juliet's tomb

Letting go of Star Wars

10/24 2021

The Tao doesn’t take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn’t take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.
The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
Hold on to the center. ¹

The influence of Taoism on Star Wars and the force is apparent and next to explicit. Yet, if we look on the franchise we see that this reflection is never really explored. Granted, it has been hinted and nibbled at, but one cannot have the cake and eat it too, and here one cannot play with the implications and not be affected by its conclusion. Therefore I wanted to do an exploration of how it corresponds to Taoism, and how the introduction of some of these ideas in a complete sense in the case of 'The Last Jedi' helped make it into a better movie. And most importantly, that the exploration of these ideas will propel Star Wars forward or, even better, guide it into what it always has been.

Taoism & The Force

So, let's first begin at looking at some core tenets in Taoism that either relates directly, or could provide the opportunity for a fresh perspective, on many aspect of Star Wars lore. In Taoism there's the Tao(道), literally translated as "the way", but roughly translated as an energy --- or a Force --- that moves and flows through every thing in the universe. But this does not mean that the things that we see are actually things, but they're a temporary tension between two forces, yin and yang, push and pull. "Things" emerge out of the Tao, and "things" devolve into the Tao, forming a perennial circle. Think of a flower emerging out of the earth in the spring, letting out its seeds in late summer, and then dying as winter comes along --- only to emerge as something else in the spring again. And then the cycle goes on. Taoism argues that precisely because this universe of things is impermanent, meaning a temporary part of the eternal part, the Tao, any attachment to this idea of reality is merely futile. Like water effortlessly flowing past jagged rocks in a river we should aim to live in accordance with the flow of the Tao, and not try to swim against the current. Note here that many concepts we take for granted, like that of "bad" and "good", begin to seem archaic in this paradigm. They are simply a part of the same thing, the same flow, and one cannot ever hope to see one side of dark and light triumph over the other. It is in fact the very tension between the dark and the light that conceives this appeared reality of separate things itself.

Another crucial tenet in Taoism is "wu wei" (无为), which can roughly be translated into "effortless action". An example of wu wei, borrowed from Zhuang zi(莊子), can be portrayed in the story of a butcher which he calls Ding. Ding is just starting out his profession, and one important task concerns needing to be able to cut the pieces of meat into the exact measurements that his customers request. So he does this initially by cutting straight through the meat, through all the bones, the muscle and the sinews. But because he is brute forcing his way through those bones and such, he finds himself constantly resharpening his knife. And as the years go by he unconsciously, and suddenly, realizes that all of those bones, tendons and muscles connect in a larger pattern, a pattern that is unique to every piece of meat. After all of those years of unintentional practice it is as if he is beginning to sense how the muscles twist around the bone, and cutting through it becomes effortless. Now Ding doesn't think before he cuts his meat, Ding just does, he performs an effortless action. And that is wu wei.

Nowadays I follow along using my spirit, and I don't use my eyes to look at all. My senses and knowledge have stopped, but my divine desires move along. I accord with the Heavenly patterns. Slicing through the big cracks, swerving through the great hollows, according with what is given. I glide through where the muscles and tendons are not linked together, and all the more so past the great clumps of bones.
...
By using what has no thickness and inserting it where there is no gap --- there's lots of space to move about in. That's why even though I've been at this for nineteen years, the blade of my knife is as sharp as if it were just sharpened yesterday.

The first part of this description of Taoism, about the Force that permeates all things, that should sound instantly familiar to the other Force we all know. Wu wei, on the other hand, isn't as recognizable. But it is there, if we look for it. Consider in 'A New Hope' when Luke is trying to aim his laser torpedoes using his guiding computer:

Obi-Wan: Use the Force, Luke
Luke shifts his eyes between his goal and the guiding computer
Obi-Wan: Let go, Luke.

When he eventually fires, and hits, that is an action of effortless action. It simply is something that he does without thinking. It is, in other words, a letting go, a letting go into something else. If we look at another example in the original trilogy we have the iconic statement on Dagobah:

Luke: I'll give it a try.
Yoda: No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Wu wei is, crucially, not about effort. But since the human mind tends not to realize this, as Luke's arc in the original trilogy demonstrates, then she'll instead try to force it to bend to her will. But trying is not the way that nature works, our hearts don't try to beat, nor do the wind blow because it tries to blow. They just do, and so do we if we do in our lives if we do so wu wei --- if we trust the Tao (or the Force if we want to keep ourselves in the Star Wars universe).

As a result even things as desire become a topic of concern for Taoists. Because, what is desire except for the inability to see reality for what it is, making every action stemming from it an action performed out of the inability to let go. Something that, if we place it in the context of Star Wars, seems contradictory to what the Force is supposed to be.

When there is no desire,
all things are at peace ²

I think that the Taoistic explanation above gives an accurate depiction of what the Force is in the already established Star Wars universe, as well as a more nuanced (or at least philosophical) portrayal of what the Force is, especially the --- very briefly --- laid out view on the connection between desire and letting go.

And this leads us to a problem with Star Wars as a whole: the false dichotomy between the extreme light and the extreme dark. The Sith obviously pull more from the dark side, and the Jedi obviously pull more from the light; however, none of them are exclusively one or the other, and none of them can be said to be in balance. Both of them deny very fundamental aspects of life, and reality as we know it. It is apparent how disillusioned both of the camps are if we consider a definition of the Light and the Dark side respectively, spoken by George Lukas in a writing meeting for Star Wars Episode III:

"The dark side is pleasure (biological & temporary), and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting, and hard to achieve. A great challenge. Must give up laziness, give up pleasures, and overcome fear (which leads to hate)."

But the Jedi having that view on the Force is inconsistent if they also accept a view on the Force as something that permeates everything. The problem isn't that one has pleasures, whether that be relationships or material things, the problem is when one stops believing in the Force, or in the context of the Star Wars universe, reality itself. When one becomes afraid to let go. The Jedi were so afraid to let go that they tightly held it, repressed it, until it no longer reflected it for what it was. The joy they supposedly stood for was simply the Force, and nothing more. If we refer back to what a Taoist sage might say, then she'd say that there is nothing but pleasure, because that is simply the way the world is. Thus if the Jedi were proponents of living in accordance with the Force they would've never adhered to an ideology so obsessed with the fear of the dark, they would've adhered to an ideology of balance, balance that naturally dispels all of the illusions about the benefits of the dark side. I'll quote Stephen Mitchell here,

"In surrendering to the Tao, in giving up all concepts, judgments, and desires, her mind has grown naturally compassionate. She finds deep in her own experience the central truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on the surface: that the more truly solitary we are, the more compassionate we can be; the more we let go of what we love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can embody the good. Until finally she is able to say, in all humility, 'I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life."³

Before we get into 'The Last Jedi' for real we first need to address a counter argument to this Taoistic idea about the Force and the Jedi. In a deleted scene for 'The Last Jedi', as Luke is finishing giving the first lesson to Rey, they both look over the bay and see ships arriving to the village of the caretakers, to which Luke says: 'They're marauders that plunder the village once a month'. Rey protests, pleading that they need to help, of course, but Luke responds by saying that it is simply a natural part of the way of the world, and that the Jedi in that situation would do nothing. While this at first glance seems to adhere to the definition above, I really don't think that's a correct conclusion. Acting in accordance to the Tao needn't be complacency. It simply means being like the water in a river. Consider a story about a warlord with a very large army coming to invade a state possessing a small army. The leader of the state, instead of fighting, uses his smaller --- but faster --- army to lure the big army out towards the vast fields where they, through attrition over the course of many days and weeks, chase the warlord's massive army until their supplies are running out and so that they give up. The philosophical picture painted above isn't one of complacency, but an ultimately pragmatical one.

The Last Jedi & Letting Go Of Star Wars

This brings us to a point where we can analyze how 'The Last Jedi' incorporated some of these ideas, which I argue made it into a better, and much more interesting movie for it.

Letting go of both the past and the future is at the forefront of both Luke and Ben's arcs. Both of them realized the hypocrisy in the Jedi teachings, but they took distinctly different paths. Luke begins the movie tethered to the past, to his failures as a teacher and as a student to an ideology/religion he has no faith in anymore. But he realizes through the course of the movie the fruitlessness of this endeavor. In clinging to your past you only cling to nothingness itself. Only in letting go to the flow of the Force does he realize this. Something summed up in the conversation between Yoda and Luke:

Luke Skywalker: I'm ending all of this. The tree, the texts, the Jedi. I'm going to burn it all down.
Yoda: [Yoda summons lightning to burn down the tree and the Jedi texts. He laughs] Ah, Skywalker. Missed you, have I.
Luke Skywalker: So it is time for the Jedi Order to end.
Yoda: Time it is for you to look past a pile of old books, hmm?
Luke Skywalker: The sacred Jedi texts?
Yoda: Oh, read them, have you? Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes. Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess. Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here, now, hmm? The need in front of your nose.

By letting go and living in accordance with the Force he accepts the way things are, the things that he needs to do at this moment in time, and thus completes his journey as a character. He "expresses himself completely, and then keeps quiet."⁴. Letting the Force be with him, and it with him.

Carrying the burden from the previous movie Rey begins unsure of herself, unsure of who she is, wanting Luke to teach her and --- in essence --- tell her who she is. Rey becomes increasingly frustrated at Luke for not teaching her, and when he eventually agrees, his inability to teach her what she wants, only, as she figures out later, it isn't what she wants at all. It is only what she thinks she wants. She doesn't really want anything, as evident by the mirror scene. The answers that the mirrors provide is that all the answers she really need are there staring her right in the face. It isn't something found in her estranged parents, nor in an old Jedi legend. It was there all along. If she only listened to the Force and what it was, and is, telling her.

Ben Solo, as always (and mirroring Rey's character), begins the movie by being unsure of himself and his place in everything. He is regretful of the things that he has done, but he is at the same time angry at himself for not doing more to fulfill the desires that he has. Through the connection between him and Rey he gradually changes in the course of the movie, and it is almost as if he is beginning to realize the things that we see Rey realize, but as is shown in the throne room scene, he had no intention of doing so. He acts from desire, and desire alone, thus corrupts any intention he might've had in the first place.

The common ground between all of these seem to be avoiding of thinking in terms of binaries, in light and dark, and instead think of it in terms of the Force itself, as well as the implications that view on the Force has on the character and their journey. And that, to me at least, is an interesting and very fresh take on the Star Wars universe that we've never really seen explored quite to this extent in any previous installment. ⁵

But 'The Last Jedi' certainly wasn't without its flaws; however, I think that most of those flaws are because of an independent factor, which is that it is more setup like the first entry of a trilogy than the second. It introduces some notions (like the ones discussed above) that sets the ideological backdrop of what the characters are going to explore, which granted, feels disjointed after 'The Force Awakens'. It had already introduced its own ideas, and 'The Last Jedi' either tossed those away & introduced new ones, or simply ignored many of them. I think that this is a valid criticism of the movie in relation to its place in the trilogy, but not valid about the movie itself. I can't help but imagine how interesting trilogy could've turned out if 'The Last Jedi' (with major rewrites) would've been the first entry in the trilogy. The way that I'm imagining it is every trilogy filling a specific philosophical role in the Star Wars universe: we would have the prequels portraying the hypocrisy of the Jedi; the original trilogy portraying the obvious faults with the Sith, as well as how sometimes all it takes is a little push for someone truly evil to redeem himself; and the sequel trilogy would have been the trilogy to show balance. That, to me, sounds like a satisfying, and interesting role for a trilogy to occupy. And I can't imagine that the backlash would've turned out to be as vicious and toxic as it did.

Furthermore I don't think that most of the backlash that did happen is relevant if we adhere to a view on the Star Wars universe as Taoist in nature (something that I think fits) rather than a Manichaeistic worldview where the universe is an eternal struggle between light and dark, and where light must win in the end. If one were to have that kind of view, then surely the Last Jedi would seem as if it simply contradicted Star Wars as a whole, something that I hopefully have shown you is --- if anything --- the opposite. Take the commonly held notion that Luke's character had been totally changed, turned from a hero to a maimed, grumpy, old man. The grumpy, old part is true, however, not the maimed part. Luke has had his fair share of failures, and for it has become stronger. His mistakes stemmed from this inability to let go, and to let the universe be as it simply is.

Thus, I think that the way forward in a franchise such as Star Wars is quite simple in thought, but difficult in execution: we let the rules of the Star Wars universe dictate where it goes next, and not our own desires of where it should go, and thus also where it should return.

Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through. ⁴