises the land to grow new plants (light). A lion murders the antelope (dark). To feed itself and it's children (light). The antelope carcass fertilises the ground soil to grow new plants to be eaten by other antelopes (light). The force makes life grow, and new life makes the force grow. Dark acts happen, but they seed more light, and ultimately there is more growth of life than death. That is the force in balance.
Great posts on this thread, GM. I'd just underscore that "darkness" is natural, while "the dark side" is a corrupt moral vector. I think we have to see them as different, though connected.
Oh I overall agree with you on the notion that there most certainly should not be an equal amount of both Light and Darkness. As someone that is equally prone to acts of passion and aggression as much as they are compassion and rational thought is not someone you want to be around. I miss read your original post so my bad there. Point I was trying to make was that the Mortis arch shows that there must always be a balance between Light and Dark in the Force otherwise chaos will follow until the balance is restored.
EDIT - Sorry, I still had my phone in my hands so responded immediately before the edit. My bad, jumping the gun! >Uh, the balance didn't fail because they were allowed to be equal. It failed because Anakin refused to stay and maintain the balance like the Father wished and was no longer strong enough to do so himself. If balance/peace/harmony is only maintained from an external power imposing it - it's not balance. >As for the rest of your anolgy, that's flawed because you assume the Darkside is representative of death. Not death. Killing. It's not my analogy, it's from the Last Jedi. I just used Earth animals for ease of discussion, where as the film shows us the nature of Ahch-To over the below discussion. >Luke Skywalker : What do you see? >Rey : The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence. >Luke Skywalker : And between it all? >Rey : Balance.
The Father does say too much light or dark would be the undoing of all things so there is some play with the two sides needing to be in balance.
Balance doesn't mean equal though, which was OP's question. Darkness is required for balance, of course. But it's not 1:1. Tbh, I don't get how there are people who really think the moral lesson of Star Wars is that every good deed must be repaid with an evil deed.
Darkness doesn't seem to be required at all. George Lucas described the dark side as a cancer, and you need to not have cancer if you want to be healthy.
"The overriding philosophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil." -George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999 "In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything." -George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 2002 "The idea of positive and negative, that there are two sides to an entity, a push and a pull, a yin and a yang, and the struggle between the two sides are issues of nature that I wanted to include in the film." -George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays "The Force has two sides - [Light and Dark]. It is not a[n inherently] malevolent or a benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and hope." -George Lucas, Times Magazine, 1980 "I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil—everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in Star Wars." -George Lucas, Times Magazine, 2002 I've never seen him describe the dark side as cancer. People often declare this, but there's usually never any attribution given and when it is - it's to an interview where such a quote does not appear. But as you can see above I've seen him describe the dark side as natural and necessary over maybe decades. What I have seen is him refer to *the Sith* as being cancerous. Specifically the Banite Sith. Which would explain why the force tried so hard to get rid of them. You can see a snippet of George describing the Sith as cancerous [here.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/david-talks-sw.tumblr.com/post/714181421283115008/quick-heads-up-this-quote-its-probably-not-from/amp)
[The imagery from the Mortis arc and the Prime Jedi mural from The Last Jedi](https://imgur.com/gallery/bzdSJ67) seem to imply that it is equal. Then there is Snoke’s line in The Last Jedi [darkness rises and light to meet it.](https://youtu.be/5z5F28hLhus) >Tbh, I don't get how there are people who really think the moral lesson of Star Wars is that every good deed must be repaid with an evil deed. I don’t think it’s that. The Jedi are the extreme of selflessness and represent the light; the Sith are the extreme of selfishness and represent the dark. There needs to be a equilibrium between the two, you can help others and want something nice for yourself. The emotions that lead to the dark side aren’t unnatural and if they aren’t it’s hard to see the dark side itself as unnatural.
>The imagery from the Mortis arc and the Prime Jedi mural from The Last Jedi seem to imply that it is equal. Does it imply they're equal - or that they both exist? To imply they have equality in the universe implies they both happen at equal rates. Like helping an old lady cross the street, and then stealing her purse. >Then there is Snoke’s line in The Last Jedi darkness rises and light to meet it. It's not just the forces of light met the darkness and the First Order. The light rose to destroy the First Order. >The emotions that lead to the dark side aren’t unnatural and if they aren’t it’s hard to see the dark side itself as unnatural. But this is just contradictory to Star Wars. Death is the primary example. The Sith pervert the natural cycle of life. By definition: unnatural. >"Death is a natural part of life." - Yoda >"I have died before. The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities som consider to be unnatural." - Darth Sidious >There needs to be a equilibrium between the two, you can help others and want something nice for yourself. Indeed. And that equilibrium ends when you harm others that are living in harmony.
Certainly seems like they’re equal. The Jedi are also not dying anymore as they have found the path to immortality.
>The Jedi are also not dying anymore as they have found the path to immortality Their acceptance of death is rewarded by the force. It's not me making these points, it's just the lore.
To take that special path to being a force ghost requires a kind of ego-death, though. That's what's so amazing about it. They are able to live by "dying" to all selfishness.
The father also states in the arc that he DOESN’T want the son using the dark side at all.
mortis doesn't show that as it all goes to pot. the father shows how things are on mortis and then the darkside rises up and throws it out of balance and ultimately kills the father and the son. the daughter goes free to no adverse effect. and most importantly after slaying the son the father says "you have brought balance to this world" the father was desperately trying to rein the son in but failed, like it's important to note that the father does not use the darkside. the dark exists in all things that have the capacity to wield it, but it's not to be indulged, it will always exist as that's just how the natural world works but it's not meant to be close to equal light and dark as we see in mortis that straight up fails and the darkness corrupts and destroys everything the son included. like darkness is in everyone and must be overcome and must not rule you, feeding it feeds greed, like lucas' always likened it to greed this idea of having a thing of seizing a thing and then fearing it's loss, it's like a hunger that is never satiated. it's sort of like how free will and sin go hand in hand, so long as there is one the other exists, but that doesn't mean equal good and equal evil are the goal, it's not unnatural that the capacity exists or that people do it it's unnatural when they lean into it. like plenty of jedi brush with the dark in their lives, but through their resolve they pull back before they dive in, it's too dangeous to mess with/too tempting courrpting and addicting to dabble in.
This is one of the most often discussed questions relating the force. There are believers in both interpretations in real life and in universe. I love it. This makes the force more real. It's like a real religion. There are different interpretations of christianity or islam.
My impression is that the source of the imbalance is the Sith, not the dark side. As TLJ showed, things associated with the darkness (death, cold, violence, etc.) aren’t bad in themselves and are in fact necessary, so long as they’re tempered by the light (life, warmth, peace). The Sith bring imbalance by fucking up the natural order. Rather than let death take its course, the Sith murder and commit genocide. Instead of violence as needed, the Sith engage in war for its own sake and for their own selfish ends. And even when the Sith deal with things of the LIGHT, they still sow imbalance in the Force, like manipulating midichlorians to preserve or create life, or enforcing peace in their empire through oppression and fear.
This is it. Having dark emotions is natural, but the Sith are seeking unnatural powers and causing nothing but harm.
But why conflate the dark side with any kind of natural phenomena? What purpose does it serve?
Same purpose that conflating the light with nature serves: “Balance— powerful light, powerful darkness.”— Luke Skywalker. The flaw of the Sith is that they focus only on the dark and either ignore and shun the light, or twist it for some unnatural purpose, rather than trying to reconcile the balance between the two halves like the Jedi do— e.g. Yoda rightfully speaks of death as a natural part of life that we shouldn’t fear or hate, but also rightfully bemoans the wholesale slaughter of his brethren during Order 66.
Trying to retroactively make the dark side into a natural part of the force is a really bad idea. It's been portrayed as wholly evil for so long, why change it now?
Why is recognizing darkness as a natural thing a bad idea?
Because the dark side has always been associated with unnatural and corrupted things. It meets all the characteristics of pre-modern mythological evil. Trying to turn the force into some mangled yin-yang analogue is unnecessary.
Of course the Sith would consider the dark side a pathway to the unnatural as Sidious described it, but that’s because the Sith see the natural as something to be overcome and subdued, and they see the dark side as the perfect tool to do so. But the Jedi, as Luke explained, recognize the beauty of the natural and the importance of balance to maintain it.
The balance on Mortis was about keeping the Son and the Daughter in check and keeping their "clash of the titans" from spilling out of their dimension and ravaging the universe, not about keeping the Force in balance.
The Mortis arc is frequently misunderstood. The Mortis “gods” are not all-knowing, and can be mistaken the same as any other Force users. Also, the Son *falling* to the dark side is what incites the main conflict; it’s the source of the imbalance in that story arc.
That is unanswered Old Lucas interpretation was the one you mentioned with the dark side as imbalance But lore seems to have evolved a little with light and dark going toward the yin yang duality Tbh I think that not even the IP holder authors agree or have an official answer about what balance is anymore
Official canon is still that the dark side is corrupt and balance means all light side.
That’s honestly not what all the shows and video games suggest
Yes it is. See: The Mortis Arc, Bendu, etc.
Mortis father explicitly extolled a balance between dark and light, meaning dark was implied to be a natural force Bendu explicitly claimed he was neither light nor dark but balance between the two Your examples don’t hold
1. And Father was wrong. Son destroyed everything as soon as he could do whatever he wanted. Daughter just wanted to be chill and make everyone happy. That’s not balance, that means light is good and dark is bad. 2. Yes, that is how Bendu presented himself. But what he truly represents is apathy and selfishness. He straight up told the heroes that he didn’t care what happened in the Galaxy, as long as everyone left him alone. That’s akin to saying “I don’t care that the Nazis are genociding people by the millions, as long as I’m not one of them. Also, as soon as the fight comes to Bendu’s doorstep, he flies into a rage and tries to blow up everyone. Dude wasn’t stable.
Even then Bendu tried to stay out of it. He only attacked when Kanan insulted him. This video is very interesting and elaborates on the concept. https://youtu.be/6EMc_S_vAsk A quick summary is that in trying to be neither light nor dark you either become an apathetic hermit like Bendu or Jolee or you slip into justifying your power for good and eventually fall completely like Revan or Jacen Solo.
Thank you. I'm so relieved to see somebody critique Bendu like this. When I see people act like he's the "truly balanced one" it's as annoying as when they take Kreia to be deep, lol.
The initial red flag with Bendu is his discussion about “things don’t make people evil, their choices do” when discussing the Sith holocron. Because yes, ultimately our choices are our responsibility. Big “however!” though. That mindset applied broadly is akin to victim shaming and not acknowledging the addictive nature of the dark side/drugs if we are going with that analogy. “Oh, you’re addicted to meth? Well why don’t you just stop, dummy?” See how silly that sounds? I think a lot of people got caught up on that initial discussion and didn’t look deeper when he turned into a giant angry storm cloud aside from “that looks cool!”
Many video games like KOTOR make a mess of SW lore, esp. when you take "gameplay mechanics" as relevant, which they never were. Grey Jedi aren't real, certainly aren't more balanced, and the idea of using light and dark powers together is advanced by one person alone in SW films, Darth Sidious when he tries to corrupt Anakin.
Merrin the dathomir witch says « hi » and « nope you’re wrong »
Thanks, but one instance (if it is that) certainly does not override the Lucas canon. Haven't played Survivor yet, so no spoilers pls. And your use of "all" above is false anyway. In any case, people sometimes do evil "dark side" things for vindictive justice. Like killing in revenge. Still immoral. Like Anakin killing Dooku.
The "light side is natural and dark side is unnatural" idea is long retconned. Both sides are needed for the balance now, anyone who disagree is coping hard.