One more big red flag keeps coming up in the new stuff for Star Wars: Moral Relativism.
This keeps appearing. It started with all that "Grey Jedi" bullshit during the Expanded Universe, and now in the new canon you see it in the comics and novels first before it comes to television and the films. Rogue One was the first big show of it in action, as usual done with plausible dependability, but now with the Bendu in Rebels and all the fan-blather that the new trailer prompted we're getting more of that Fan-Dumb that I find bothersome and stupid.
Again, for those that missed it the last time I posted it, this is George laying out what the Force is about. Note the date; this was a writers' meeting for Season 3 of The Clone Wars, which is in the new canon unchanged so this IS the official position (i.e. "Yes, the Jedi are correct.")
Go on, try to lie to me and say that you can mix Good and Evil like that. That "balance", that "grey", is just an excuse for moral degeneracy. It's not like we don't see, in graphic detail, MULTIPLE TIMES where this goes and how this ends- both in multiple stories and in real life. He said nothing that wiser, smarter, and far more holy men haven't said many times before (and got martyred for it); he just put on new trappings and sold it well. Star Wars is Superversive.
Which is why I find the official stuff out of the official love-in throwing up so many red flags for this--again, remember who's running the show now: Ascended Fans, no less prone to Fan-Dumb than the rest--that I cannot ignore it. Nothing would destroy the value of the franchise faster than diving into that known fraud of Moral Relativism.
I hope that Rian didn't go that way, and that the tease we get is just that- and instead we're getting a Save Old Man From Despair arc for Rey and Luke (with she doing for him what he did for Anakin). (The rest of the arc being the restoration of the Jedi from its ethical corruption as a tool of the Senate to being a pure expression of fulfilling a mission to the Galaxy to fulfill the Will of the Force- i.e. Qui-Gon Was Right; Season Six of The Clone Wars lays that out plainly.)
Nothing will get me committed to making a fork faster than proof positive that this form of pozzing is now policy- and yes, even something so beloved as that can be forked, successfully, and made to surpass it far sooner than you'd think.
Vox Day has said similar, that if they mess up Star Wars, and it looks like they will, then it needs to be forked and said forking will do far better. He thinks it needs doing regardless of the next two films simply because of the theology of the force, if you will, is messed up (and mideclorians). Why would killing the bad guy who is killing your friends make you suddenly evil and have a penchant for ruling a galaxy wide tyranny? The Light/Good vs. Dark/Evil needs to be preserved and moral relativism rejected, but the functionality of the force needs to make more sense in regarding the human condition. The Dark side needs to act more like sin that is always tempting the user and encourages the person once they start down that road...think of how St. Ignatius explains encouragement in Discernment of Spirits.
ReplyDeleteI think many of us SW fans would like a fork of the series that made sense to the human condition and stayed closer to the pulp that inspired it while also adopting superversive standards.
You ain't kidding about that last bit. Hell, in a lot of ways Star Wars was just a forked Buck Rogers.
ReplyDeleteA lot of it seems like Lucas, and/or EU creators keep trying to have the Force simultaneously represent Good/Evil and Yin/Yang (or they have somehow confused to two concepts). This confusion is why crazy shit like righteous anger at injustice can turn people 'dark'. It also would contribute to people trying to come up with various Grey Jedi philosophies in attempts to solve this discrepancy, even if they don't consciously realize there is such.
ReplyDeletePart of it is that fans often take what a character says as being wholly correct, and don't pay attention to the actions and their consequences. The result is that they miss when characters are wrong in word, deed, or both and thus subtlety is lost. That inability to deal in such things is a big reason for a lot of Fan Dumb (which feeds back into the miseducation of recent generations, but that's another post).
DeleteBut now? Post-buyout we're seeing this come from the top, and (as with the previous post) I think this is Kathleen Kennedy pushing a policy. I can't prove it yet (unlike the feminism fraud), but I suspect it.
That's the big difference. It's one thing to have an incompetent, and therefore inconsistent, editorial oversight. It's another to impose relativism by policy from the head office.
Agreed, watching that video in the previous post, it looks like SW is going to be another episode of "women ruin everything" especially feminists.
DeleteWhile I agree that subtly is lost, the difficulty in SW, at least with the movies, is Lucas' awful dialogue, and his poor story development at times. Anakin going dark makes sense, but in the moves it feels hollow and arbitrary. And Luke is supposedly tempted in RotJ, but the temptation, as a I mentioned before, doesn't make sense (or, if I understand you correctly, the Emperor is lying to Luke about striking him down or his father will make him dark).
Lucas, because he isn't a Christian, tried to go the Eastern route (that and the Shogun influence), and for whatever reason, he seems to get the resulting morality mixed up. Anger isn't dark or light in Christian morality, the intent behind it matters, but it's implied that Jedi need to be stone cold stoics or they will go bad if they dwell in anger. It's very kiddish morality, and while Lucas might cop out with the whole "I made it for kids" I do blame SW mentality for some of the morality simpleton stupidity we see in people, especially when it comes to dealing with evil.
What George Lucas got right: the notion that there IS an objective right and wrong and that the heroes are on the side of the right, and if the right wins, then everyone is better off.
ReplyDeleteWhat George Lucas got wrong: he has no idea what right and wrong actually are. The Jedi—even the mentor Jedi figures like Yoda and Obiwan—are lying, scheming jerks who see everyone around them as nothing more than pawns to be sacrificed as convenient. They refuse to stand up and fight against actual evil when needed, and refuse to step back and respect the freedom of others when needed. "Aggressive negotiations?" They are plyers of situational ethics and an incoherent philosophy that is little different than r-selected SJWism.
The notion of gray jedi and "balance" as a juxtaposition of light and dark has nothing to do with Star Wars. It's a bizarre footnote from D&Diana translated into space.
I think Star Wars started going wrong long ago, but in spite of the incompetence which marred many of its releases, there was still a core to it somewhere that had its heart in the right place. The newer releases, I suspect, have lost that core. They've fixed the incompetence, but will be increasingly revealed as hollow and soul-less.
It's a great time to be playing in an ersatz Star Wars field. I think Nick Cole and Jason Ansbach's #StarWarsNotStarWars has a lot of potential right now. And if anyone else would get on it, they could tap that same potential. The iron is hot and it's time to strike!
For all that a lot of us might rag on Lucas for his myriad of failings with the prequels, that clip shows the man who created something great, with meaning, a meaning which, as you said, may be lost now. I have no problem with gray characters, or some elements of an in-between morality, so long as it does not become the ideal, supplanting the good. Star Wars was, at least, very clear at where the line between good an evil lay, though I do agree with what Durandel Almiras said above, that there have been and are still issues with the functionality of the Force as relates to Light/Good and Dark/Evil.
ReplyDeleteGo on, try to lie to me and say that you can mix Good and Evil like that. That "balance", that "grey", is just an excuse for moral degeneracy.
ReplyDeleteWell there's a slight problem... in that George Lucas ends up going off the other end in sabotaging his stories. Let's look at the prequels.
How does #1 go? Padme struggles, figures out she can't get any help, goes home and raises up an army to fight for her home. How does #2 start? Padme goes to the senate to vote AGAINST a bill to raise up an army to fight for the Republic.
Here's the key question: WHY? Why does SHE oppose an army? Especially when her character arc in the previous film was from a peacenik to fighter, what reason as a character does she have to oppose this action? We're shown no evidence of PTSD, regrets over her actions previously, or any kind of sleepless nights. If anything, after the last movie, Padme should be the lead supporter of the bill.
So why? Why does Padme oppose this law? Because the WRITER knows that the army the Republic raises will later be the stormtrooper army the Empire uses. Padme is a good character, so therefore she cannot do any action that would later lead to evil even if she has every reason and incentive to undertake that action - which would NOT be wrong or evil at the time.
When one watches the prequels, this becomes very obvious as Lucas' biggest flaw. The good guys are supposed to be so pure and good, they can never make mistakes no matter how innocent - even if the only argument against that action is an outcome years into the future that only the writer can foresee.
And well... you can't do the fall of a Republic and rise of an Empire if the good guys are never allowed to make a mistake or the wrong choice.