Anyone want speculate on the "balance" of the force and will this be the end of the Jedi order?

I find this whole balance thing really bizarre. The Jedi order is supposed to be based on Buddhism, but the idea that Light and Dark must be balanced is Taoism, so it just doesn't go together at all. Buddhism is already about achieving balance through the elimination of desires and attachments, so if that's just one side of a greater balance then the force just doesn't make any **** sense. There aren't two conflicting desires tugging over control of the galaxy, there is "I use the Force to do whatever I want" and "I don't want anything so I won't abuse the Force".

The Force gets thrown out of balance because the Jedi ultimately can't live up to their ideal, they have to fight the Sith because they aren't completely indifferent to the destruction of the galaxy despite striving for having no attachments or desires. If the Jedi were 100% true to their principles the Sith would simply win and rule the galaxy through wanton use of the Force. There would be no balance at that point, which is why in the Buddhist view the light side is balance, the dark side is unbalance.

If you run with the Taoist view, that opposing forces are actually a symbiotic part of the whole on the other hand it only works if you cast the Jedi as an organization dedicated to imposing their own kind of control over the force, and fighting anyone who doesn't go along with that. That doesn't really hold up with how they are written though. The Jedi aren't a bunch of moralizing Paladin types who go around striking down anyone they consider dark sided.

Without attachment Luke would have not been able to defeat the emporer, The last two other remaining Jedi (one a force ghost) expected Luke to fight Vader, who ultimately was the person who found the balance between the two. Luke also would have learned from that and probably realised in restarting the jedi he created Kylo Ren and an opening for Snoke to corrupt. Similarly the Jedi code created Vader, who if had been allowed to form attachments would have been a more "balanced" person.

Anakin's fear of losing Padme, his attachment to her, is what caused him to fall to the dark side. If he had lived true to the Jedi code and purged himself of desires he'd have been fine.

1 hour ago, Aetrion said:

I find this whole balance thing really bizarre. The Jedi order is supposed to be based on Buddhism, but the idea that Light and Dark must be balanced is Taoism, so it just doesn't go together at all. Buddhism is already about achieving balance through the elimination of desires and attachments, so if that's just one side of a greater balance then the force just doesn't make any **** sense. There aren't two conflicting desires tugging over control of the galaxy, there is "I use the Force to do whatever I want" and "I don't want anything so I won't abuse the Force".

The Force gets thrown out of balance because the Jedi ultimately can't live up to their ideal, they have to fight the Sith because they aren't completely indifferent to the destruction of the galaxy despite striving for having no attachments or desires. If the Jedi were 100% true to their principles the Sith would simply win and rule the galaxy through wanton use of the Force. There would be no balance at that point, which is why in the Buddhist view the light side is balance, the dark side is unbalance.

If you run with the Taoist view, that opposing forces are actually a symbiotic part of the whole on the other hand it only works if you cast the Jedi as an organization dedicated to imposing their own kind of control over the force, and fighting anyone who doesn't go along with that. That doesn't really hold up with how they are written though. The Jedi aren't a bunch of moralizing Paladin types who go around striking down anyone they consider dark sided.

I think the "balance" jargon is a side effect of decades of fanboys wanting to have their Dark Side Cake and eat it too. The whole "grey force user" crap. They want to be able to say they are a good guy, yet still be able to force choke a bi***. And that has, sadly, bled over into the popular culture as some "true force users find a balance between the two". Which I personally think is crap. Though, oddly enough, I'm totally fine with the Jedi ending. As depicted in the movies (especially the prequels), they were not a very effective system. They were pretty incompetent, gullible as heck, and ended up dying out just like all the other force traditions before them, that died out because everyone wanted to be a Jedi. And, considering that Luke saved the day by NOT doing what the Jedi told him to do, I'm totally on board with some new thing for the force users to be.

Because frankly, some of the Jedi doctrines were just stupid. And it apparently only takes one guy, good at double speak and apologist thinking, to turn a single Jedi to the dark and bring the whole thing crashing down, using their own doctrines against them. Though I've yet to hear a single Sith concept that didn't sound completely batshi** crazypants either, so they're hardly the route to go.

OT: I liked the trailer, though I did think, upon seeing all the pebbles floating up at her hand as she was crouched down, that she was going to pull a Superman and go flying up into the air.

I'm looking forward to it.

Balance in the force was something Lucas brought to the table long before the first SW RPG existed. The prequels showed that the jedi were far from balanced. Balanced does not mean using darkside abilities but finding the balance between the selfish and the selflessness sides of your personality.

If you do everything for others you lose touch with your own humanity, similarly if you are completely selfish then you become inhumane. Note that on this latter part this is my own opinion and not Lucas. Remember Vader was the Chosen One, not Luke and he definitely straddled both worlds but as Vader he did not bring balance but as Luke's compassionate father he did.

The Jedi rely too much on detached thinking about consequences without a drive to action, the Sith rely too much on selfish action without thinking of the consequences. Balance would be acting on your feelings without being without doing more than is required of the situation.

Translation: Being "grey" is being like Luke defeating Vader after Vader threatens to turn Leia. He gets a little rage-y and goes nuts until Vader goes down. According to Yoda and Kenobi, this should have sent him spiraling down the Dark Side without recourse. But it doesn't because Luke doesn't kill Vader. He goes to the line and turns back.

Side Note/Addendum: Anakin was also "grey" at the time of RotS. It's probably why he's so stinking powerful. The slippery slope starts when he kills Dooku. He knows it was wrong but he really wanted to kill him because of the crap Dooku put the galaxy through. Keeping Anakin from Padme is not cool, man. The final push is the vision of Padme dying. He's so consumed, key word here is consumed, by the loss of his mother that the loss of Padme makes him poop Dark Side turds.

Well actually Annakin's fall began with the death of his mother and losing her is what caused him to go all nutso about losing Padme.

If they had gone back and gotten his mother out of slavery and hooked her up with a sweet job on Naboo he never would have started down that bad path.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

Because frankly, some of the Jedi doctrines were just stupid. And it apparently only takes one guy, good at double speak and apologist thinking, to turn a single Jedi to the dark and bring the whole thing crashing down, using their own doctrines against them.

Except for saving Palpatine from Mace Windu, what did Anakin actually do that was essential to bringing down the Jedi? I feel like he didn't really betray the Jedi in any way that required him to be a Jedi first.

43 minutes ago, syrath said:

Balance in the force was something Lucas brought to the table long before the first SW RPG existed. The prequels showed that the jedi were far from balanced. Balanced does not mean using darkside abilities but finding the balance between the selfish and the selflessness sides of your personality.

If you look at it from a Buddhist interpretation then the Jedi aren't on the wrong path to balance, it's just an impossible endeavor to try to bring balance to the whole galaxy because the dark side is an eternal foil to it.

I mean, I totally get the idea that you need to be more practical than the Jedi were about fighting against the dark side, but when you're talking about the metaphysics of the universe I simply like the idea of balance as a virtually unattainable Nirvana state that is constantly threatened by a tumultuous universe. An ongoing story will always have more bad guys, so balance to the force will never mean "Everyone strikes a sensible balance between selfish desires and benevolence", and if it means "There is just enough evil in the galaxy for things to be an eternal stalemate" that doesn't exactly seem like a good outcome either, given that a stalemate can still cause untold suffering. Hence why I prefer the idea that balance is an eternal struggle that is never fully achieved because you can't be in balance with the force while the dark side exists, and the dark side is also always there.

I think that given Anakin's origin as a slave strongly attached to his mother, adhering to the Jedi Code was bound to be problematic. Had he been allowed to have his attachments, though carefully reigned in by the Masters of the Order by forcing his progression to slow, he would have found balance like the Jedi of old. This is the most likely reason the Council didn't want to have Anakin trained in the first place.

I can definitely see this going in the direction of "with internal balance comes external balance". Bring on an entire new Force tradition I say, give us new concepts rather than rehash old ones.

I like the trailer, it's very light on for details but that's expected with the first. The space battle looks fierce, and the shot of starships ripping across the desert looks cool.

A new Force tradition would probably give FFG a great excuse for an entire new RPG edition too!

I mean, in Legends material Luke did basically found a new Jedi order that was a lot more practically minded and promoted a less unattainable standard for Jedi to live by.

6 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

I mean, in Legends material Luke did basically found a new Jedi order that was a lot more practically minded and promoted a less unattainable standard for Jedi to live by.

Which is kind of the obvious continuation of the story told by the Prequels and OT. Luke should see the faults of the old Jedi Order and change the way things are done... still he could be wrong, which I think is one of the points of TFA

Yea, I agree there. The notion that people can't resist the darkness without acknowledging their desires and fears makes sense, but I really don't like the idea that the dark side isn't bad. That sort of invalidates the whole idea that the dark side corrupts people and drags them down a path where they crave absolute power at any cost, and if that isn't a thing the whole story is no longer about a struggle between good and evil.

8 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Except for saving Palpatine from Mace Windu, what did Anakin actually do that was essential to bringing down the Jedi? I feel like he didn't really betray the Jedi in any way that required him to be a Jedi first.

He murdered Dooku, who could've been taken prisoner, and pressed for information, potentially unraveling who the puppet master was. He assaulted the jedi temple and destroyed it, killing everyone there (thus reducing the number of people capable of resisting their new regime). Destroyed tons of the records at the temple, insuring the bulk of the knowledge about using the Force was lost, giving the Sith a monopoly on the ability in the galaxy.

And, basically every time Anakin didn't listen to the advice of other people who weren't trying to turn him to the dark side. Hiding important information from them, and refusing to help them, instead backing Palpatine, and furthering his agenda. At ANY time, Anakin could've turned to one of the jedi and been like "Hey, so Palpatine is a force user, and he's been telling me all this crazy stuff about the Sith. I think he might be behind all this war we've been dealing with." There are multiple times in the prequels, where Anakin is clearly uncomfortable with what Palp is telling him, showing his internal conflict about the "advice" Palp is giving him. So he was clearly aware that this was some shady stuff that he was being taught. But, because Palp was really good at twisting words, and using double speak, he was able to keep Anakin under his thumb, and turn him into the scourge of the galaxy. He then proceeded to send him out like a rabid attack dog, to kill anyone that was a threat to his rule.

Seems like a significant amount of action to me.

6 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

He murdered Dooku, who could've been taken prisoner, and pressed for information, potentially unraveling who the puppet master was. He assaulted the jedi temple and destroyed it, killing everyone there (thus reducing the number of people capable of resisting their new regime). Destroyed tons of the records at the temple, insuring the bulk of the knowledge about using the Force was lost, giving the Sith a monopoly on the ability in the galaxy.

None of those things strike me as a particularly great betrayal though. Dooku could have been killed by any number of other means, Palpatine just wanted to test Anakin which is why he arranged it happening that way. That wasn't a huge betrayal of the Jedi's trust. The assault on the temple, is the same thing. Sure he was there, but there is nothing to suggest the assault on the temple would have failed if one of the Jedi hadn't betrayed them. It wasn't like they had an impenetrable shield or something and Anakin shut it down from the inside or that Anakin was feeding the Emperor all the locations of the Jedi to be able to carry out Order 66 or anything like that.

When all is said and done, yes, he helped the Emperor a great deal, but Dooku or Maul could have done all the same things if they had proven to be the more powerful ones. Being part of the Jedi order wasn't in any way a requirement for Anakin's actions, so the downfall of the Jedi simply wasn't the result of a great betrayal.

Dooku was planned to be caught, it was part of the sith plan, that the jedi were supposed to catch him , then Palpatine could bring an end to the war, but Sidious used the fight to start the process of replacing him with Anakin, there was supposed to be a load of clunky dialogue where Palpatine reveals that Dooku was behind the sand people capturing his mother, this was replaced with the words "do it".

BTW for those that dont know The Last Jedi is Luke (singular)

I wouldn't recommend reading too much into Luke's lines about how the Jedi must end. As for balance, with the presence of Snoke, the Knights of Ren, and the First Order, pretty safe to say the galaxy (and thus the Force) is "out of balance" given the chaos those groups are causing in the galaxy.

After all, how many folks were convinced that Finn was going to be the new Jedi hero based upon TFA's promotional materials? Or the speculation from the initial trailer that Finn (then just known as John Boyega's character) was wearing trooper armor because he was a hero in disguise, that the planet was Tatooine, and he was being pursued by an Imperial probe droid? Or that Captain Phasma was going to be the biggest badass ever?

Based on what little we have, I'm thinking that it could be Luke admitting that the Jedi Order as he roughly knew it (probably from various records that survived the Empire's efforts to wipe out the post-Ruusan prequel-era Jedi Order) is just simply too flawed, and needs to end so that a truly "new" Jedi Order can come about. Part of Luke's self-imposed exile may be that he's trying to get back to the roots of the Jedi instead of building upon the admittedly flawed foundations of the prequel-era version, especially after he had a repeat of his father's fall to the dark side in the form of Ben/Kylo's betrayal.

4 hours ago, syrath said:

BTW for those that dont know The Last Jedi is Luke (singular)

The title and Luke's comment in the trailer are both in plural (source : spanish makes the distinction crystal clear), he is not referencing himself, but the jedi. Or maybe you meant something different, in such case apologies.

Los Últimos Jedi.

The Spanish title if anyone is curious.

Luke discovers something in the original temple that convinces him that the balance in the force is what is meant to be, best, more powerful. Perhaps he feels betrayed? Rey brings balance to the force? This isn't new, Lucas has had this idea for 40 years. See Qui Gon episode I.

I'm thinking that Luke is more jaded over the destruction of the Jedi. He's probably been thinking that, as a named organization, they always get caught up in galaxy-ruining wars, and groups like the Sith always appear to cause problems because of the Jedi. His conclusion may be that a public organization or group causes more problems than fixes them, and thus thinks that it would be better for it to disappear. Teaching individuals to use the Force and the path of the light.

2 hours ago, TrainedMunkey said:

Luke discovers something in the original temple that convinces him that the balance in the force is what is meant to be, best, more powerful. Perhaps he feels betrayed? Rey brings balance to the force? This isn't new, Lucas has had this idea for 40 years. See Qui Gon episode I.

I was about to post about this. Qui Gon was the first "gray jedi" mentioned in canon. But, much of his grayness didn't make it to the screen. There was much talk about him being a Gray Jedi in the lead up to Episode 1, and how that made him different. There is probably some old discussion on these forums. But, little of the Gray Jedi concept made it to the screen. Only if you know of the original intention can you see small things that began as Qui Gon being different from other Jedi. He was capable of defying the Council if needed, for example. And, most importantly, he discovered or developed the force ghost form. Not Yoda, the most powerful Light Jedi. Not the Emperor, the most powerful Dark Sith. Qui Gon discovered this new, greater power. Qui Gon who was previously hinted as being a "Gray Jedi".

I'm hoping this teaser is hinting at the light/dark being a split from a gray/balanced use of the Force eons before that is more powerful. Rey will be the first true Gray Jedi in eons, be more powerful then a Jedi or Sith, and thus bring true balance to the Force as previously predicted.

So, she's gotta be a Skywalker right? Was she born in a system with multiple suns? Or was the "son of suns" interpretation wrong making Qui Gon and Kenobi think Anakin was the chosen one, when he actually wasn't? Or, he indirectly does bring balance to the Force by killing Palpatine and setting Luke on the path to eventually mold the first Gray Jedi?