"But then [Maul] noticed the darkness was moving and alive with dancing bright red stars. And he suddenly knew what he was really looking at. Dark clouds. And drifting, burning ashes. ... He felt free. ... He became resolved to survive. He would do anything and everything necessary to stay alive." (Windham, 64-5).
As the sky above copies his colours, Maul finally grows into himself and unlocks a secret, unplanned, love for life. Moments later, his vigorous desire to hold on to it develops.
The ungodly determination that allowed Maul to survive bisection was born in this moment.
The imagery here also relates to the cosmic nature of the dark side. It is as we expect, of course, a vision of hell. But there is beauty and majesty; The dark side is not a sickness here, but is joyous, like Maul. Alive and dancing. How interesting for something which is associated only with suffering and death.
The red stars could be the Sith themselves: stars gone supernova with the dark side, trading a long life for the thrill of power. Destined to fall, like ash, to irrelevance. Beautiful all the same.
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How could would it be to have a Star Wars movie called "Star Wars: The First Jedi"? Just, see the beginning of the Jedi Order? Maybe even the beginning of the Sith and the Republic?
That sounds like it could be pretty neat. Which beginning though? When the Jedi Order became all about the Light Side? When they joined the Republic? Or all the way back to the Je'Daii?
Personally, I like the idea of the Je'Daii. Striving for an internal balance between Light and Dark sounds far more healthy to me. I'd like to see how that would play out.
I'd like to see the Je'Daii civil war. Mainly because I want to see both sides being a little messed up, because they are both unbalanced by focusing on only one aspect of the Force. The Dark Side is unstable because they don't use more peaceful emotions and are destructive. The Light Side is unstable because they are too passive and become complicit in things they shouldn't...
I dunno. I think that would be neat.
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Hellen, how do you know how to do so many things? I know how to do a few things but I look at your stuff and every time I'm like "damn. I wish I could do that"
oh, I just do them.
It's after 1:30 am, so you get the existential answer. The fun thing about personhood is you get to just be whatever. You can't necessarily do whatever--money and laws are things, unfortunately, and you only get so much control over the opportunities available to you. But you can sort of just throw yourself down on the anvil of life and hammer yourself into whatever shape you want. Ideally the process of it drives out some flaws as you go, but sometimes also you take an impurity and make yourself stronger with it.
I am, still, a person who is terrified of failure; of incorrectness; of being wrong. And there is nothing to do with fear except shatter it with blunt force, and so I line myself up against failure again and again and again. I will try. I must; or the fear of failure wins, and I must keep trying after I fail or I have failed utterly. I fear failure, and therefore I take it as a challenge. I must do what I think I cannot. And you know what? More often than not, I can.
I have a weird and wandering skillset because I make myself try things, knowing full well that I will remember for decades every time someone saw me be less than instantly successful, because the only way I know to get better is to batter down the dross of my own fear. That's the deal. I'm not doing anything that nobody has done before. I know it's all possible. I just have to be the sort of person that does it. And it gets easier every time. If the question is can it be done and the answer is yes, then the next question is can I be the one to do it, and the answer is I want to be.
Every time I fail my way over and over to eventual success, trying again the next time is less scary; every time I have a broader base of skills to carry to the next challenge. I'm not unusually talented, just stubborn as hell, and I've lived long enough on I have to do what scares me that honestly, not that much scares me anymore.
If you keep failing long enough, it turns out that you just get really good at problem solving, and figuring out unconventional ways to reach your goals. It's not about a special secret concoction of skills, it's about persistence, and hammering away until you've taken a mess and made it into something you think is worth keeping. It's not easy, but it is simple.
Also I have incredibly strong unmedicated ADHD. But I sort of assume that's glaringly obvious.
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There are no trash takes on Jedi philosophy, there is contextual analysis.
As may be obvious from the title (humorous--I have gone through several common misinterpretations myself), this is about that infamous scrap of poetry,
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.
And the other version,
Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.
I've seen quite a few interpretations of these along the lines of "the second version is reasonable but the first version is crazy and stupid," so here's why I think both versions are actually communicating the same idea, and the wording doesn't really change the meaning much at all.
So just like I did in my post about "do or do not there is not try," let's start by asking some questions to establish context before we look at the text itself.
Is it THE Jedi Code or just a mantra? Legends says it's the Code, canon says it's a mantra. The fact of the matter is that no matter what, it's really a scrap of poetry which couldn't encompass the entire philosophical basis of a culture even if it was trying, so we'll consider it a mantra.
Does the fact that it's a mantra rather than THE Jedi Code mean that we can't get anything deep or meaningful out of it? Of course not. Just because it's not the whole of or a full explanation of Jedi philosophy doesn't mean it's just a nice sounding string of words.
Who is saying this to who? This mantra is often used to focus a meditation, with the first phrasing used by adults in the culture, while the second phrasing is more often used by children.
What were George Lucas' inspirations for Jedi culture that relate to this mantra? (borrowing from this post) A combination of christianity, buddhism, and his interpretations. I'm not an expert in any religion, and definitely not in buddhism, but I know enough to know I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations, so take this with a grain of salt. Disclaimers aside, this mantra, and the way it is phrased, indicate it is being inspired more by buddhism. The way christian texts, specifically the Bible, are written typically goes "here is a story about people doing something, and here is how big G god and/or Jesus reacted." There are metaphors sprinkled in, but they are mainly there to clarify for readers. Buddhist texts on the other hand (and lots of other eastern belief systems as well, like daoism, hinduism, etc. It's an important note that these belief systems don't necessarily conform to the western idea of what a religion is, and often their original languages don't even have a word which is equivalent in meaning to "religion") use metaphor in often deliberately contradictory ways, to make the reader think about things which are difficult to express in words alone. The ongoing struggle to reconcile contradictory descriptions is the point. This doesn't mean those texts can be interpreted however a reader would like. There may be multiple right interpretations, but there can also be wrong interpretations.
What the mantra does NOT mean:
"There is no ___ …" =/= "The experience of ___ is fake news."
"There is no ___ …" =/= "___ is not a useful concept."
"There is no ___ …" =/= "We should totally ignore ___ and pretend we've never heard that word before."
The mantra is not realy a set of advice on how to act. It's a set of statements about Existance. And I do mean capital E, philosophical, epistemological, weird, deep, think-y, Existence.
Temperature Metaphor
You know the first time someone tells you as a kid that cold isn't real, it's just the absence of heat and you're like… "but I'm touching something right now and it feels cold???" It sounds wild the first time you hear it, but as you think about it more, maybe learn about it a second time in science class, get some more context about how molecules work, etc. it begins to make more sense. It gets easier to grasp, until eventually the knowledge feels intuitive--especially if you're a STEM person who thinks about it a lot. We still talk about cold as a concept, because it's useful to us as well--lack of heat can have damaging effects on our bodies after all, and a cold drink is great on a hot day--and it's more efficient to say "cold" than it is to say "lack of heat." But there are some situations, like developing refrigeration or air conditioning, where it is not just useful but essential to think of temperature as it really is--heat exists, cold doesn't--and thinking of it colloquially can only hold us back (if this isn't actually intuitive to you, that's fine, it's just a metaphor--you could also think about dark being the absence of light, vacuum being the absence of mass, any number of things mirror this).
Probably the easiest like to get one's head around, imo at least, is "there is no ignorance, there is knowledge."
Taken hyper-literally it would mean "why seek out knowledge ever when everyone already knows everything?" But if we say knowledge is to heat as ignorance is to cold, then we can understand the real meaning--knowledge is real, where ignorance is only the name of an experience.
The Whole Mantra
This is the way the Jedi are understanding of emotion, ignorance, passion, chaos, death, etc. They are introduced, as children, to the idea that whilst they may feel all of these things, what they are actually experiencing is the lack of the other things--peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, the Force. That's why they start with the "___ yet ___" phrasing--it introduces them to the first steps of understanding:
They can feel emotions, yet peace is still real and out there to reach for no matter how overwhelming those emotions may be at the moment,
They can feel ignorant or unknowledgeable, yet knowledge is out there to find,
They can experience passion (meaning suffering or pain in this context), yet know that serenity will return to them,
They can find their surroundings chaotic, and yet look for the harmony in the noise,
They can understand that death happens, yet be comforted by the fact that the person dying is still as much a part of the Force as they ever were.
Eventually they move onto the full mantra:
They will always feel emotions, but if they always reckon with those emotions and pass through them they can always return to a place of peace,
If they feel ignorant, they must seek out knowledge, rather than acting rashly. Also, their own knowledge is not the limit--others may hold knowledge in places they consider clouded,
They may experience suffering and pain--it may even feel like a good thing--but there is no wisdom in pain, it is the distraction from serenity, which is where truth can be found,
No matter how chaotic the world appears, it is actually a part of an underlying harmony that makes up all the patterns and the beauty in the world,
Death is not an ending, no matter how much it may look like one. It is a natural transition back into the Force, the place all life comes from.
A Jedi youngling is someone for whom this understanding is an essential part of the culture they are being brought up in.
A Jedi Padawan is someone who is beginning to learn to apply this understanding outside the confines of the Jedi temple, in a world where not everyone shares it.
A Jedi Knight is someone who has learned to apply this understanding on their own, without supervision.
A Jedi Master is someone for whom this understanding has become intuitive and automatic, no matter their surroundings.
All this is to say,
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i just saw someone say that faramir is infuriating because he's self-aggrandizing in claiming that he won't act in any way that doesn't befit his status, and on one hand - i understand the root of it? he does have a courteous, almost formal style of talking. he does openly claim that he would not take this mysterious power (before he knew about the ring) if it was on the highway. he agrees to denethor's characterization that he wants to appear noble like a king of old.
but on the other hand i'm straining at the bit to defend my baby because - infuriating?? when he lives up to the words he is saying?? when the text shows over and over that he's loved by his people, that he genuinely tries to live by those standards (and seems to succeed) - him not killing even animals unnecessarily, him riding back for his men. even his proclaimed dream to see gondor's tree bloom and peace restored, is supported by him seemingly making that transition from steward to king as smooth as possible?
maybe it's because i instantly liked him so much. it just caught me so off guard because this particular criticism never ever crossed my mind. so funny how people will interpret the same thing differently. to some internet user out there, his words are self-aggrandizing. to me, his words are straightfoward and supported by actions - dreamboat central.
Hi, anon! I'm pretty much with you on this one. I've seen the occasional post like that, and I can understand finding his style grating (though I personally love it) or disliking the general baggage associated with Tolkien's handling of Númenóreanness (there's a considerable degree of classism and racism built in to the presentation of Elves and peredhil/Númenóreans in LOTR in particular, while later texts like "The Mariner's Wife" are relatively more nuanced).
But the idea that Faramir is essentially just performing the appearance of high virtue as a sort of imitation of Númenórean cultural values without actually possessing those values or the virtues of the best of them just seems a profound misinterpretation to me. He has flaws, but he's not a hypocrite and he does not fail to live up to his presentation of himself at any point.
He's exactly what he appears to be, a stern and intelligent young man out of step with the current trends of his culture, who still cares deeply about his people and their allies. He's potentially highly dangerous in the way of Denethor and Aragorn, and like them, his personality is hard and unbending when it comes down to it, but he's also gentler than either—the combination of his willingness to act on the threat he represents if necessary and ethically justifiable, with a deep compassion and sympathy for others (even animals), is distinct and really interesting.
I think there's a very important distinction between Faramir performing virtue and gentleness and putting on the persona of a great Númenórean lord in times of peace, and Faramir presenting himself as he truly is and then suiting actions to words, despite the fundamental antipathy between his temperamental inclinations and the circumstances he's been placed in.
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