As I am home today slowly recovering from an awful migraine that kept me up most of the night, I figured I’d spend time going through social media. I am what you call a social media lurker – I very rarely say anything on social media but I always READ what everyone else is saying. This is a very powerful thing because when you’re not caught up in your own ego, you can learn a lot online from the things people say. Although that can also be a trap because most people are full of BS to be honest. This is where you have to make up your own mind on what you decide to keep and what you decide to discard.
This is how I feel about Star Wars. Everyone has a lot to say about it but only very few people truly understand it. Knowing a lot about Star Wars doesn’t mean anything if you don’t appreciate where it all started and it all started with George. To say that I admire George Lucas for what he created would be a serious understatement. But when it comes to Star Wars, there really is no other higher authority for me. And sure, Star Wars has grown a lot since he handed it over to Disney. But I still feel the truest essence of what Star Wars is belongs to him.
So when he talks about the Star Wars universe, I listen. So I found this and decided to post about it because it’s awesome and probably the best way anyone could explain what the force actually is:
Through The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is learning to be a Jedi, but it’s not something that you just pick in 10 minutes. The whole idea is it’s very hard to learn to be a Jedi.
A lot of people get confused about the Force. They see it as some special thing that you can find and pick up and put it on your head and suddenly you have the Force. Whereas it’s always been designed so that every [living] being has the Force.
The amount of Force, which is like talent or intelligence, is different in every person. Some of it is inherited, but it’s no more than a talent. It’s not something you can acquire – it’s something you can learn to use. I have the power to lift that cup off the table using the Force, but I can’t do it unless I have been trained to do it.
– George Lucas on “The Force”
What do you think about this? Do you agree or disagree with George? Do you think George’s understanding is outdated and not modern enough now to apply?
Let me know what you think my friends, ANY opinion is welcome and I always try to reply 🙂
Stay safe out there and I’ll catch you in the comments!
darksiderconfessions.blog 
Firstly, I hope you’re feeling better. Secondly, concerning the Force–it seems like the more I learn about Star Wars, the more fuzzy the Force becomes. What is the basic nature of the Force? What is the Living Force versus the Cosmic Force? What does it mean to be in balance? Light and Dark both balanced, or all Light? What about the Chosen One? Did he bring balance? If so, how? Who can wield the Force? Anyone with training? Or only those who have midi-chlorians? Sigh.
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It’s true which is why I like to use George Lucas as a benchmark. I mean yeah things have expanded but I mean it was his baby, I think he would have a much better idea on how something he created worked ya know?
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Whatever Lucas says is Star Wars is Star Wars. I don’t argue with the maker! I loved everything he did.
Got some more George Lucas quotes about the Force. Something tells me your the kinda guy who might like to see some of em =]
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“The core of the Force….you’ve got the Lightside and the Darkside, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you want to keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the Darkside, It [The Force] goes out of 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 … 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.”
~ George Lucas, 2010
video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiImoO5QkcA – [50 second mark]
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“The Force has two sides – [Light and Dark].* It is not an inherently malevolent or a benevolent thing. *It has a bad side* to it, involving hate and fear, *and it has a good side*, involving love, charity, fairness and hope.”
~ George Lucas
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“The Force itself is split into two sides: the living Force and a greater, cosmic Force. The living Force makes you sensitive to other living things, makes you intuitive, and allows you to read other people’s minds, et cetera. But the greater Force has to do with destiny. In working with the Force, you can find your destiny and you can choose to either follow it, or not.”
— George Lucas
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“The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion – of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides – the good force and the bad force. They’re the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction.”
~ George Lucas, Time interview (Bill Moyers) 03/05/99
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“People have a tendency to confuse it — everybody has the Force. Everybody. You have the good side and you have the bad side. And as Yoda says, if you choose the bad side, it’s easy because you don’t have to do anything. Maybe kill a few people, cheat, lie, steal. Lord it over everybody. But the good side is hard because you have to be compassionate. You have to give of yourself. Whereas the dark side is selfish.”
~ George Lucas, 2019
https://naboonews.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/george-lucas-says-there-has-never-been-any-war-between-the-jedi-and-the-sith-in-his-canon/
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George Lucas on the Force:
“This is the cosmology. The Force is the energy, the fuel, and without it everything would fall apart.
The Force is a metaphor for God, and God is essentially unknoweable. But behind it is another metaphor, which fits so well into the movie that i couldn’t resist it. Midi-chlorians are the equivalent of Mitochondria in living organisms and photosynthesis in plants – I simply combined them for easier consumption by the viewer. Mitochondria create the chemical energy that turns one cell into two cells.
I like to think that there is a unified reality to life and that it exists everywhere in the universe and that it controls things, but you can also control it.That’s why I split it into the Personal Force and the Cosmic Force. The Personal Force is the energy field created by our cells interacting and doing things while we are alive. When we die, we lose our persona and our energy is assimilated into the Cosmic Force.If we have enough Midichlorians in our body, we can have a certain amount of control over our Personal Force and learn how to use it, like the Buddhist practive of being able to walk on hot coals.”
The Star Wars Archives. 1999–2005, by Paul Duncan
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“No human can let go,” Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. “It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, ‘You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power – but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more.”
“The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth,” he continues, “They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.”
~ George Lucas, The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213
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“Jedi are like negotiators. They aren’t people that go out and blow up planets, they aren’t people that shoot down things. They are more of a one-to-one combat type. So I just want a form of fighting and the role of the Jedi Knight to be special and more spiritual, and more intellectual than just a fighter or a superhero, or something like that.”
George Lucas – The Phantom Menace, “Prime of the Jedi” Featurette, 2001
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“The Jedi, they don’t attack, they only defend. Yoda didn’t attack until the [Attack of the Clones]. […]
There’s a conundrum ultimately. It’s been there forever. Which is, are you just going to sit there and let them kill you? Or your loved ones? Or destroy the world that you know? Or are you going to try to fix it? At some point, you do have to stand up for what you believe in. Obviously, I can make my religion be whatever I want it to be. It doesn’t have to be consistent. If a cobra’s going to strike you, I think you have every right to put a stick up there and hit him over the head. Because it’s either him or you.
Of course, this is the mythology of the cowboy. They always put him in these crises where you have to choose between your own personal values and the practicality of what you need to do. You’ve got to pick up the sheriff’s badge even though you had all these problems in the past. You’re going to have to go out and kill people again. Even though you said you’d never do it.”
George Lucas – James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, 2018
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“The Darkside is always there, it is experienced daily by people. It’s like a huge cancer, alive, festering – both a reminder of the moral state and, at the same time symptom and symbol of a very sick society”
~ George Lucas, “The Mythology of Star Wars”, Joseph Campell and the Power of Myth DVD, 2001
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“The key part of this scene is Anakin saying, ‘I’m not going to let this happen again.’ We’re cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi, and the only way you can really do that is to go to the Dark side because the Dark side is more powerful. *If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side, which is the Dark side, but ultimately it’ll be your undoing.* But it’s that need for power and that need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and allow the natural course of life to go on — which is that things come and go — and to be able to accept the change around you and not want to keep moments frozen forever in time.”
~ George Lucas, AotC DVD commentary track [during Shmi’s funeral]
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George Lucas on the bottom line of Star Wars.
“The secret, ulitmately, which is the bottom line in Star Wars and the other movies us there are two kinds of people in the world, compassionate people and selfish people. The selfish people live on the Darkside. The compassionate people live on the Lightside.
“If you go to the side of the Light you will be happy because of compassion, helping other people, not thinking about yourself, thinking about others, that gives you a joy that you can’t get any other way.
Being selfish, following your pleasures, always entertaining yourself with pleasure, and buying stuff and doing stuff, you’re always going to be unhappy. You’ll never get to the point. You’ll get this little shot of pleasure but it goes away and than you’re stuck where you were before and the more you do it, the worse it gets. You finally get everything you want and you’re miserable because there’s nothing at the end of that road.
Whereas if you are compassionate and you get to the end of the road you’ve helped so many people.”
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“As evil begins to take over, it pushes the Force out of balance. It’s easier to succumb to evil than it is to be a hero and try to work things through on the good side. Evil is inherently more powerful—it doesn’t have the burden of worrying about other people. What Luke sees in Darth Vader at the end of ROTJ is something that I thought was worth understanding: the idea that Darth actually was a very good person. Except he’s slightly more powerful than other people and when you get into that situation, your ability to do evil is much easier to come by.”
“I think it is obvious that [Qui-Gon] was wrong in Episode I and made a dangerous decision, but ultimately this decision may be correct. The “Phantom Menace” refers to the force of the dark side of the universe. Anakin will be taken over by dark forces which in turn destroy the balance of the Galaxy, but the individual who kills the Emperor is Darth Vader—also Anakin. The tale meanders and both the prediction and Qui-Gon are correct—Anakin is the chosen one, and he did bring peace at last with his own sacrifice. Luke couldn’t kill the Emperor himself, but he could make Anakin reflect on his life and kill t
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“He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother, he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes him greedy. And when you are greedy, you are on the path to the Darkside, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.”
~ George Lucas, Time Magazine, 2002
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“The act of living generates a force field [Living Force], an energy. That energy surrounds us; when we die, that energy joins with all the other energy. There is a giant mass of energy in the universe that has a good side and a bad side [Cosmic Force]. We are part of the Force because we generate the power that makes the Force live. When we die, we become part of that Force [Cosmic Force], so we never really die; we continue as part of the Force.”
—George Lucas during a production meeting for The Empire Strikes Back
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“[The] 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.“
~ George Lucas, The Clone Wars interview, 2010
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Wow thanks so much for this awesome reply! I’ve never read some of those quotes, thanks so much for including them (oh and by the way, I’m a she not a guy) 🙂 Thanks again for sharing!
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[…] Ahsoka training Sabine using Zatoichi is a nod back to A New Hope when Obi-Wan trained Luke. I really enjoyed this scene; I’ve known a few martial arts instructors who would have employed a similar method of training. I also love the homage they pay to George Lucas’ explanation of the Force. […]
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