Thank you for saying that, friend. I also get really pissed off when the Buddhism/Taoism thing come up because it's well damn clear to me that the whole Force thing is just White Man Protestantism with a gloss of Appropriated and Barely Understood Exotic laid on top.
A few sparse considerations here: - the Dark Side as embodied by Sidious, Vader and Kylo Ren is fascism, basically, and that has nothing to do with loving too much, as with considering others inferior and disposable. - love =/= abuse. Abuse is also considering people as disposable objects that exist for your enjoyment. - the behaviour of the Jedi Order towards its adherents is also abusive, as many people before me have already said, starting from the "recruitment" method, down to the "selection" of Initiates, down to the control of all aspects of a Jedi's life and the inquisitorial mentality that floats around in the PT and Clone Wars - The worldbuilding regarding the Force is so messed up that I can't even... Like, how are you supposed to have the Balance of the Force is the Dark Side is inherently evil? Gnosticism at least did away with the entire premise of balance and focused on using ascetic practices and enlightenment to avoid sullying themselves with The Bad Stuff. - The whole Fanged God/Winged Goddess/Duded Who Looks Suspiciously Like The Christian God thing was like ??? Why do you need a third figure in a dualistic system? - The whole thing about "falling to the Dark Side" is roughly equivalent to the "fall from Grace" as well.
tl;dr: As a Kemetic polytheist I am just determined to ignore the bullshit worldbuilding from Lucas in my fics and interpret the Force though a Kemetic Polytheist framework as the in-world equivalent of Ma'at, and consider the Dark Side Chaos/Change/Sethian-aspected and the Light Side Order/Permanence/Horian-aspected.
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Date: 2019-02-10 03:19 pm (UTC)I also get really pissed off when the Buddhism/Taoism thing come up because it's well damn clear to me that the whole Force thing is just White Man Protestantism with a gloss of Appropriated and Barely Understood Exotic laid on top.
A few sparse considerations here:
- the Dark Side as embodied by Sidious, Vader and Kylo Ren is fascism, basically, and that has nothing to do with loving too much, as with considering others inferior and disposable.
- love =/= abuse. Abuse is also considering people as disposable objects that exist for your enjoyment.
- the behaviour of the Jedi Order towards its adherents is also abusive, as many people before me have already said, starting from the "recruitment" method, down to the "selection" of Initiates, down to the control of all aspects of a Jedi's life and the inquisitorial mentality that floats around in the PT and Clone Wars
- The worldbuilding regarding the Force is so messed up that I can't even... Like, how are you supposed to have the Balance of the Force is the Dark Side is inherently evil? Gnosticism at least did away with the entire premise of balance and focused on using ascetic practices and enlightenment to avoid sullying themselves with The Bad Stuff.
- The whole Fanged God/Winged Goddess/Duded Who Looks Suspiciously Like The Christian God thing was like ??? Why do you need a third figure in a dualistic system?
- The whole thing about "falling to the Dark Side" is roughly equivalent to the "fall from Grace" as well.
tl;dr: As a Kemetic polytheist I am just determined to ignore the bullshit worldbuilding from Lucas in my fics and interpret the Force though a Kemetic Polytheist framework as the in-world equivalent of Ma'at, and consider the Dark Side Chaos/Change/Sethian-aspected and the Light Side Order/Permanence/Horian-aspected.