OKAY, TIME FOR A NON-SHITPOST RESPONSE.



Let’s set up some things first: This is a discussion about the narrative intentions of the source material, which means word of god commentary is relevant to concepts we’re talking about, however that is not the same thing as being obligated to take them into account, if you don’t want to. You’re absolutely free to disagree that these things are conveyed or executed well in the canon (and word of god is not the same thing as canon) or even just that you dislike them, and I’m not saying that in any sort of dismissive tone. You are 100% free to do these things and they are just fine. I say all of this without rancor or dismissiveness.



Further, I am going to speak with confidence about subjects, but that is not the same thing as that I’m browbeating you into that you must agree! Agree or not, as long as we’re coming into this with good faith re: being willing to live and let live with the other person, we’ll be fine!



Now, despite that no one’s obligated to take word of god/authorial intent into consideration if they don’t want to (hell, you’re not even obligated to take actual canon into consideration if you don’t want to!), if we’re talking about The Way The Force Works, then the creators have been pretty emphatic about how balance is not the mid-point between light and dark.



Here is, authorial intention and narrative intention-wise, How The Force Works, per a writer’s meeting for The Clone Wars, where George Lucas spoke about the foundational and fundamental concepts of the Force:

“The core of the Force–I mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience.

“Once you become afraid that somebody’s going to take it away from you or you’re gonna lose it, then you start to become angry, especially if you’re losing it, and that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person who’s selfish, because you spend all your time being afraid of losing everything you’ve got instead of actually living.

“Where joy, by giving to other people you can’t think about yourself, and therefore there’s no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience, therefore you’re constantly trying to replenish it, but of course the more you replenish it, the harder it is to, so you have to keep upping the ante. You’re actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy.

“So that is ultimately the core of the whole dark side/light side of the Force. And everything flows from that. Obviously the Sith are always unhappy because they never get enough of anything they want. Mostly, their selfishness centers around power and control. And the struggle is always to be able to let go of all that stuff.

“And of course that’s the problem with Anakin ultimately. You’re allowed to love people, but you’re not allowed to possess them. And what he did is he fell in love and married her and then became jealous. Then he saw in his visions that she was going to die, and he couldn’t stand losing her. So in order to not lose her, he made a pact with the devil to be able to become all-powerful. When he did that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, so he lost her.

“Once you are powerful, being able to bring her back from the dead, if I can do that, I can become emperor of the universe. I can get rid of the Emperor. I can make everything the way I want it. Once you do that, you’ll never be satiated. You’re always going to be consumed by this driving desire to have more stuff and be afraid that others are going to take it away from you. And they are. Every time you get two Sith together, you have the master, the apprentice, and the apprentice is always trying to recruit another apprentice to join with him to kill the master. The master knows that basically everybody below him wants his job.

“Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.”

In another video, he echoes the same themes:

“Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. It can be either one, you add them up and it can be the uber category of happiness.

“Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.

“On the other hand is joy and joy is the thing that doesn’t go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction. But it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can’t. So the secret is that, even though it’s not as intense as pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer.

“People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out. You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work.

“If you’re trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you’re doomed. It’s a very American idea, but it just can’t happen. You just let it go. Peak. Break. Pleasure is fun it’s great, but you can’t keep it going forever.

“Just accept the fact that it’s here and it’s gone, and maybe again it’ll come back and you’ll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure, it’s about you. It’s a selfish self-centered emotion, that’s created by self-centered motive of greed.

“Joy is compassion, joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else. And it’s the kind of thing that is in it’s subtlty and lowness more powerful than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.”

The dark side is spoken of as a fundamentally bad thing, but it’s something that we all have within us and you’re meant to overcome it, because the dark side makes you miserable if you don’t keep climbing up out of that pit. (I have a post here that has several examples of how the Jedi’s teachings in canon reflect George Lucas’ explanations of how the Force works, showing that they are meant to be portrayed as narratively correct about these things.)



This is precisely what the Jedi teach and practice, as we see explicitly in Master & Apprentice

But we also in the way that they all show an array of emotions, from anger and sorrow and fear to joy and happiness and contentment. It’s about not letting those things bite into your heart, it’s about not acting from that place when utilizing the Force.



Even the story group say this point-blank:

“No, but as George says, the dark side corrupts. So one couldn’t remain in the middle for long. […] Dark characteristics are inherent in human nature. It’s about keeping that stuff in check. And specifically in Star Wars, it’s not tapping into those negative emotions to utilize the dark side of the Force.”

The Force is about the emotions you put into it, it’s about the motivations and mindset that you’re acting from, and you cannot remain in the middle, because the dark side corrupts. You can slide along the scale, certainly, but you cannot find balance in the middle, the only place that balance is found is in the light, in the selflessness, compassion, and



Because, as George Lucas also says:

You have a choice between the light and the dark, but the world works better if you’re on the side of the light. Because the light is the good in all of us.



“If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.”



The light is selflessness and compassion. Compassion and selflessness are joy. And Joy is everlasting happiness. And that is balance. The light is the balance. That’s just how Star Wars is set up.



And the Jedi choose the light:



“It matters which side we choose. Even if there will never be more light than darkness. Even if there can be no more joy in the galaxy than there is pain. For every action we undertake, for every word we speak, for every life we touch—it matters. I don’t turn toward the light because it means someday I’ll ‘win’ some sort of cosmic game. I turn toward it because it is the light.” –Master & Apprentice



“The Force is the light, the Force is the dark. Jedi choose the light, for all it reveals.” –Poe Dameron