Balance of the Force in the Star Wars Universe

I wrote the following paragraphs following a sensational class at Ole Miss. In it I suppose the last third of the series, if there were to be one, would need to end with the Jedi in the same state as the Sith/Dark Side at the beginning of Episode I The Phantom Menace in which the dark side is unknown to most and the and in hiding, hiding among them. 

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

When the prequals to the original Star Wars films came out they were less than well received. It really should come as no surprise. They looked nothing like the Star Wars of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. There were landscapes full of color with light everywhere. The only landscapes in the original series were stark desert-scapes and black starry backdrops except of course the forest moon of Endor. The episodes were bright. The colors were beautiful and Naboo is one of the most colorful places in the galaxy. 

Jungian theory is set in opposites. The Hero has his Shadow the Ego has has it’s Id. None are bad but simply existing as an integral part of what is going on. If the series began based on the Jungian architypes and the roles they play in the collective myth. It would follow that in the overarching plan to balance the force, the roles the architypes play would have to at some point reverse. In Episode one The Force is so unbalanced that a myth has been created, complete with prophecy, about the “one who will bring balance to the force” 

The Phantom Menace stands in stark contrast to The Force Awakens. They are like day and night; respectively. In The Phantom Menace there is an imbalance to the force and The Jedi Council seem to be running the galaxy through the Republic and doing a fine job of it. They sit as a collective god-head above the senate and above all rule in the society. When it seems there may be a problem with the leadership of the Republic their first consideration is to take it over by force. 

In The Force Awakens, Snopes is in power instead of the collective republic, and things seem to be going pretty well. He’s obviously some sort of Dark Side villain but be can’t be a “Sith” due to the rule of two. The Knights of Ren are all trained Jedi. Or at least Jedi school drop-outs following their masked hero to glory. It would seem that the dark side’s version of the Jedi council would be the Knights of Ren and instead of affecting it’s will and vision through democracy they have decided to go with the, more direct, autocratic rule of the Galaxy. As in Episode One the ruling power is still trying to flush out the last remaining die-hard critics of their ways and are doing so through strong-arming by way of the force. They have also learned a thing or two from the history books of the Republic and the Jedi council. 

Both the republic and the first order steal babies to make soldiers. They both sacrifice individuals for the sake of a greater good, and they all agree that The Force is a necessary tool for anyone wishing to enjoy intergalactic power. 

In order to better see the imbalance of the force in both The Force Awakens and The Phantom Menace one must take a Jungian look at the entire series with no judgement and without the use of good and evil. The Light and Dark sides are merely opposites coexisting and if there is to be balance of the force the “bad guys” are going to win sometimes. 

Darth Sidious is an unknown in The Phantom Menace. He is in hiding and everyone is looking for him. The same can be said of Luke Skywalker in The Force Awakens. Obi-Wan Kanobe is a headstong yet, passionate almost-jedi in the Phantom Menace. Kylo Ren is recalled to Snopes at the end of The Force Awakens to “Complete his training”. The Sith are said to always be two. “Never more, never less” by Yoda in The Phantom Menace. The Force Awakens ends with the last two altruistic beings with raised mediclorian counts meeting each other for the first time. What’s the light-side equivalent of a sith? 

Some conclusions could be drawn if The Force is truly balancing itself out here, some of the same things would have to happen. The Fist Order would have to come to complete power, at some point, completely ending the rebellion for a time. One of their ranks would have to defect and seek his/her destiny on the light side of the Force. And Luke Skywalker will have to become the ultimate leader of the rebellion before dying a hero’s death. 

As long as we are explaining Jung with Star Wars we might as well look farther into the future. The Phantom Menace being one extreme and the Force Awakens being the other with the end state of balancing the Force. It would seem that there are a few more series to be made of all of this. 

Dr. C. George Boeree

“The final principle is the principle of entropy. This is the tendency for oppositions to come together, and so for energy to decrease, over a person's lifetime. Jung borrowed the idea from physics, where entropy refers to the tendency of all physical systems to "run down," that is, for all energy to become evenly distributed. If you have, for example, a heat source in one corner of the room, the whole room will eventually be heated. 

When we are young, the opposites will tend to be extreme, and so we tend to have lots of energy. For example, adolescents tend to exaggerate male-female differences, with boys trying hard to be macho and girls trying equally hard to be feminine. And so their sexual activity is invested with great amounts of energy! Plus, adolescents often swing from one extreme to another, being wild and crazy one minute and finding religion the next. 

As we get older, most of us come to be more comfortable with our different facets. We are a bit less naively idealistic and recognize that we are all mixtures of good and bad. We are less threatened by the opposite sex within us and become more androgynous. Even physically, in old age, men and women become more alike. This process of rising above our opposites, of seeing both sides of who we are, is called transcendence.”

If these first seven movies (or nine) are the first, most grand dosey-do, of a big square dance that eventually disapates into homogenous beings all with the same mediclorian count and complete ignorance of the force I guess you’d end up in a pretty boring place. Luckily for us the Force is still unbalanced enough for the occasional News Flash or Face Book status update. But the fact that all this once happened is not up for debate. It’s still part of who we are. We still have the memories in our collective unconscious and we know that we’ve come a long way since Corosant so long ago, and far far away.