Why a "Gray" Force, if true, will ruin Star Wars and the Sequels

Of course you can't, and I don't think that's the idea.

The Sith, and dark Force users in general, are still an impediment to the Force. Remember, "Life creates it - makes it grow." Yes, death is a part of life, and you cannot light a candle without casting a shadow. However, those that use the Force to murder and enslave are essentially using the Force against itself.

Therefore, somebody who serves the Force - even if that person isn't a Jedi - is going to stand against those who minimize the Force by abusing its power. It's just that they will do so in harmony with the Force, rather than as part of a dogmatic code. The Force will guide them and ensure that they are at the right place at the right time to do what the Force needs them to do.

 

The thing is,I don't think we're supposed to care about the "natural order" when an examination of the grey may offer a superior solution.

The poem isn't saying the grey will bring eternal day (which itself would probably cause a planet to become a hellscape wasteland) but a resolution. As of now, we really can't say what it is. Maybe it's artificial lighting with indoor air conditioning.

 

But that's the point my friend - the Jedi already acknowledge they have a dark side. Yoda outright says it in the CW cartoons and in Rebels I think. Luke's training is all about seeing his own dark side and learning how to not act on it. So I don't see that as the middle ground the Jedi should move to. They're already there but constantly work and train to ensure they reject this dark side.

 

but you're assuming Yoda knows the Force. you're assuming everyone up until now has some kind of total knowledge when the trailer tells us that Luke feels there's something more--something "bigger".

i'm gonna trust Luke because i can personally conceive of something bigger. Luke himself represented a hint of something bigger in ROTJ.
so long as you hold onto a strict dichotomy as defined by a failed order, of course you're going to be skeptical.

 

I saw Luke do what he was trained to do: reject the dark side and embrace compassion and selflessness.

I don't understand what could be bigger than the struggle between light and dark. The struggle that Maz Kanata refers to.

 

Do I?
The idea of balance was introduced when the Prequels were made. Balance is canon since then.
Balance is a theme and I agree it would be deeper explored (same as the prophecy)
The "is so much bigger" line...
and it's due: becouse honestly the answers (in the PT) to both things were not satisfying.

But Grey is not just another word they are using to define it.
Bendu is not a character in balance (in fact he's not the chosen one or the father).
Those are different plots, themes, call them whatever you want, that you have to explain first in their own contenxt and once you've done inside the larger contetx of the SWU (where everything in the end is connected)

I'm afraid - that's my opinion - that many are messing up with words becouse they want to see what they want to see.
I think the surface is made up to be a red herring, but if you look closer.... clues are there.
I think it's preatty obvious that when Luke says - in a trailer - that it's time for the Jedi to end they're not spoiling how all the saga will end.
I think if the ST starts with LST saying the opposite thing, in this sense it is a bigger clue.

I know Anakin and few other left the order, but thousands in centuries did not.
I know the Jedi Order guaranteed peace for hundreds of years, before the Sith come back, planned the Clone Wars etc...
And that's canon, not my personal interpretation....

 

Luke rejected the idea that the Dark side was unsolvable ~ that Anakin's destiny was sealed by the fact that he embraced the Darkness even as fully as he did.
Obi-Wan and Yoda both told him it was impossible, that Vader was lost. Luke saw something more.

the struggle to define that "something more" is the abutment of dogma vs. revelation.
the very nature of revelation is that it reveals something heretofore unknown and perhaps previously unknowable.

it takes a leap of faith.
or, another way to put it is: you don't have to be a degreed/licensed engineer to imagine flying.

i can image this middle/nexus/balance of the Force.
probably can't articulate it well since i can't convince you it's possible.

i'm okay with letting it go ~ hahahaha

 

Oh look, more b.s. clickbait on the forum.

yay.

#stopclickbait

 

That's rather the point, the metaphor just doesn't work. Why compare something to night and day when we're not supposed to be dwelling on the "natural order"?

To be honest, I'm way off topic here because my only real point is that I think it's a rubbish poem! A few more air conditioning metaphors would improve it no end....

 

Haha, for sure.

I'd agree that it's definitely not a perfect metaphor. I guess it's just because we have the "light side" (day) and the "dark side" (night). It's just terminology people will be familiar with.

I'm sure you and I both are thinking way too hard about this.

 

If we get another Empire (FO) vs Rebels (Resistance) story ark with an epic conclusion in EP IX, I will not be satisfied.
I hope that Lucas story group also thinks that way, at least in small portion.
Anyway, many of you kept nagging about how TFA brought nothing new to the table in terms of story.
Now it appears that things are gonna get serious and that we will really get something new and exciting, and still people are complaining "that can't be done, I wall walk away from the franchise".
I am open minded to any new direction that TLJ brings, and only when I watch it in December I will say if it's good or not. I strongly believe it will be good.
Star Wars are in good hands, people who make new movies really care about them. I am grateful to have new Star Wars movies that kick-ass in a world of generic and predictive Marvel superheroes and boring Fast & furious franchise.

 

I'll certainly read your thread once I'll have time to watch Rebels, but imo the "why" in this case dosen't matter that much.
The mere exsistence of beyond the idea of the duality of the force is what matters. It might not be the way to obtain balance, but the idea is still there, it's canon and still to be explored.

 

"From a certain point of view"... Now where have I heard that before?


"So, what I told you was true... from a certain point of view... Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

 

I think Disney got us right where they wanted with the teaser for The Last Jedi. The way the trailer was edited is to make us believe that Luke wants for the Jedi to end. But, let's be real for a second, Jedi is basically another IP within the Star Wars Universe. In my line of work, I have to travel a lot so I meet a lot of different people, many of those people are Star Wars fans (casual fans, not hardcore nerds ). Want to know what most people tell me about Rogue One? They say it was good, but there was no Jedi!!!

There's no way that the powers that be at Disney will remove the Jedi from the Star Wars verse, they're just teasing us to get the excitement going until the film gets released.

If I had to guess, I'd say the line we'll hear in the movie (if it doesn't get cut out in the final edit of the film) is : It's time for the Jedi of old to end. He'll realize that brainwashing kids into an ideology that will shape their beliefs for the rest of their lives is wrong, similar to how Qui-Gon used to challenge the old Jedi order with what he perceived to be right. Qui-Gon had no problem using The Force for his benefits and I think Luke will grow into something similar.

Like Pablo Hidalgo said, (I'm paraphrasing) there's no such thing as Gray Jedi, you're either Jedi, or you are not. Gray Jedi opens the door to White Sith, if you catch my drift...

 

I'm not sure we're really communicating all that well here. I know that we do seem to be getting bogged down in semantics, though. Let me see if I can lay out my original point (or the one I was trying to make, at least) as succinctly as possible.

The objection raised by this thread is that if there is a "grey Force" that it will somehow ruin Star Wars.

I disagree with this, and believe that what people are calling a "grey Force" will probably end up being something closer to what we saw in the Father in the Mortis arc.

This isn't a mathematically equal blend of Jedi and Sith, but a balancing influence that embraces the Force in its true, natural form rather than through the lenses of the Jedi or the Sith, recognizing that though the Force is created and expanded by life and that this is what give the Force its vibrancy, the natural order of things also includes death and corruption.

If this is the case, then to me it makes perfect sense that Luke might have this in mind when he speaks of his belief that it's time for the Jedi to end.

Again, we know virtually nothing of what happened between Luke and his nephew Ben, the circumstances behind Ben's turn to the dark side, or what Luke has learned in his studies of ancient Jedi texts. So speculation can only go so far. But given what we know of Luke and his experiences in the OT, it would be pretty damned unbelievable to have him suddenly begin rooting for the dark side.

When Luke says he believes that the Jedi must end, therefore, he almost certainly has something else in mind that he thinks will resolve the endless conflict with dark side users in a way that the Jedi path could not.

Logically speaking, it would almost certainly have to be that third thing, which is represented in TCW through the Father, but seems to be completely absent from canon thus far aside from that.

I see nothing so far to indicate that this would "ruin" Star Wars. It may change the way we view the Force, sure. But wasn't that inevitable once Lucas decided that his "happily ever after" ending for Return of the Jedi wasn't the end of the story, and that there was a sequel tale to tell?

 

This...is a great post, and finally translates the idea of a "grey" in a way that isn't just a user of Light and Dark as we've seen suggested over and over in these threads, and is a very well phrased and constructed argument.

Bravo, the Force is strong with you; shame that I can only give you "great post" and not that along with a "like", "original", etc.!

 

I think all of this discussion about The Grey is much ado about nothing... and largely misunderstood. It is not about "grey Jedi" or "grey Force-users"... it is about the lessons Luke learned both in the OT and likely since then... that no action is purely "good" or "evil." There are positive and negative consequences from every action.

Some of this has been long debated on these kind of forums ever since the first movies came out: Luke blew up the Death Star, but there were thousands if not millions of "innocent" independent contractors that worked on the space station. It was a "necessary evil" for the "greater good." Therein lies the "grey"... There are certain actions which are obviously evil. Cold blooded murder for no real purpose. Then there are necessary evils, such as dropping the bomb on Hiroshima... hundreds of thousands of innocent lives killed, but perhaps to save millions of lives if the war were to continue. This is the grey. This is the middle. The Jedi of old failed to see what atrocities they were either responsible for, or contributed to, until after the Clone Wars had begun and Palpatine became the most powerful in the galaxy.

I think Luke has realized that there is always going to be some collateral damage, even horrible atrocities at his own hands like blowing up the Death Star, if the eternal war between the Jedi and the Sith (or whatever Snoke and Kylo Ren decide to ultimately call themselves...) continues. Is he a pacifist? I think he is struggling with just that choice. In some ways, he doesn't want to be personally responsible for death any more. But he will probably have to come to terms with the idea that he is just as responsible by taking no action. The last time he took no action (throwing down his saber), it all worked out, but this time not so much... Hence, he will train a new generation... not of "Grey Jedi"... but something else that will have to be more mindful of the potential unintended "evil" or "darkness" that they can wreak or unleash on the galaxy in their attempts to combat out-and-out obvious evil.

Precisely. Excellent post!

I disagree... and this is exactly the whole point of this evolution of things in Star Wars. Things are not so cut and dry either in the real world or the GFFA.

There is a fundamental sense of right and wrong. "Thou shalt not kill" being perhaps the most recognizable. In one of the better lessons from the OT, Luke was presented with two options: kill his father, or join the dark side. One can argue some virtuosity in each choice: If he kills his father, Luke can rid the galaxy of one of the most evil actors the galaxy has ever known. If Luke joins the dark side, he can perhaps save his friends (I don't think he really would have saved them by doing so, but that is a point for another time...). But in reality, neither were good choices. So, Luke rejected them both. Sometimes there are no "good" options and one must choose what ends up being perceived as the lesser of evils. Or making no choice at all.

The point of all this "grey" talk is that sometimes what is right and wrong is not so fundamentally apparent and obvious. We have to make tough choices, the consequences of which may ultimately be more "evil" or "wrong" than we intended. I personally think Luke, through his experiences with redeeming his father when his mentors thought it impossible, and losing his nephew and everything he had worked for to pass on what he had learned, will have recognized this truth about the Force being being much more complex than simple right vs. wrong. This is what I think is meant by "the resolving of grey through refined Jedi sight."

I think Luke will make this a fundamental construct in his teaching his apprentices, whatever he decides to call them going forward, whether Jedi or otherwise. Luke knows that the Jedi that preceded him had too narrow a view...

 

Anakin brought balance. He did so by destroying those that disrupted the balance of good and evil in the galaxy. He did so as a Jedi.

So I don't get how we go beyond that and I don't get what can be "bigger" that the balance between good and evil.

I'm just reading a lot of comments that add up to nothing. The Mortis Arc thing reflected the balance in that the brother represented good and the sister represented evil. The father was the Jedi, finding the way to "resolve the grey" and ensure that evil didn't take over. This is EXACTLY what the Jedi do. They are guided by the will if the Force to ensure that good and evil is balanced in the gffa. It could also however be seen as metaphor for Anakin's inner journey. But people are constantly falling for the trap of seeing the Jedi and Sith as the balance. And from that thinking the father role is the guy in the middle balancing the Jedi and Sith. This isn't the case.

The Jedi have always been the people in the middle in that they are the "keepers of peace and justice". They have to maintain the balance. And only by following the will of the force can they achieve this. The rigid Jedi Order of the PT failed because they were too far removed from the living force. But Yoda changed that and through Luke, the Jedi were successful again.

The Sith, like any dark side group, seek to take over and in doing so spread evil everywhere. That is what causes imbalance.

Now the suggestion is that there is something bigger at stake here - what that is I have absolutely no idea. I guess they're trying to raise the stakes my going beyond just the balance going out of sync again. This is perhaps a potential nod to Plagueis again as he wanted to find a way to have power over the Force itself. But again, I see no better way of combating this threat than through the precepts of the Jedi - compassion, selflessness, non-attachment (as in connection to all living things) and love. Only through love and sacrifice can you remove that which brings destruction without adding to the destruction.