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this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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KOTOR isn't in the new canon anyway, so I feel it makes sense to pick and choose what from the current canon applies to KOTOR and vice versa. I don't think anyone outright suggested the force being sentient per se. I personally think of its influence more like gravity, both in the sense that it's a fact of existence and that the work in applies (in the physics sense, not labour) isn't absolute. This is reflected in the game mechanics, the force rewards the PC for "picking a side”, at neutral the player can't get prestige classes and max light/dark side points gives bonus attributes.
Even if we don't get into the light vs dark notion, the force is definitely pushing people in anti-human directions. In the prequels, every time Anakin asks for advice, he receives some pseudo-buddhist inhuman horseshit, and I don't think the point was that the jedi leadership were all imbeciles. Hell, even in the OT, it's clearly said that Luke cannot kill Vader, since he'd fall to the dark side if he indulged his anger in that way. The force is literally telling us killing space hitler bad. The balance (as described by Lucas, not that he was perfectly consistent) is supposed to be all light and no dark, but if human tendencies give rise to the dark side so easily, this balance isn't a real equilibrium. You can see this in almost all the post-ROTJ stories, the dark side rises back somehow.
I like Kreia's animosity towards the force for a very meta reason. All of the idealist idiocy in any of the SW stories, all the individuals that changed the fate of the galaxy had the power to move worlds, can be explained by the Force forcing an idealist reality on the SW galaxy, and that destroying the Force would restore materialism as a fact to the universe, and as a bonus will break the cycle of galaxy-wide conflict.
I think that’s a fair interpretation - don’t necessarily agree with it but I get it! I did subscribe to the fan explanation for the Jedi order being absolutely no help to Anakin, basically saying the Order as a construct became ossified and unable to contend with the realities of life and human (or alien) emotions. There’s plenty of good SW media going into how the light doesn’t require to ignore emotions, love, or even killing when necessary, and the restrictions were the result of a millennia old stagnant order.
The Light would be the ideal state: beings living in harmony, valuing each other’s lives etc., but I like to think the Dark is “unnatural” in the way of conditions leading to humans making malicious or greedy choices. It’s all a bit metaphorical but the dark is almost always used to represent selfishness and disregard for empathy, patience, etc., but the Dark can be a descriptive term. It can represent the “darkness” and evil choices that humans (or aliens in fiction) are capable of, and the evil they perpetrate in their selfish pursuits creates the Dark. Basically the Dark is the use of the force for “evil”, selfish, or non-empathetic actions, and it acts as a force multiplier (haha), causing a literal cascading descent into evil and madness where it would be more metaphorical IRL. The corruption necessary to accrue billions, and the ease of abandoning human empathy when it is in one’s interest is pretty analogous IMO. I see the idealist nonsense of the dogmatic Jedi philosophy as just as problematic as Kreia does, but I’d be more willing to point to human (or alien) power structures causing it more than the mystical field itself.
As with all interpretations of vague and inconsistent media I think there’s no real answer, or at least one that’ll get us to agree 100%, ¯_(ツ)_/¯. All I know is that I used to spend far too much time thinking about fiction like this and this thread’s been a throwback so thanks, good discussion lol