Ah, Heraclitus :D It is such a major theme of the prequels. The Jedi try to maintain stability with rigid rules, and the Sith, while seemingly more flexible (like the disposable apprentices you mention - good point!), are just as rigid in their own way. The Emperor keeps changing things, like finally dissolving the Senate in ANH, but all the changes have one goal: putting him in absolute control. In a way, even though things are kind of chaotic, people under the Empire are just as bound by rules as the Jedi. It's a weird kind of unchanging change, if that makes sense. The individuals (apprentices, stormtroopers) get rotated in and out, but the groups stay the same over time. It's just a bunch of identical troopers!
Anakin as a yin/yang guy makes so much sense. I'm thinking of his line in RotS when he says, "I have brought peace to my new empire." It's a massive, Sith-y kind of change, but he's trying to do the Jedi preservation thing in his twisted way. And that is such a good way of looking at the end of RotJ, Anakin using change to bring harmony.
I think there's also a lot of the Living Force/Unifying Force split going on here. Both the Jedi and the Sith work on the macro level - managing the Order or the Sith or the galaxy as a whole and not valuing individuals as much. The Jedi have their Code which they put above special cases most of the time, Palpatine has his decades-long master plan of galactic domination with disposable apprentices, Vader gets sucked into the galactic management thing as well... It's all about the Unifying Force, the macro structures. Even the uniforms in the Empire merge people into big, identical groups.
Then you have Qui-Gon, who is willing to break the Code if he thinks an unusual case warrants it, and who is much more in tune with the individual and the moment (but who also can take the larger view and go on about prophecies and Chosen Ones restoring balance to the Force as a whole). And there's Anakin, who gets positively myopic about individuals to the point where he can't see the big picture at all (like, maybe being evil will make it irrelevant whether Padme lives or dies, because he'll lose her either way). When Anakin swings over to the galactic management side, he does that just as badly as he did the individual, and just about as completely. Qui-Gon seemed to have a balance between the Living and Unifying Forces (tilted toward the Living), while the Jedi, the Sith, and Anakin usually fall heavily toward one side or the other. Anakin especially is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. He can't just like someone - it's total attachment. He can't just find them annoying - they're out to get him and he hates them. He can focus on either a loved one or on galactic order, but not both. And in both cases, he tries to keep things from changing.
So maybe the imbalance in the Force wasn't just between Light and Dark. Luke goes against Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end of RotJ; instead of looking at his father as the avatar of evil and killing him to balance out the Force better, he sees his father as an individual with both light and dark in him and tries to get his father to see that too. And then Anakin realizes change is still possible (it's not "too late" for him after all) and okay, and uses that to overthrow Palpatine, and realizes that his son is a separate person who can teach him things about himself, and accepts death, and brings balance to the Force and the galaxy... it's both personal and galactic-level things all mixed up, and using change to restore stability, and...
Heh, you've really got my mind running now. There is just so much to think about.
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Date: 2007-01-31 02:39 am (UTC)Anakin as a yin/yang guy makes so much sense. I'm thinking of his line in RotS when he says, "I have brought peace to my new empire." It's a massive, Sith-y kind of change, but he's trying to do the Jedi preservation thing in his twisted way. And that is such a good way of looking at the end of RotJ, Anakin using change to bring harmony.
I think there's also a lot of the Living Force/Unifying Force split going on here. Both the Jedi and the Sith work on the macro level - managing the Order or the Sith or the galaxy as a whole and not valuing individuals as much. The Jedi have their Code which they put above special cases most of the time, Palpatine has his decades-long master plan of galactic domination with disposable apprentices, Vader gets sucked into the galactic management thing as well... It's all about the Unifying Force, the macro structures. Even the uniforms in the Empire merge people into big, identical groups.
Then you have Qui-Gon, who is willing to break the Code if he thinks an unusual case warrants it, and who is much more in tune with the individual and the moment (but who also can take the larger view and go on about prophecies and Chosen Ones restoring balance to the Force as a whole). And there's Anakin, who gets positively myopic about individuals to the point where he can't see the big picture at all (like, maybe being evil will make it irrelevant whether Padme lives or dies, because he'll lose her either way). When Anakin swings over to the galactic management side, he does that just as badly as he did the individual, and just about as completely. Qui-Gon seemed to have a balance between the Living and Unifying Forces (tilted toward the Living), while the Jedi, the Sith, and Anakin usually fall heavily toward one side or the other. Anakin especially is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. He can't just like someone - it's total attachment. He can't just find them annoying - they're out to get him and he hates them. He can focus on either a loved one or on galactic order, but not both. And in both cases, he tries to keep things from changing.
So maybe the imbalance in the Force wasn't just between Light and Dark. Luke goes against Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end of RotJ; instead of looking at his father as the avatar of evil and killing him to balance out the Force better, he sees his father as an individual with both light and dark in him and tries to get his father to see that too. And then Anakin realizes change is still possible (it's not "too late" for him after all) and okay, and uses that to overthrow Palpatine, and realizes that his son is a separate person who can teach him things about himself, and accepts death, and brings balance to the Force and the galaxy... it's both personal and galactic-level things all mixed up, and using change to restore stability, and...
Heh, you've really got my mind running now. There is just so much to think about.