I blame my Star Wars ruminations of late on the Playstation 2 Lego Star Wars games, which I'd taken out of storage recently and played with the boys, along with other games. I'd had a Playstation 2 that I'd effectively mothballed after B1 was born, just because who has time to play games when you're in the middle of Baby Boot Camp, right? It was amusing for me to see the save dates on some of the games (like GTA III: San Andreas and Vice City, more blasts from the past). Anyway, now that the boys are older, I decided to bring out the console and we've been playing a bit. They love it, of course, although hearing them squabble as they play is both amusing and disarming -- nothing gets the boys more pissed at each other than trying to play Lego Star Wars together! One pushes the other's character off a cliff, one takes the other's coins, etc. Of course, I try to communicate and/or demonstrate the value of teamwork to the boys, which, I think, is slowly seeping in, although usually they're like "I want to team up with Daddy!" since I can usually get through a level. We take turns, since there are three of us, so it'll be B1 + B2, or B1 + me, or me + B2.
So, playing those games (the original one being far more entertaining than the actual prequel movies) has made me philosophical about the Star Wars universe. Now, of course, the Star Wars universe is space opera central, isn't a place of deep thought or characterization, but it's possible to think about the Empire as a kind of revolt of the norms against the paranormal oligarchy of the Jedi. I mean, as Obi-Wan said to Luke, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
From a certain point of view, the Jedi could be seen as the hitmen for the Republic, who we're supposed to accept as innately virtuous. However, from the point of view of a norm, a Jedi would seem oppressive and frightening. Here is this person who has paranormal abilities and a lightsaber who will cut you if you cross them, or Jedi Mind Trick you. We're told the Jedi are a force (pun intended) for Good, because they have benign avoidance of Anger, Fear, and Hatred -- the tools of the Dark Side of the Force. But a Jedi is a warrior, remains a human weapon, at heart. And a weapon is always going to be an instrument of oppression, even if used for ostensibly good purposes. So, there's that.
And there is the sticky wicket of the Dark Side of the Force, the eternal temptation of the Jedi to go bad and become Sith Lords (of whom we only see a few, right? Sidious, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader). The bad apples that spoil the barrel, the indictment of the power principle, basically. The Sith are nowhere near as numerous as the Jedi -- again, we just see a handful of Sith -- but they completely overturn the Jedi-enforced order of the Republic. All those Jedi (multiple generations of them) are no match for Sith machinations, and are nearly wiped out by their dark counterparts. But that the Sith exist as a defined entity points to a larger infrastructure in place -- an entire shadow organization of Sith out to overturn Jedi order, which gets at my problem with the paranormal police force the Jedi represent: if the Jedi can't prevent the Sith from appearing, and the Sith are so great at overturning Jedi order, this is a fatal structural flaw in the system.
It points to the peril of this Force thing to begin with -- if your enforcers are perennially vulnerable to "going bad," and only a few Sith are capable of demolishing your order (or worse, are capable of flourishing in the shadows, creating a shadow conspiracy that will destroy your order), when what good are you, anyway? It points to the fragility of this seemingly long-lived order. Of course, all of this happened to serve the needs of the plot, but at the same time, it makes me wonder how Luke (and Leia) could possibly restore order to the Galaxy in the wake of the Empire. I mean, if legions of Jedi were mowed down, at a time when the Jedi order was at its greatest, how could those two right things? What's more, would they even be righting anything, or merely returning to baseline -- namely, Jedi as enforcers of the New Republic. What's to stop another bad apple from spoiling the barrel again? It's not like Anger, Fear, and Hatred are hard to come by -- even Luke nearly succumbs to it several times, and lord knows Leia's quite the angry one.
And since, as Yoda and others said, the Dark Side was "quicker, easier, more seductive" -- it makes me think that those who can get their hands on the nanites that let people channel the Force, sooner or later, somebody else is going to go that quicker, easier, more seductive route again and presto -- a new Sith Lord for the New Republic. And it all repeats. Now, in the short-term, obviously, with Luke and Leia being the only two sporting the Vader bloodline, who is apparently the strongest Force-bearing soul ever, that threat isn't realized, yet. But a few generations hence? And it's a big Galaxy, after all. Anything can happen -- and entropy always wins -- Order inevitably becomes Chaos.
In a weird way, it almost feels cyclical, ala "The Matrix" -- that the New Republic will stand for awhile, and then Chaos will intrude, and we'll get another Empire of some sort. Much of that hinges on the appearance of another Palpatine/Sidious, of course, who just sort of appears.
Even though the Empire was led by Sidious and Vader, it was really a melange of normal humans, clones, starships, and droids. That was the real foundation of the Empire, with Sidious and Vader at the top, acting as dark mirror Jedi, keeping this order in check through fear -- or a different brand of fear than the Jedi had been pimping. The norms really formed the backbone of the Imperial order, were its administrative and business class, with the Sith and the Stormtroopers as the muscle.
If I were a norm facing the devastation in the wake of the collapse of the Empire, I'd be like "To hell with the Jedi. We don't want anymore Jedi around -- the risk is too great. Sooner or later, they're going to go bad, and we'll have Sith on our hands again, and they're going to frag us."
This is one of those things that would have some scold friends of mine saying "You have wayyy too much time on your hands." But it's still fun to think about.
