I’m not the greatest fan of the new, Disney-owned Star Wars movies (including the animated series). However, I do have to admit that they are at least trying to deal with some of the issues present in the original movies.

I’m talking about the concept of powerful good characters, or lack thereof, because apparently our civilization ties the concept of power so intimately with the concept of evil, the two seem to be the same thing. When you imagine power, you basically imagine Darth Vader, or Sauron, or Balrog, or Emperor Palpatine, or Voldemort. The good guys apparently can’t do much beside being gentle and comforting, forgiving, glowing in white light and they die in order to save you. Think Gandalf, Obi Wan, Dumbledore… they all manifest the Jesus stereotype of goodness, which I find outright puke-inducing. Yeah, the archetype of good power is to allow the bad guy to kill you so that you could raise from the dead, physically or as a Force-ghost, and guide your disciples by providing vague and marginally helpful advice, because you’re too good to be able to do anything useful.

Not sure it’s actually a stereotype? Gandalf, dies fighting Balrog, gets reborn as Gandalf the White, provides encouragement and white light, but doesn’t actually fight and kill anything meaningful but smiles a lot. Dumbledore, provides vague and cryptic guidance to Harry Potter, fights only defensively, fails to kill Voldemort, arranges his murder/suicide and guides Harry beyond the grave through a crumb-trail of hints. Also smiles a lot. Obi Wan, allows Luke to be raised by peasant foster-parents although he lives next door, provides a few days of vague guidance, allows himself to be killed by Darth Vader without really putting up a fight so that after his “suicide by Sith Lord” he could guide Luke in spirit. Smiles a knowing smile of a cave-dwelling saint. Jesus, teaches students things that aren’t really useful for figuring anything out beside the general “you should follow the rules sincerely, and not hypocritically, like the priests”. Arranges his murder/suicide (by instructing the students to get swords, which was punishable by death in Roman Judea), gets himself killed, raises from the dead but only to provide comfort and vague guidance to students. Yes, it’s a stereotype and obviously a Christian one, established as a rationalization for the traumatic martyrdom of Jesus. The only theory according to which Jesus could be the real God is that power in the physical world is somehow not worthy, either as a goal or as an instrument, and if you’re really “the one”, you’ll allow yourself to be killed in order to guide the disciples “in spirit”, you won’t actually do anything to fight evil. But of course, your forfeiture will be interpreted as a victory over evil, at least in spirit. My problem with this is that “moral victory” is another name for losing.

The Disney revision to the Star Wars theology is that the light/dark dichotomy of the Force is in fact an error in understanding by both Jedi and the Sith, and that the true nature of the Force is not split into light and dark, but a unity and balance of the two. This was explained very directly by Bendu in the animated series: he says that Jedi and Sith wield Ashla and Bogan, Light and Dark, and that he is balance. He sees both light and dark as, essentially, disturbances in the balance of the Force, where the light-side wielders are so afraid of the dark they are constantly tempted by it, and the dark-side wielders are constantly preoccupied by proving something to the Jedi, and as a result, neither side is truly at peace. The back story is that long ago, some civilization picked up force-sensitives from around the galaxy and brought them to the planet Tython, which was particularly attuned to the Force. There, they practiced their Force-skills and eventually established the Je’daii order, which taught the balance of the force and avoidance of the extremes of light and dark. The planet had two moons, Ashla which was white, and Bogan which was dark red, and to the Je’daii they served as a metaphor for the light and dark sides of the Force. When force-users became unbalanced, by favoring either side, attempts were made to correct it. So, essentially, Bendu is the last known remnant of the original Je’daii, and those later known as the Jedi were in fact a heretical sect, that embraced an extremist adherence to “Ashla”.

The good part of this is understanding that there’s something wrong with the Christian archetype of goodness. The bad part is that it promotes ethical relativism, where goodness isn’t sufficient, and some evil needs to be introduced into the mixture, so that balance would be achieved. So, instead of realizing that goodness was poorly defined, as something that is inherently incompatible with power, the new theory acknowledges that power is the domain of the dark side, but that one needs to get some of the dark side in order to obtain the amount of power that is necessary if you want to do anything useful and not get crucified.

The thing is, only Christians have a problem with good power. In Hinduism, for instance, Gods are not depicted as rejecting power to the point of assisted suicide. They are described as possessing great power and using it to attain good goals. “Good” is defined as attainment of higher initiation and liberation from the bondage of the lower spheres of existence, and “evil” is defined as attachment and bondage to the lower spheres of existence; essentially, it’s a dichotomy of freedom and bondage. Nowhere is there a problem with power; power is something that you obtain by various means, and use for various purposes, and if you use it wisely it produces liberation, while applications of power from ignorance and attachment produce spiritual degradation, bondage and karmic fallout. Both Shiva and Vishnu liberally use various powers, either in lilas or to vanquish some evil and solve a devotee’s problem; this kind of power is not seen as a lure of Satan or as falling prey to some temptation, it’s a completely normal thing one does when God. He solves problems using great wisdom and power. Krishna, for instance, had a situation similar to Obi Wan’s duel with Darth Vader on the death star: he decided to end his exile and vanquish his evil uncle, king Kamsa. Did he treat this as an opportunity for assisted suicide? No, jumped to his throne, dragged him to the ground and killed him easily, because God kicks ass, and good is far more powerful than evil. Is this some kind of balance between good and evil? No, it’s a better, purer definition of the good, a definition that doesn’t commit an error of relegating power into the domain of evil, but understands that power is a good thing, and therefore inherently in the domain of the good. Evil is inherently powerless, because all greatness and glory forever reside in God. Envious and spiteful, the adherents of evil can create great mischief for God and his friends, but the true cause of this mischief is not power, but manipulation and abuse of the laws of the world. When God intervenes, it becomes clear that He is the only true power, and everything else is powerful only if it takes part in God’s power and greatness.

This, however, is not what we perceive in this world. On the contrary, one of the reasons why we have such problems finding examples of good power outside of mythology is the fact that, as a rule, powerful people in this world are assholes. In fact, the worst and most evil assholes tend to gravitate towards the top of the heap of the powerful. How can this be reconciled with the Hindu vision of power? Very easily, in fact. The “powerful” of this world are merely manipulators of others. As individual persons, they are devoid of any kind of power. Physically, they are as weak as any human, and spiritually they barely hold themselves together, and that only by the fact that singular body they inhabit prevents their spiritual elements from dispersing. They are not powerful because they can bend steel, move mountains, create or destroy Universes, teleport to other planets, or something similar. No, they merely managed to attain control over larger human groups, in which every individual invests his small power towards a common goal, and then the evil individual decides what the common goal is, and how this collective investment of energy, in form of money, aircraft carriers, strategic nuclear submarines and ICBMs, will be used. They decide what the media will write in order to convince and coerce the masses, they decide how to milk the masses for money and where to put the money. They are merely spiders controlling a complex web of social interconnections, in which human individuals invest their power, and it is all directed, allocated and utilized for nefarious purposes. This is not individual power. It is the harnessed power of the collective, and this is the power that is invariably evil, and the evil ones strive for it. This power is not needed by the Gods and the saints, because they have their own; however, to the evil ones this is the only way to exceed the limitations of their personal insignificance.

In a more realistic scenario, Darth Vader and the Emperor would be ordinary, albeit old and sickly humans, in control of the vast imperial army. Only the good beings would have Jedi-like superpowers, and the real fight would consist of peeling away the layers of soldiers and weapons that protect the two evil weaklings on top of the pyramid of social power. A real Darth Vader would not be using a lightsaber, he would be using a phone. Without the invested power of others, he would be nothing. Evil doesn’t have power of its own; its power comes from manipulation of others. Good has the power of its own. Through initiation into God, who is the ultimate greatness, virtue and wonder, the good become aspects of God, and therefore they do obtain power of their own; the more you are God, the more you are powerful, virtuous and wonderful. This process of spiritual evolution is something the evil ones cannot take part of, and thus remain powerless, virtueless and insignificant.