Lord Haseo said:
You don’t think he can adopt a philosophy of “Use your inner darkness to best your enemies but don’t let it envelope you for too long”? Also what’s to say that Luke didn’t take bits and pieces of philosophy that Dark Siders hold dear and use them to bolster his new philosophy?To me? No. Again, I still see the Dark Side as the malignant tumour on the energy field that life creates. It is not a difference in philosophy; it is the manifestation of the emotions behind bigotry and oppression. Being “A little dark” is akin to being “a little evil.”
We all harbor some amount of taint inside us. Luke would no doubt accept that and try to use his for the betterment of the Galaxy. The nature of these base feelings doesn’t matter so long as the outcome is good.
The Force is not a tool; it is not just a means to an end. It is the very thing that brings life together. Using the corruption of the energy created by life to protect life is hypocritical at best.
Sometimes extraordinary and/or unpleasant measures have to be taken to ensure peace in the long run. Does this fact conflict with emotional whatevertheshits? Of course it does but feelings don’t matter in situations of this magnitude.
And what you call hypocritical is what I call being able to see patterns or new ways thinking and adapting to your philosophy. And to pit it in even simpler terms it’s just being realistic.
But does a hypothetical “peace” justify using the very power that when used, brings the chaos and war that plagues the Galaxy? It would seem to me that encouraging the use of the Dark side would encourage those who can’t control themselves to fall, thus creating a neverending cycle of war and violence that would be defining to the galaxy.
To me it would seem better to teach apprentices outlets for fear and anger that would avoid tapping into the dark side, to trust that the will of the Force is what’s best, rather than to try to control that which can easily corrupt those who try.
This will quickly get into deep epistemological distinctions about good and evil, but to me, since the Force is an energy field created by life, all the processes of life forms feed into this energy field. This includes both the ‘nice’ emotions such as happiness and serenity, but also the ‘ugly’ emotions like fear and anger and apathy. As someone who has dealt with apathy in the past (‘what’s the point, nothing can get better’), often in order to rise out of apathy one must become aware of fear (‘I actually can affect this situation, and the situation is scary’), accepting it in order to rise through that through anger (‘I hate that I’ve let things get so bad’) and into happier emotions. This is what I imagine Luke going through in ROTJ.
My point is that these ‘ugly’ emotions exist in the real world for a reason. They’re not aberrant or unnatural, and to turn them into the equivalent of sin is a very religious, very Jedi, thing to do. The natural state of someone in command of the light and dark sides of the Force would, I expect, be a very serene and happy person on the whole, but it doesn’t mean they couldn’t get mad or fearful. It’s a gradient, not a black and white distinction, and I don’t think that a grey Jedi or the equivalent would use both sides equally. To dip into Eastern religion, someone using the Dark Side would be rather unenlightened, whereas someone using the light would be more enlightened. A good Jedi teaching in an Eastern mold might be that anyone who uses the Force is a Jedi, but the use of the Dark Side momentarily masks this Truth. That is how I choose to interpret Luke’s assertion after he throws aside his lightsaber.
I think you and I might be talking past what I mean by the Dark Side representing dark emotions. The Dark Side is anything but coping with fear and apathy. If anything, it is letting those emotions define you, and dominate your life. A straightforward example is death. Everyone fears death. Those of the Dark Side will do everything they can to avoid death, to make themselves immortal. Those who follow the light, however, will acknowledge that while death is scary, it is a part of life and try to find ways to find comfort in the fact they will die one day.
Anakin’s fall is another good example. The Jedi teach to avoid connections entirely to avoid fear. Anakin did not get to learn to trust that the Force will do the right thing. Anakin’s fear dominated him. He tried to avoid fate as hard as he could, rather than trying to accept it was a possibility. His fears led him to look into ways of altering reality, and it consumed him into a monster.