Deus ex Machina: the Will of The Force ...

[metadigital]

This is more significant than I believe anyone has mentioned yet.

 

If The Force has a Will of its own, then it is a God (equivalent to the Judea-Christian one).

 

Up until this point in time, Star Wars has implied that The Force is neither good nor bad, simply the sum of all life. If, indeed, The Force has a Will, then either:

 

it is a Good God and Good will triumph (Light Side), or

it is ultimately an Evil God and the universe ends in pain and suffering.

 

It also means that an individual's free will is subsumed in the Will of the Force (so that they are all pawns of The Force).

 

Interestingly, this is one of the central dilemmas of Christian thought, as first illucidated by Saint Augistine: Free Chioce means that there must be some people who will choose evil and will therefore not be saved; if some people are doomed, then either God is not all knowing (didn't see it coming) or not all powerful (couldn't prevent it).

 

So, does The Force have a Will? Or is it just an energy form that binds us all together (and can be manipulated by carbon-based life forms with iron-based fluid called blood that transports nutrients and oxygen fuel around their bodies, together with midichlorians that enable them a degree of control over this Force)?

 

Free Will or Fate?

[Bounce]

The Force is as fake as God himself - But that's just me

[metadigital]

The Force is as fake as God himself - But that's just me

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, that's avoiding the conversation. What the topic initially asks is "Is The Force simply an analogy for magic, or is it an allusion to a Godhead?".

 

So you're saying that magic and God don't exist. Okay, but we're talking about SW generally, and the world of KotOR specifically. Herein there is indeed The Force, and I wanted to know whether it is merely magic or a/the Supreme Being.

 

 

I then added the Free Will Paradox, first attributed to Saint Augustine (in Christian thought).

[The Great Phantom]

Nature. It always seeks balance! Granted, a very uneasy, easily disturbed, balance, but it is balance all the same.

 

The Force doesn't have any other will than to inflict balance upon the universe (like Nature!).

 

No, it doesn't control people. Kreia never actually said it did, and even if she had, would you have believed her? The closest she came to saying this was to the Handmaiden: "Ah, but at what time does the free will and the Force become one?" or somesuch.

[The Great Phantom]

Well, I still say it's nature. Look at rocks, for example:

 

Dump a huge pile of small rocks off of a tall cliff, so that they come up to the edge of the cliff. Now, have Bill Clinton climb up them. You see, they're balanced JUST right, and the slightest pressure will send them falling, crushing whoever was stupid enough to climb up them in the first place. I've had first hand experience (no, it wasn't me, thankfully).

[Darth Frog]

The way the Force makes sense to me as a force would be as the superposition/sum total of an infinite number of infinitesimally small contributions by Force sensitive consciousnesses/beings. Similar to the way clouds of small droid 'flies' can form a group intelligence/consciousness with fearsome powers even though each individual fly is hardly more intelligent than a bacterium on its own, in the Stanislaw Lem book whose German title Der Unbesiegbare translates to The Invincible One. Or Isaac Asimov's Nemesis, where the planet intelligence is actually the sum total of a gazillion microbes. Or Gaia in Asimov's Foundation series.

 

As such the Force could have 'a will of its own' even though it is not a conscious being in itself.

[Musopticon?]

Great idea for a thread and all, but what does it have to do with deus ex machina?

[Darth Frog]

Nature. It always seeks balance! Granted, a very uneasy, easily disturbed, balance, but it is balance all the same.

 

Entropy. Left to its own devices any system tends towards states with lower energy, simply because they are more stable and returning to other states would require investment of energy.

 

Occasionally nature 'achieves' balance when contradicting influences/forces reach an equilibrium, like the balance between the number of predators vs. the numbers of prey. But these are coincidences, as a rule only observable because they are in fact more stable/enduring than the numerous failed 'experiments' of Mother Nature which simply resulted in all dead predators and/or all dead prey.

[darth spock]

What goes "Dues ex Machina' mean?! IT was an episode title to one of my favorite shows and it's killing me..................

[SteveThaiBinh]

What goes "Dues ex Machina' mean?! IT was an episode title to one of my favorite shows and it's killing me..................

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Literally, 'God as/from a machine', I think. It comes from ancient Greek plays, where the plot would get more and more confused and convoluted, to the point where it was impossible for the characters to sort everything out. Then at the end one of the Greek gods would just 'descend' (on stage, probably involving some sort of machinery) and pronounce a solution that everyone just had to accept.

[SteveThaiBinh]

If, indeed, The Force has a Will, then either:

 

it is a Good God and Good will triumph (Light Side), or

it is ultimately an Evil God and the universe ends in pain and suffering.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why though? If the Force has a will, it is surely that the peoples of the Star Wars universe should be free to make their own fates, and to make their own decisions about what is right and wrong. This at least is what appears to be happening in the movies.

 

One aspect of religions in the real world is that God's will is revealed and known. Neither the Jedi nor the Sith make such a claim in the Star Wars universe. The Force does not really behave like a God.

 

While the Force does not appear to have a will, it does have a nature. It is constituted from life, and favours life. Using it to kill twists and deforms the user. To equate the Force with life does not automatically make it good, I suppose, although in practical terms it might be hard to see the difference.

 

I'm not sure if any of that made sense, but it's what occurred to me on reading the original post. Very interesting topic.

[metadigital]

What goes "Dues ex Machina' mean?! IT was an episode title to one of my favorite shows and it's killing me..................

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Literally, 'God as/from a machine', I think. It comes from ancient Greek plays, where the plot would get more and more confused and convoluted, to the point where it was impossible for the characters to sort everything out. Then at the end one of the Greek gods would just 'descend' (on stage, probably involving some sort of machinery) and pronounce a solution that everyone just had to accept.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yep, here's another reference:

Deus ex machina - wikipedia

 

Actually I was being a little more literal and a little more prosaic, referring to emergence of the Will of the Force (= God) and combining that with the fact that this is a computer RPG (= machine) ...

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... The closest she came to saying this was to the Handmaiden: "Ah, but at what time does the free will and the Force become one?" or somesuch.

 

Hmm -- wasn't that the whole rationale behind why Traya turned on the Exile, to destroy The Force once and for all? Because she couldn't reconcile Force Predetermination (i.e. Fate) and the Jedi teaching of Free Will ...? If she could take The Force out of the equation then universe will be better off?

 

****

 

 

Of course, there is one solution to Saint Augustine's Paradox .... (Why, if The Force -- God -- is all-knowing and all-powerful is there evil and suffering?) if The Force is inherently Dark, then it would will darkness and suffering, and any light would be permitted to further the aims of eventual ultimate darkness and suffering. So The Force is a Chaotic Evil God. "

[The Great Phantom]

Nature. It always seeks balance! Granted, a very uneasy, easily disturbed, balance, but it is balance all the same.

 

Entropy. Left to its own devices any system tends towards states with lower energy, simply because they are more stable and returning to other states would require investment of energy.

 

Occasionally nature 'achieves' balance when contradicting influences/forces reach an equilibrium, like the balance between the number of predators vs. the numbers of prey. But these are coincidences, as a rule only observable because they are in fact more stable/enduring than the numerous failed 'experiments' of Mother Nature which simply resulted in all dead predators and/or all dead prey.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Entropy: The steady degredation of any material into something uniformitarily stable.

 

The Force seeks balance, as does Nature. They rarely ever find it (it's not called Star WARS for no reason ), but they still seek it. Many things in Nature (and the Force, I suppose) can be balanced (read the rock analogy), but it is WAY unstable, because of its complexity.

 

I'm not sure if you were agreeing w/ me or not.

[The Great Phantom]

The Force is not but a mystified version of Nature. It has no sentience, and can not MAKE anybody do anything. It is inherently NEUTRAL, considering that the Jedi (those that seek to syncronize w/ it) take no sides, except to destroy CHAOS and DISORDER (the Sith).

 

The Force doesn't predetermine destiny. "The future is never certain". There are WAY too many variables, and thousands of possible CHOICES.

[metadigital]

The Force is not but a mystified version of Nature. It has no sentience, and can not MAKE anybody do anything. It is inherently NEUTRAL, considering that the Jedi (those that seek to syncronize w/ it) take no sides, except to destroy CHAOS and DISORDER (the Sith).

 

The Force doesn't predetermine destiny. "The future is never certain". There are WAY too many variables, and thousands of possible CHOICES.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, how do you know "The future is never certain"? Let me play Devil's Advocado for a moment ... how do you know that we are not just following a fate that has been pre-determined ? Perhaps there is a God -- but this is not necessary -- there is no way you can tell that we are compelled to a fate with the illusion of free will, without some "super-natural" experience.

 

E.g. You may just think you are choosing to not run over that pedestrian in your automobile, when in fact you were never going to, instead you willl have a heart-attack and crash into the parked car next to them ... You didn't choose to die when you did, what makes you so certain you chose not to run over the pedestrian? Perhaps we are all just like trains travelling along our own tracks.

 

Budhists believe that reality is an illusion, that the existence of suffering is not real. They do not allow themselves to harm any beings, not even earthworms or pests on crops.

 

The Existential philosophy postulates that the believer is the only real being, and all the universe is merely their over-active imagination (talk about schizophenia!).

 

There is more to the universe than is dreamed of in your philosophy ...

 

PS Here's another Deus ex reference, namely the manga anime "Ghost in the Shell"

 

:D

[metadigital]

If, indeed, The Force has a Will, then either:

 

it is a Good God and Good will triumph (Light Side), or

it is ultimately an Evil God and the universe ends in pain and suffering.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why though? If the Force has a will, it is surely that the peoples of the Star Wars universe should be free to make their own fates, and to make their own decisions about what is right and wrong. This at least is what appears to be happening in the movies.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Interesting example: every time you play the movie, exactly the same thing happens, regardless of the will of the individual characters in the story! So they are all following their pre-determined fates. The characters have the illusion of free will (a self-delusion for the characters, not the audience.)

 

One aspect of religions in the real world is that God's will is revealed and known.  Neither the Jedi nor the Sith make such a claim in the Star Wars universe.  The Force does not really behave like a God.

 

While the Force does not appear to have a will, it does have a nature.  It is constituted from life, and favours life.  Using it to kill twists and deforms the user.  To equate the Force with life does not automatically make it good, I suppose, although in practical terms it might be hard to see the difference.

 

I'm not sure if any of that made sense, but it's what occurred to me on reading the original post.  Very interesting topic.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmm, I was not really directly equating The Force with the Judeo-Christian God. In fact (as has been mentioned on these boards before) the Jedi code is based on the Japanese Samurai ideology. The Samurai were mainly Shintoist and Confuscian; even the Ninja were mainly Budhist. (See The Jedi as Ninja, by Lyta Alexander)

 

My point was that, if you imbue The Force with a Will, you have created something more than just a force that must follow Newtonian-or-even-Einsteinian-like rules of balance. It wants, strives and aspires; it uses Force-sensitives to achieve its aims. Force + Will = more than the traditional Jedi Force. That's why I found it so remarkable (and why I'm making so many remarks about it! )

[The Great Phantom]

I'm not talking about real religions. I'm talking about Star Wars.

 

If Destiny was for-ordained, then the Future wouldn't be "ever uncertain", now would it?

 

The Force doesn't control. It's a balance thing. It CAN control, but ONLY if we let it. Notice how only Jedi and Sith have uber reflexes. Any SW Geek can tell you that this is because the Force TELLS them what to do. BUT, only they can do it. Why? Because they want it to! However, any SW Geek can also quote the same Obi-wan statement and point out that it also LISTENS to your commands.

 

It doesn't use FS's to achieve its aims. It's the FS's that give it 'sides', in the first place. If LIFE didn't have good and bad, right/wrong, etc, then the Force wouldn't have to choose between the two. If all the SW people were nothing more than testosterone/estrogen run people that didn't think about anything except the most basic of instincts, then MORALS wouldn't exist, and there would be 'balance'.

[stop_him]

Well, a lot of what I think the nature of Force is is entrenched in many of the philosophical studies I took in college.

 

Originally, I think the Force and all life - all existence was originally One. However, as One homogenous life form, the Force lacked identity; it was not a subjective force, as there was only One, no Other. Consciousness and self-awareness, is attained only through opposition. Both the Subject and the Object recognize their own existence through their oppositional relationship to one another. This relationship, however, does not further divide them, but rather reconciles them. They are forever bound. Each only defines themselves in relationship to one another.

 

From what I have seen in the movies and comics, the Force is all life - all existence. As a part of life then, its will is our will. I see life as a way for the Force to attain self-awareness. When a person dies, they return to the Force with their own experiences and thus, change the nature of the Force. In a sense, life - the Force is always in a state of becoming. Only at the end of time, when all life has returned to the Force, will the Force again be whole. But at the end, the Force will not be as it once was; it will be complete.

 

I think that's what the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force is all about.

 

So to answer the original question, yes the Force has a will, but it is our will even if we are not aware of it; after all, one human life is only one small part of life as a whole.

[metadigital]

I'm not talking about real religions. I'm talking about Star Wars.

 

If Destiny was for-ordained, then the Future wouldn't be "ever uncertain", now would it?

 

Well, it might be uncertain to us poor mortals, who cannot see the mind of God (or the whimsey of The Force), but that doesn't mean it isn't pre-ordained.

 

The Force doesn't control. It's a balance thing. It CAN control, but ONLY if we let it. Notice how only Jedi and Sith have uber reflexes. Any SW Geek can tell you that this is because the Force TELLS them what to do. BUT, only they can do it. Why? Because they want it to! However, any SW Geek can also quote the same Obi-wan statement and point out that it also LISTENS to your commands.

 

It doesn't use FS's to achieve its aims. It's the FS's that give it 'sides', in the first place. If LIFE didn't have good and bad, right/wrong, etc, then the Force wouldn't have to choose between the two. If all the SW people were nothing more than testosterone/estrogen run people that didn't think about anything except the most basic of instincts, then MORALS wouldn't exist, and there would be 'balance'.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, this is the canon as understood by the traditionalists from "A New Hope" onwards. The twist is what has been introduced into the doctrine by the latest KotOR game, namely Darth Traya's motivation to destroy The Force because it has a will and it controls FSs (which she resents absolutely).

 

I too noticed it doesn't fit with the existing philosophy, but that never stopped Lucas before ...

[The Great Phantom]

Do you actually believe Kreia, metadigital??? She only says what she wants others to believe.

 

She never says that is what she resents. She implies it, but NEVER offers any proof. It doesn't change the Force, just the way easily gullible people view it.

 

Stop Him: You basically summed up what I think about the 2 sides...

[The Great Phantom]

According to the Chronicles, she falls because she gets mad at the Force for allowing Revan to fall, and because all of her students were 'failures' for her trying to make them human.

[The Great Phantom]

Are you even there, metadigital?

[metadigital]

Well, a lot of what I think the nature of Force is is entrenched in many of the philosophical studies I took in college.

 

...

Consciousness and self-awareness, is attained only through opposition. Both the Subject and the Object recognize their own existence through their oppositional relationship to one another. This relationship, however, does not further divide them, but rather reconciles them. They are forever bound. Each only defines themselves in relationship to one another.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Why do you say that self awareness is only gained through opposition. (I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just that there are several philosophical standpoints that do not agree with you: Existentialism and even Ren

[metadigital]

According to the Chronicles, she falls because she gets mad at the Force for allowing Revan to fall, and because all of her students were 'failures' for her trying to make them human.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ah, okay, I never read (nor do I intend to read) the EU, so this is new information (and probably better researched and elucidated than the text from the game).

 

Actually it is not Kreia that says she hates the Will of The Force, it is someone else who tells you she does, and therefore where to find her -- one of the Jedi Masters, Atris, maybe?

[SteveThaiBinh]

...after 20+ years of telling us The Force was just a cosmic ether that could be tapped into by FSs and manipulated like clay on a potters wheel...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rationally, this and nothing more is known of the nature of the force. Force users in the Star Wars universe can observe and record these effects, and they are as 'real' as anything else your philosophical/ontological position allows you to accept.

 

now we are told that the clay has a will of its own! (Deus ex argilla    )

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As it seems this cannot be proven or disproven, it's just her belief, founded on faith. She ought to have started a church. But I don't see how it could ever be more than one among many competing interpretations.