Ok, first a confession: I am a huge Star Wars nerd, to the point that I actually read the old EU books and comics and that I specifically started learning martial arts after seeing Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Now laugh all you want, but the duels were awesome.
That said, the other day I was watching Rebels with my partner and I have to say that finally after several filler-ific episodes, things have started getting heated, which is good, and philosophical, which… YMMV.
Personally, I got a bit hacked off by some of the ideas put forward by the show, and if you have the patience of following me below the cut I will explain why and what this has to do with Ma’at and the NTRW.
As always, this is 100% up for debate, so don’t be shy.
Warning: possible spoilers for SW Rebels S2E17, and potentially for lots of other things Star Wars.
Also, lots of political ranting, Karl Marx quotes, Sandro Pertini quotes, and me getting angry at some christian thinkers and stoic philosophers.
Now, we all know that the Empire is like the Nazis in Space, right? From the costumes, to the discipline, to the ideology, there is little room for alternative interpretations.
They are authoritarian, militaristic, oppressive and speciesist, and govern the Galaxy Far Far Away through fear and coercion, spreading misery and malcontent.
Thankfully there is the Rebellion, which is conceptually quite similar to the various Resistance movements that sprouted throughout Europe, from Poland to Italy and from Greece through France, during WWII and had an instrumental role in securing the victory against Nazi Germany.
Back to Rebels, our heroes often have to deal with the SW equivalent of the Gestapo, namely the Inquisitors and Darth Vader, which is a bit like Himmler in that respect.
Faced with the unshakable pursuit of their foes, the heroes seek counsel from the wisest person they can think of, and this magical helper is none other that former Grand Master Yoda.
And what does the little green tosser do, when questioned about the best way to fight against the Empire?
He starts questioning the legitimacy of the fight and prattling about how anger leads to the Dark Side and how the true fight is that with one’s dark emotions to find inner peace…
I flipped so hard that I must have been standing upside down for a while.
I mean: “Hello, Yoda! WTH is wrong with you, beyond your syntax?! Those are the Nazis and you start spouting New Age crap?! Are you frikkin’ serious?!”
As my partner would tell you, I started ranting angrily for a while, then I just got tired and called it a day, but as I slept some other pieces of the puzzle must have clicked in place, and as I woke up I was even more worked up than when I went to sleep, but also a lot more clear as to why.
The whole problem is that the Jedi, for all their aura of mysticism and wisdom are actually a conservative, and I would dare to say, counter-revolutionary force, often functional to the perpetuation of isfet, and now I will tell you why.
1. Transcendence and oppression.
First of all, focusing on your inner self is well and good, and struggling to be a better person in the face of adversities is definitely a worthy endeavour (shadow work anyone?), accepting reversals of fortune is wise and all that jazz, but doing so at the expense of ignoring what is happening in the world outside?!
It seems like a viable option only if you are a sodding hermit on an uninhabited planet…
Or if, like the members of the Jedi Order in the Prequel Trilogy, you are allowed to spend your days meditating and learning how to chop people up in artistic ways in a huge palace in the best district of town, where you have everything provided for you, you don’t have to work for a living, you don’t have to worry about cold, hunger, abuse and oppression.
In short, if you are so frikkin’ privileged that you don’t even know what the life of normal people is like.
In a way the Jedi are like the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greek and Rome, ideally cosmopolitan and philanthropic, in reality a bunch of rich, privileged men.
Stoicism was a philosophical current of the Hellenistic period, a period in which the rich and sometimes violent political life of the greek poleis had all but been extinguished and the scope of action of cultured men had been reduced to the private sphere. As such it is a belief system very centered on the self and on self-improvement, but very little on political action or on society.
“Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of the ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together…” said Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations (Book II.I).
However It is worth noting that this guy was the frikkin’ Roman Emperor, and as such unlikely to meet someone who could actually harm or oppress him.
On the other hand, Yoda’s off-topic “intimistic” and “spiritualistic” remarks can be read as a manifestation of an even more pernicious school of thought.
In-universe, there doesn’t seem to be any immanent deity, but everything is justified as “the will of the Force” and as predetermined, so that fighting against it would be futile and a sign of arrogance and “lack of balance”. This is why, instead of kicking Nazi/Imperial ass the surviving Jedi like Obi-Wan and Yoda himself sit tight in some backwater, playing hermit.
Now, Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of people/ the opiate of the masses.” (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 1844), a sentence that has been widely commented as a criticism of the role of religion as instrument of control and oppression of the masses, by means of focusing their attention on their moral character and on transcendent matters such as salvation, instead of on their present problems and their oppression.
By extolling the salvific function of suffering, oppression and misery as something that “pleases deity XYZ”, and by presenting patience, resignation and docility as chief virtues, this kind of ideology draws a blueprint for the underprivileged to follow.
In this context, accepting one’s fate and one’s oppression with forbearance and almost gratitude (because it is a sign that, eventually, you’ll be among the blessed) is a virtuous, commendable behaviour, while getting angry, rebelling and trying to change things is not just useless, but also a sin.
As a examples, I just want to mention that in Romans 13:1-7 Paul of Tarsus explicitly says that civil authorities are to be considered as invested with the full authority of the Abrahamic deity and “[…] therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.”
Following his lead, in response to a revolt of the German peasants who, inspired by the evangelic ideals of equality between all the faithful proposed by Luther himself, had risen against their absolutist rulers, Martin Luther wrote in 1525:
“The peasants have taken upon themselves the burden of three terrible sins against God and man; by this they have merited death in body and soul… they have sworn to be true and faithful, submissive and obedient, to their rulers… now deliberately and violently breaking this oath… they are starting a rebellion, and are violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles which are not theirs… they have doubly deserved death in body and soul as highwaymen and murderers… they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the gospel… thus they become the worst blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy name”.
He thus justified the horribly violent retaliation of the civil authorities as divinely sanctioned.
I won’t even get into the doctrine of predestination, otherwise this thing will become a bloody book of a rant, but I guess you can catch my drift.
When people tell you that you’re not supposed to fight against an injustice, but to be meek and humble and patient, it’s because they have a vested interest in your docility.
2. Power and responsibility
Secondly, the Jedi are a mostly contemplative order but with a definite military streak and a somewhat military hierarchy. They perform different duties in service of the Galactic Government, following the orders of the Galactic Senate or, more often, of the Chancellor.
They are almost universally described as incredibly powerful, yet they are not the ones in control of that power.
In-universe, the explanation is that the Jedi Order does not seek power for itself, but serves the Galaxy. In practice, I have yet to see an instance in which the Order shows any interest for anything beyond the orders of the current government.
Coruscant itself, the planet where the Order is based, is often described as a den of villainy and corruption, and what they do about it? Nothing, because they don’t want to seem to be “taking matters in their own hands”.
Slavery is illegal, yet widespread in the Galaxy. What they do? Nothing again.
The Senate is corrupt? “We can’t interfere.”
The new army is composed of purpose-made, sentient beings who have no choice but to fight in a war that has nothing to do with them and which are to all intent and purpose slaves? They take command of it, without a single pip about morals.
Power corrupts, or so they say (probably so that people will not trust anyone in power and will keep on thinking that “they are all equally bad, so whatever…”), but on the other hand on May 8, 1793 in a decree of the French National Convention, an anonymous Conventional said: “The people’s representatives will reach their destination, invested with the highest confidence and unlimited power. They will show great character. They must consider that great responsibility follows inseparably from great power. To their energy, to their courage, and above all to their prudence, they shall owe their success and their glory. (translation from Quote Investigator)”.
Through a process of memetic mutation, this has become the famous Spider-Man quote “From great power comes great responsibility”.
Whether they want it or not, the Jedi have power, but have forgotten all about their responsibility towards society.
3. Anger and derailing tactics
Faced with something unjust, harmful, offensive or otherwise unacceptable, people will often get angry, as is natural, and will take steps to redress the injustice or demand apologies and reparation.
Often shitty people will refuse to address the issue and will try to derail the conversation to benefit themselves.
One of the most common ways of doing this is to redirect the attention from the person who has done something wrong to the person who is calling them out, and this is done by focusing on their behaviour and their emotions, principally anger.
There is a harmful notion that manifesting anger and being upset immediately invalidates all concerns and arguments, no matter what, because the person who puts them forward is “not in control”, or “not rational” or, is “taking this too personally”.
It is an easy way of dismissing people’s concerns and focusing everyone’s attention on their behaviour, seen as reprehensible, childish or threatening, depending on the situation.
The perceived “flaw” of anger is a silencer of inconvenient opinions.
In the Star Wars universe the effect of these kinds of remarks is taken up to eleven, and invariably the problem at hand is set aside in favour of more angsty introspection and navel-gazing.
In the case in point, in particular, the remark is even more preposterous, as the real problem is that Space Nazis are oppressing the entire Galaxy and happily wiping entire populations away.
How is a person endowed with a conscience supposed to not be angry or upset?
In-universe, anger is depicted as the typical Dark Side emotion, but while some of the Dark-siders, especially those who were abused, manipulated or somehow coerced into the Dark, are actually on the verge of flipping the lid all the time (Darth Maul and General Grievous and then Kylo Ren, like, seriously), the leadership of the Sith doesn’t seem to be that “angry” at all.
Darth Sidious/the Emperor, Count Dooku and Darth Plagueis (who has now been relegated to EU material, unfortunately) instead are wealthy, cultured and influential sociopaths, who use their position to manipulate others on a large scale and realise their ideals of world domination and extreme social darwinism. They are cruel, calculating individuals, capable of playing very long games and deploying their pawns with utter coldness. Also, they gaslight, manipulate and abuse their minions to get what they want, using violence as an instrument (and occasionally as entertainment) rather than a necessary outlet.
Rather than anger, the problem with them seems more their selfishness, lack of empathy and superhomism, that leads them to view other sentients as inferiors, as tools or objects rather than independent beings with thoughts and feelings.
Anger, and in general passion is contraposed to peace, a state of inner serenity and clarity of judgement that is supposed to guide the way of the wise being.
Detachment from one’s emotions and reliance on rationality are usually arguments put forward by neurosexists to explain why men are supposedly better than women at taking hard decisions/leadership/problem solving/you name it, which makes the whole proposition a bit suspicious to me, but let’s discuss the matter a bit further.
While I agree that uncontrolled anger, the kind that leads people on a rampage is a manifestation of isfet, to be angry at an injustice is a first necessary step to fighting and solving it, thereby achieving Ma’at.
If you have no emotional connection to a problem, you are a lot less likely to care enough about it enough to actually invest time, effort and resources on it.
I would contend that a little bit of controlled anger, married with a lot of empathy, goes a long way to achieving maatian change in society.
4. One of these things is not equal to the others.
Another thing that really set my teeth on edge about Yoda’s little speech is the way he considers the Rebellion.
When prompted on fighting by Ezra, who is talking about the guerrilla war of the Rebellion against the Space Nazis, the little green tosser starts talking about the Clone Wars and about how that led the Jedi Order deeper into the Dark Side and stuff like that, implying that all forms of armed conflict are equally bad/evil.
Now, that is more or less the same as if someone said that the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, a war stemming from economic and imperialistic motivations as well as nationalism, is morally the same thing as the war fought by the Italian Partigiani, the French Maquis and the Greek, Croatian, Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, Russian and other Partisans against the forces of the Axis, or the wars fought by colonised people against their colonizers to regain their freedom.
I hope you realise how damaging and revisionist this kind of message is, and how functional to systematic oppression and fascism.
As Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.”
Fighting for justice, for one’s freedom from oppression is not the same as fighting to oppress another people for fun and profit, and if the writers of the show don’t know the frikkin’ difference, probably they should read a bit more about world history.
5. Achieving Balance – The Force and Ma’at
I think I have demonstrated in the previous points that the Sith leaders are almost universally a bunch of total bastards with strong Nazi tendencies, but also that, while individual Jedi are positive characters in the Star Wars franchise, in-universe the Jedi Order as an institution is an organic part of an oppressive system, and in the media Jedi-centric narratives often contain ideas or concepts that are a bit (or a lot) shitty IRL.
But what about the in-universe beliefs of the different Force-users? And what does this have to do with Ma’at?
Let’s have a look.
The Jedi code recites
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force
The latter does not concern us, but let’s examine the rest.
We have already seen how peace is intended as an inner state of an individual’s mind, but actually, in my view all the tenets are first and foremost devoted to self-betterment and the development of one’s personality.
So the Jedi do a lot of shadow work, but is that enough for Ma’at?
Maatian ideals are orthopraxic, explicitly tied up to positive action in society. People are supposed to abstain from harmful practices (as exemplified in the negative confessions of the BotD), but also to perform specific acts which are useful for society (as exemplified by the autobiographical texts of the Middle Kingdom).
There is general consensus among us on Tumblr that we have to “live in Ma’at” and fight against isfet to be doing the work of the NTRW, and not just concentrate on the inner sphere of one’s conscience. So on one hand I would be inclined to say that the Jedi way is not quite enough, but on the other hand, the concepts extolled as virtues in the code are aligned with Ma’at and to me have a distinctive Horian flavour.
Even though we have already said that Darth Sidious is a piece of walking refuse who most likely abused little children (Darth Maul, for example), let’s have a look at what are the tenets of the Dark Side.
The Sith code says:
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
This is also a recipe for self-betterment, but focused on outward action rather than self-control and self-knowledge.
Despite how much I hate the Nazis in Space and Darth Sidious in particular, the code itself has some merit and reminds me of the philosophical teachings of Heraclitus, another Greek philosopher, who contended that the world was in a constant state of flux and that conflict was what animated the Universe.
According to this code, stagnation is a situation to avoid. Internal drivers lead the practitioner to engage in conflict as a means of bringing change in the world and the result of this conflict is freedom, in either a physical or spiritual sense. In this sense it is also very Sethian in its spirit and in itself it is not necessarily “evil” or necessarily violent.
Freedom, like equality and social justice is a staple of a just society, and achieving it in that sense can only be considered a worthy endeavour.
Unfortunately, as we have seen, in-universe the code above can be easily twisted into some sort of eulogy of sociopathic amorality, achieved by shedding all kinds of links with society and one’s fellow beings, and IRL the desire for freedom can be easily transformed into selfish liberistic proclaims, which make a mockery of the concept of freedom itself.
As Sandro Pertini, 7th President of the Italian Republic, socialist and Partigiano, said “there cannot be true freedom without social justice, as there cannot be true social justice without freedom. […] Tell me, in conscience, can you consider free a person who goes hungry, who lives in misery, who doesn’t have a job, who is humiliated because they don’t know how to feed their children and educate them? This is not a free person. They are free only to curse and swear, but this is not the freedom I mean.”
In the Star Wars media there is a lot of talk about the “balance of the Force”, but I highly doubt that killing all the Sith would bring it about, as seems to be implied at the end of Return of the Jedi.
I would argue that Light Side (order, self-control, permanence) and Dark Side (change, conflict, emotion) must be somehow reconciled to bring lasting peace and justice in the GFFA, like Seth and Horus must be reconciled and must work together in the person of the King to achieve Ma’at IRL.
So is there in the Star Wars universe any such synthesis and is it any useful?
Well, in the official SW media there is not, but the fandom has produced some amazing conceptualisations, which I am going to share with you.
The first, from SW Fanon Wikia says:
Flowing through all, there is balance
There is no peace without a passion to create
There is no passion without peace to guide
Knowledge stagnates without the strength to act
Power blinds without the serenity to see
There is freedom in life
There is purpose in death
The Force is all things and I am the Force
Another one, made popular by a really cool graphic on 9GAG recites:
There is no Dark Side, nor a Light Side
There is Only the Force
I will do what I must to keep the balance
The balance is what keeps me together
There is no good without evil, but evil must not be allowed to flourish
There is passion, Yet peace
Serenity, Yet emotion
Chaos, Yet order
I am the wielder of the flame, the protector of balance
I am the holder of the torch, lighting the way
I am the keeper of the flame, soldier of balance
I am a guardian of life
I am a Gray Jedi
Now try and substitute all instances of “Force” and “balance” with “Ma’at”.
Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
Through balance Seth and Horus are reconciled, through balance the distant goddess is brought back and pacified and humanity saved, through balance the Eye of Horus is made whole again.
From the Two Lords Thoth is born, Wisdom from the conflict of other principles.
And in this case, maybe we can have a bit of wisdom from unashamed nerd-ness? Let me know below.
Many Journeys 