Only a Sith thinks in absolutes...

[sistermagpie]

teratologist offered a heads-up to this link showing that, as she puts it, Orson Scott Card is acting a damn fool again. This link reminded me of something I've been thinking about lately, mostly due to a random discussion about Revenge of the Sith. It has, I guess, to do with that impulse to

One comment that I have gotten many times in HP fandom that always brings me up short is some version of: I just don't see how you can say that [bad character, usually Draco] is as bad as [good character, usually Harry]. This brings me up short because I've never set out to say such a thing. There are ways I might think two characters are similar, but that doesn't make them the same, and anyway I rarely think about questions of which person is worse than the other unless I absolutely have to choose between them. I've just never been interested in those kinds of questions and find it really difficult to judge two people as "equal" or "the same" because everyone person is such a complex thing in him/herself. Now, perhaps whatever I'm trying to say I'm not saying well so another person is justified in asking if I am saying these characters are the same--then I can just clarify that I'm not saying that and move on. But other times I feel like it's more the impulse of people to want to do that, to deal in absolutes where there's only the choice of which one is better than the other, so we can name that the "good" one and the other the "bad" one, and then go about justifying the one and condemning the other.

I see this the other way round too, though, where people are quick to want to say, "Ah, see, this person is doing the same as this other person. They're all just the same, one's just as bad as the other." Or, as seems to be the case with some people in interpreting ROTS: The Jedi are the ones who are evil! In HP fandom this would, of course, be that the Gryffindors are the ones who are evil while the Slytherins are good--an argument which, I must confess, I have never actually seen made, but I have seen referred to as if somebody is making it. The point is one can say that both sides are unappealing and still be interested in the individual ways they are unappealing. Choosing one over the other because you have to isn't the same as embracing your choice with enthusiasm.

Star Wars has often been criticized for being childlike, simplistic and goofy--and it is those things which is why we love it. But these recent discussion about something being "exactly the same" made me realize that moral questions, even in childlike, simplistic and goofy universes, are more complicated than they appear. The comment in question was talking about the flaws of the Jedi (which I agree with the person in the above link are intentional on George Lucas' part) and s/he said that s/he found it chilling when Yoda said to Anakin the exact same thing the Emperor said to Luke in ROTJ--iow, they're at heart exactly the same. I thought that was a very good catch that the two lines are similar--but disagree that they are the same. The Jedi and the Sith do have certain core principles in common; they are similar in many ways, but they are also different (opposites in some ways) and that's significant too. The lines in question were: "Your faith in your friends is [your weakness]" from ROTJ and "You must let go of that which you fear to lose" from ROTS and I want to talk about them because they show, imo, how the ideas of SW are really very consistent--and also because I think Yoda's cool.:-)

These lines are similar on the surface but really are saying the exact opposite. In context, in ROTJ, the Emperor has just told Luke that he knows about the plans to knock out the shields on Endor and destroy the Death Star, and that he knows these plans will fail. Luke says his over-confidence is his (the Emperor's) weakness and the Emperor replies that Luke's faith in his friends is his (Luke's). The Emperor does *not* consider loving another person a bad thing (that is, he doesn't consider it a bad thing when others do it; he doesn't seem to love anyone himself)--on the contrary, throughout this scene and throughout ROTS he *encourages* the Skywalkers to focus on their love for others in a very specific way. He wants them to think about how they can't bear to lose those people. In his line to Luke the Emperor is not telling him to stop loving or worrying about his friends--he wants him to do that. He's telling him that he can't have faith in his friends to take care of themselves. It's the exact same thing that caused Luke to leave his training early to run after Han and Leia. He knew they were in trouble and in pain and had to protect them or risk losing them one way or another.

Not that this is a silly fear--it's quite possible Luke's friends will fail and be killed. Yoda knows this too, and that's the possibility behind his own line to Anakin: You must let go of all you fear to lose. He's not telling Anakin to not love his friends and family, he's telling him to love them without holding on to them. I don't know much about Buddhism, but I do Vipassana Meditation, which is related, and I think the core principles of the two are the same: everything passes away. Suffering arises from craving and avoidance, so you must learn detachment. That's the basic idea of Vipassana. If you get an itch while you're meditating, rather than scratch it, you observe it in a detached way until it disappears. Thus you learn that everything rises and passes away. You don't have to constantly be reacting to outside forces. The people you love, including yourself, are no more permanent than that itch.

The Jedi do love each other of course--Obi-wan loves Anakin and Qui-gon obviously (though not as obviously as in the fanfics, maybe;-). The idea is not to stop loving the person, but to love them without needing to possess them and hold them, because you will not have them forever. The goal you're going for, ideally, is to love someone completely selflessly, so that you don't love them because you feel good when they're around, you just love them for themselves. Yoda and the Emperor are saying the exact opposite thing: Yoda tells Luke to have faith in his friends, to let go of his fears of losing them (even accepting that he might). The Emperor is telling Luke not to have faith in his friends because that will only lead to losing them. It is the emperor who more probably thinks that caring for others is a weakness, because he thinks caring=needing. Yoda separates the two.

That is, of course, played out even more obviously with Anakin's being tempted by immortality. There's nothing wrong with immortality--the Jedi not only seek it too but gain it, as Yoda tells us at the end. They gain it, in part, by not being afraid of physical dying. (I know as a kid I was puzzled the first time I saw Obi-wan's death--why did he let Vader win?) The Emperor, by contrast, must stress that death must be feared, and that it's the physical life that must be protected at all costs. The short-sightedness of Sith immortality is obvious even in Palpatine's description of it: he tells Anakin about the Sith lord who conquered death...and was murdered by his apprentice who is now the immortal one. Err, then that would mean he hadn't conquered death, because he's dead now, as you will be four movies on. This is a pretty common juxtaposition of ideas, imo. LOTR uses it too--the ring freezes things and keeps them from changing, which is why the ring bearers do not age. But they are never fully immortal; their lives are just stretched over more years, a sensation that feels, according to Bilbo, like butter scraped over too much bread.

For an example of the kind of love this can produce again, Anakin is kind of the poster boy. By the end all he can think about is Padme being taken away from him to the point where she doesn't want him anymore. Looking beyond the more heavy-handed aspects of the stuff in ROTS (you lost her yourself because you slaughtered a bunch of children!) it makes sense in the overall storyline. Anakin is afraid of change (I believe he says so outright in PM). He is threatened by a baby (who will take Padme from him in a sense), threatened by the idea his old ideas are wrong, threatened by changes in government. He's still smarting over the loss of his mother, something that's symbolically probably represents something really regressive. In fact, he's never had a wit of interest in who is father was...I wonder if that in itself is a sign of his being stuck at an earlier stage of development because it seems like that's how these things work: you leave the nursery and then you focus on your father instead of your mother. Anakin constantly looks to the past with regret; Luke has more trouble waiting for the future, according to Yoda. Obviously Anakin has father figures--plenty of them. But he chooses the one who seems like the easiest, the one who tempts him with security and safety while Obi-wan and Yoda are big meanies by comparison. Of course in the end Anakin's love of Padme turns completely self-centered because his feelings for her are more important than Padme herself. He can't really love anyone who isn't giving him what he wants.

What does that have to do with absolutes? Well, probably nothing except that my mind went from one to the other. Or not--because this distinction between the two ideas, while subtle, is still the idea around which the entire Star Wars series revolves. It's consistent, it's laid out clearly, it's coherent and, imo, holds up. I think, though, that it may be deceptively simple given the way the Jedi and the Sith are being discussed because when it comes down to it, this is what's important about the two groups, not the name of the government with which they are associated (although those governments do work as reflections). Individual Jedi can be flawed, stupid and downright wrong--and they suffer the consequences of these things. "Return of the Jedi" as a title can refer to Luke, who ends the series with the potential to start a new Jedi Order that learns from past mistakes. Darth Vader's final act is a complete rejection of his former priorities; he completely gives up control, destroying the Emperor with no one to take his place. The Jedi of the title can therefore also be the Jedi Anakin Skywalker, who never really went away, but finally understood the true difference between his former masters and his present one, and thus gained immortality.

Comments

Very interesting!!

[ex-leianora730.livejournal.com]

I've been chatting like a very chatty thing on LJ today, but I just had to ring in on this. I see the parallels between Harry and Voldemort in this same light. Voldy is afraid to die, so he does everything he can to keep it from happening. Harry is afraid of losing someone, and that very fear is the one thing Voldy played on to trap him and his friends in the DoM and got Sirius involved in that fatal duel. fearing loss is something Harry is going to have to learn to distance himself from, or avoid until he has done what needs doing.

Re: Very interesting!!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're chatty! Yes, I definitely thought that about Voldemort, though sometimes I think in HP this aspect isn't really laid out the way it is in other places. As you say, Harry, too, wants to hold on to people--and it's a little problematic, I think, because there is more back-and-forth across the barrier, with ghosts etc. Though those are said to have made the wrong choice by sticking around. So I do think the idea is there, we'll just have to see how it ultimately works out.

[balfrog.livejournal.com]

I meant to comment on your 'responsible fiction' post, but was goofing - but these sort of fall together in my crazy mind, only because the recurring action, of the characters you discuss here, in thinking of absolutes, and the readers who demand 'responsible fiction,' gesture at a move towards instant conclusions. Or single conclusions.

It seems logical in a simple minded way, I guess, for Anakin to go "Love Padme;Save Padme; Kill Jedi; Join Sith" or for this brand of simplification to be turned on its head and used in Palpatine's sophist arguments.

As is the straight line from "I don't see how you think Draco is as bad as Harry" and the ilk.

The complexity and possibilities hidden between the folds of a fairy-tale like narrative of the original Star Wars was its very strength wasn't it? Or Harry Potter? Given that both read first as parody/fairy-tale rather than realist fiction, at first (OotP makes that interesting move between), makes it intriguing for the fan reader/writer to play, turn on its head, re-interpret, fill in the blanks, turn inside out, what the original story is doing.

And that's where I feel the absolutes in both the characters who cannot look around the straight line logic, make for a good story, can't be savvy interpreters, but are more than the viewers who wish to clamp them down to one meaning want them to be.

Tangentially with the 'responsible fic' - yes, certain topics treated with compassion, understanding, would be nice, yes, but that kind of simplistic "shut down" on "how to produce a story" moreover the assumption that fiction MUST be a wrapper for a moral message, just drives me up the wall.

Uh.... I did have a point... I think...
Or was just being rambly and ranty...

Sorry about that...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hey, no problem putting the two posts together since they probably go together in my head somehow too.

And that's where I feel the absolutes in both the characters who cannot look around the straight line logic, make for a good story, can't be savvy interpreters, but are more than the viewers who wish to clamp them down to one meaning want them to be.

Yes! Well said. Since people are like this characters often are too, and that makes for complications and conflict in the plot. But there are so many areas where of course people are going to react differently or think something else other than what is happening is going on.

The two ideas really do go together, because I think they tie together this fear of chaos and love of order that's easily understood, so even traumatic experiences follow a familiar pattern. That's what's so odd to me about Card being so offended at the idea of someone not seeing good as an absolute when to me "good" is so obviously a nebulous concept. It has nothing to do with moral beliefs, for me, but just facts. Maybe you'd like it to be that easy, but it usually isn't--and I think that's often why in my experience the people who think it's simple and black-and-white and absolute are the ones doing the worst job of living up to it!

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Oh for the good old days, when Card was running secular humanist revival meetings at SF cons.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL--that frightens me because now I wonder if years from now I'll be ranting about all the things that seem so sensible to me now!

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

I think there's a gene that makes aging science fiction writers go batshit insane, actually. Look at Bradbury and Dick. Look at poor old Arthur C. Clarke, and of course, Harlan Ellison has become rather... cranky. Of course he always was kind of cranky from what I'm given to understand.

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

You know I really am not surprised in the least that right wingers have taken up with the Evil Empire. They've modeled themselves after them, haven't they? Of course they're going to feel put out when it turns out in the end that they're supposed to be the bad guys.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it fits with that weird thing you see in people where they attack others while at the same time whining that they're being oppressed.

It reminds me, too, of this thing I was reading about "South Park Conservatives." Apparently a lot of people who call themselves conservatives (not sure they actually are--probably many of them are radically right-wing) claiming that South Park agrees with them and supports Republican values (which is funny because other people claim it's liberal). I don't think it supports one party or the other, it just supports the values of its creators.

Anyway, apparently they were therefore shocked when in the recent Terry Schiavo episode that when Satan needed help he said, "We'll go to who we always go to. The Republicans." As if this represented some turn around for South Park because they'd mistakenly thought that skewering stupid liberal Hollywood attitudes meant they loved these other guys. Now they're doing the same thing with Star Wars, acting like there was ever a time that it supported what they represent!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I have to tell you, this is one of my favorite posts of yours ever <3<3<3<3 So... inspiring and stuff (and the last line! wah!). *wallows*
Of course, it helps that this is one of my all-time favorite subjects-- the subtleties in loving & needing, the struggle between fear and acceptance, and so on :D And it's so nice to hear positive things about Star Wars as a whole, without the sort of (often fond) mockery that's been dominant ever since the prequels came out.

Somehow you made me empathize with Anakin and Obi-wan & Luke all at the same time, which is difficult yet now makes complete sense. And actually, I've always had a lingering dislike of Anakin since the first movie, but now I guess I can just feel bad for him 'cause he's got all these regressive issues, almost similarly to Draco, actually, ahahahah.
And it's startling to think that wanting/having immortality isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it's often portrayed (what villain doesn't want it? it seems like they all do, I swear to god) but rather it's the wanting that's bad, not the immortality. Any craving that becomes overpowering leads to um... becoming an evil villain that wants to destroy the world?? Something like that. Oh yeah, so I'm reading `The Naming' and am curious what you'd think of it *nudgenudge* If you feel like a fantasy book atm, that is :> Anyway, it has a system of Light and Dark and the Jedi Bards who struggle with keeping the Balance (ahahah), etc. And of course there has to be an evil "Nameless One" who went bad because he craved immortality and so on.

Man, following that link made me pretty pissed at both OSC and the various stupids who're all about seeing Star Wars as some political parable. It reminds me of everything I hate about lit-crit to the point of frothing at the mouth and declaring I shall never be an English major just to dissociate myself from everything to do with reading one's personal agendas into whatever artform. That's just... I mean, I really abhor, seriously abhor the intellectual dishonesty involved. Though I guess I can't blame lit-crit as a practice, only stupid people, stupid people everyone. Must burn and destroy. Or something. /tangent

This absolutes thing also makes me think it's a question of comfort, meaning that the Sith want the comfortable solution where there are guarrantees, because they're always afraid of being lost & adrift, I guess-- if they (Anakin, the Emperor) didn't know they possessed the beloved, what would they depend on? So it's a sort of basic selfishness, too. And this is related (hah!) to people who need there to be this clearcut divide between Slytherin & Gryffindor, Draco & Harry, from either side-- it's this whole concept that if you don't know something for sure, 100% delineated and boxed in (and owned?), then you don't know it at all. Perhaps there's some link between the fear of moral relativism and the fear of letting go of the desired, say, in the mechanics of the need for control (out of fear). If we cannot control the vertical and the horizontal, or worse, if we let it (the Force??) control -us-, then everything is up for grabs, and tomorrow we may wake up Slytherin :> Or worse, a dirty Jedi :>

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I have to tell you, this is one of my favorite posts of yours ever <3<3<3<3 So... inspiring and stuff (and the last line! wah!). *wallows*/i>

Hee! Yay! *preens*

And it's so nice to hear positive things about Star Wars as a whole, without the sort of (often fond) mockery that's been dominant ever since the prequels came out.

Yeah, I hope after a while people can stop doing that. I mean, I didn't like the first two prequels either but it's more interesting talking about the core stuff in the story that works.

And actually, I've always had a lingering dislike of Anakin since the first movie, but now I guess I can just feel bad for him 'cause he's got all these regressive issues, almost similarly to Draco, actually, ahahahah.

LOL! It's true! And he's just not that bright (also like Draco, maybe, but Draco might actually be smarter). He wants everything set to the way it's supposed to be but really he can't stand the way things are supposed to be. What do you mean I can't be a Jedi Master at 19? Why should my mother have to die, ever? That can't be right! It's like wanting or needing anything that bad is a problem, the way he wants everything on his terms, even about things that he has no control over. All the tantrums in the world isn't going to change the fact that people die, you know?

Oh yeah, so I'm reading `The Naming' and am curious what you'd think of it *nudgenudge*

*makes note*

Man, following that link made me pretty pissed at both OSC and the various stupids who're all about seeing Star Wars as some political parable.

Oh god, yes. Although I'm not bothered by somebody making an analogy that's actually in the story, like if you're trying to explain how you feel about something you can say, "It's sort of like the way Yoda says..." But this is inside out where you feel it makes sense to twist the story to pretend it's really talking about your pet issue. Because, you know, even if the creator *was* thinking of your pet issue a bit, so even if George Lucas really does think that the Bush Administration reminds him of the Galactic Empire, that doesn't mean his characters really are those guys. He's just talking about what he feels about his fictional situation. So maybe he has set out why he thinks certain ideas are wrong--that doesn't make it a transparent attack on real people.

This absolutes thing also makes me think it's a question of comfort, meaning that the Sith want the comfortable solution where there are guarrantees, because they're always afraid of being lost & adrift,

Right, and even when they have what they want it's not enough because they'll worry they'll lose it. So they need to know that things are inherently the way they want them forever so not only are things okay now, or are they the good guys now, they need to know they always will be.

[kylandra.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY. Just...that's precisely the difference, exactly what the deal is, in regards to Sith and Jedi and the various arguments. <3

[dotsomething.livejournal.com]

on the contrary, throughout this scene and throughout ROTS he *encourages* the Skywalkers to focus on their love for others in a very specific way.

Exactly. He uses their emotions. To him love is, like every other emotion and all people, a tool among many tools, neither good nor bad. Just a tool.

You must let go of all you fear to lose. He's not telling Anakin to not love his friends and family, he's telling him to love them without holding on to them.

While watching the movie, I had an odd thought about this line. It can be read two ways. It's as you say, love without clinging. It also may be that Yoda meant let go of fear. Not let go of those things you fear losing, but let go of *fearing* to lose them. Which maybe means the same thing, but I think there's a nuance of difference there (and maybe I'm assigning more than what's there).

Anakin constantly looks to the past with regret; Luke has more trouble waiting for the future, according to Yoda.

Great observation, I'd missed that. Yet look how much stronger Luke is emotionally than his father, the message there being look to the future, not the past. Yet ironically Yoda reprimands Luke that his mind is "never on where he was, on what he was doing." So really the idea is to be in the present, which is, I think, a zen thing.

[raleighj.livejournal.com]

Card isn't the first person to bring this up -- Salon magazine (which I think tends to pretty liberally-oriented), did a whole article (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin_main/index.html) a couple years ago about how the Jedi were traditionalist elitist snobs, and that their religion was horrifically wrong-headed. (I think it might have also said that it was good thing that Anakin wiped out the old order, so that the Jedi could get rebuilt on a more egalitarian plane, but that might have been another article).

Agreeing with you and everybody else down in the comments, I am duly sick of everyone making parallels to current politics. What really tended to tick me off, after about the 8th time I saw it, was the reaction to the "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" line. ("OMG! He's talking about GWB! GWB is a Sith! GWB is an evil emperor! The US is and Evil Empire! Lucas is so brave and perspicacious!")

I tended to see Card's article as him getting rather sick of this knee-jerk reaction as well.

Honestly -- it never really entered my head to start making comparisons between the Star Wars galaxy and contemporary Earth politics. The prequels are about the rise of a dictatorial regime -- which I think is a pretty standard and archetypal plot. Revenge of the Sith, containing the plot it sort of had to have, happened to come out at the same time that Iraq and GWB and Terror Alerts were a big deal. Shucks -- if I happened to finally publish a book right now, including in it a scheming politician who seizes power by promising the people more security, would I be making a bold political statement about contemporary politics? Hell no! I'd just be trying to tell a good story!

The lines in question were: "Your faith in your friends is [your weakness]" from ROTJ and "You must let go of that which you fear to lose" from ROTS

Interesting. I don't see much potential for similarity in those...more promising (and more in need of some clarification) are the "point of view" lines (in ANH, Phantom (I think), and ROTS). And this mess of easily-equivocated words:

Obi-Wan: "Only a Sith deals in absolutes"
Obi-Wan: "Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil."
Anakin: "From the Jedi point of view! From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."
Obi-Wan: "Well, then you are lost!"

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

And here I'll confess to actually having rather liked Brin's analysis. I'm not going to claim to be so pure that I'm not the least bit swayed by the fact that Brin's perspective is culturally, religiously, and politically nearer my own to begin with; but I also think it's a better piece of writing and thinking than Card's. Brin steps outside the fiction and critiques the author's whole worldview; Card prostletyzes against the Jedi the same way he would prostletyze against Hindus if one of his grandkids converted.

[raleighj.livejournal.com]

::grins:: Ditto here on the cultural/religious/political bias bit (though substituting in Card for Brin...)

I'm still trying to get a hold of the distinction you're making between critiquing the author's whole worldview and proselytizing.

I thought the whole framework Card made his criticisms in was a bit crazy -- like he actually thought that there were people seriously taking "Jedi" as their religion. And I'll agree that Brin has a more coherent article -- it builds up better than Card's does. And Brin does wind up with a deeper article, dragging in a lot more things (the whole western literary tradition, for instance).

It seemed more a difference in focus, though.

Brin: focuses on the elitist underpinnings of the movies; bad things about in Jedi philosophy get touched on in this discussion.
Card: focuses on inconsistencies in Jedi philosophy; elitism gets touched on in this discussion.

Though this might be exactly your point.

The fact that they both criticized the elitism of the Jedi worldview was what was interesting to me. I stumbled across the Card article a day or so before seeing it mentioned here; my initial reaction to the thing was something like, "Huh -- this sounds a lot like that Salon article." I found it rather amusing a more conservative person was finally attacking Jedi philosophy too, and sounding a lot like Brin.

[lm.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You know, my difficulty with Yoda's philosophy is that it's the exact opposite of what he tells Luke to do that ends up (albeit indirectly) redeeming Anakin. If Luke hadn't gone to Cloud City intending to save his friends, he wouldn't have learned that Vader was his father. In which case he may have found out in an entirely different way, which could have ended in either him killing Vader or vice-versa.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's completely true. And you know, I'd say the same thing about the end. It's not Yoda's idea that Luke appeal to the good in Vader. I suspect he and Obi-Wan might very well have both thought Luke needed to be trained to be able to kill Vader. As it was, though, it was Anakin's love for his son--his perfectly human, imperfect love--that really saved them all. And perhaps the reason Luke tried it at all was because he felt the same kind of love for his father.

So I think in the end it really was a balance that was needed. The Skywalkers refusing to let go might cause Vader's fall, but it saves him too.