Midi-chlorians, Whills, and the Force

Hello, first post on this forum, though many of you may know me from the JCF

I definitely agree that the Midichlorians make a strong metaphor for mitochondria, originally foreign bodies that became intrinsic parts of our cells and enhance life, allowing it to branch out with new sources of energy to adapt in multitudes of variety before unseen.

It also makes a beautiful parallel to the rest of TPM, which features much thematic focus on symbiosis, pairing for mutual advantage. It's a literal microcosm of the film's overarching statements. The Jedi, paired with master and apprentice. The Naboo and Gungans fighting for one cause to save their home. The Sith, with their more parasitic dependence on one another, while always seeking to backstab their partners.

So not only are Midichlorians a profound translation of a real world concept, making the lore of the force deeper, they also mesh very well with the themes and help propel TPM's goals as a movie. It's interesting how some accuse them of rendering the Force 'scientific' and demystified, when in fact it would seem that it's this movie, before the onset of the darkness of the wars to come, when the Jedi (or at least Qui-Gon as a representative) are most in tune with understanding the links between people, societies, and even their own bodies.

That is a great example of the broad misunderstanding of Star Wars. I'm of the opinion that in order to truly understand Star Wars and analyze it properly, one needs to understand George Lucas. And I don't mean (just) his biography, but his worldview.

To George, biology and spirituality although distinct are interconnected. No character, in any of the six movies, reduces the Force exclusively to a biological or spiritual analysis. Both concepts are always present when the Force is addressed.

The fans (both the fandom and those working on the franchise) are the ones who take their misunderstanding as if they are an established fact. And worse, they cast judgement on the characters based on that misunderstanding. The Jedi are one of the victims.

As George says:

"The Force is a metaphor for God, and God is essentially unknowable. But behind it is another metaphor, which fits so well into [The Phantom Menace] 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 [living] 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 midi-chlorians in our body, we can have a certain amount of control over our personal Force and learn how to use it, like the Buddhist practices of being able to walk on hot coals. Some people can’t because they just don’t have as many midi-chlorians - that’s just genetics. So the more midi-chlorians we have, the more accessibility we have to the Force. So we have to be trained how to use it."

I wonder if the accusation that midi-chlorians are a scientific explanation for the Force has to do with the separation of spirit and body under Cartesian dualism? Since midi-chlorians are a biological phenomenon, they are therefore seen as being of the body and therefore have nothing to do with spirituality.

However, if you aren't coming at midi-chlorians from a Cartesian angle, that separation between spirit and body disappears.

I think that's very likely part of it. Another part of is the Christian conception of theistic dualism, wherein God is separate from his creation, having generated it ex nihilo, rather than having formed his creation from a part of himself. I think both these ideas contributed to the development of the concept which Stephen Jay Gould called "non-overlapping magisteria," wherein there's a fundamental separation between science and religion. We're a culture shaped by various forms of dualism which place a hard distinction between the spiritual and the physical. I don't really subscribe to that myself. Without meaning to be inflammatory, it just seems like a convenient way of avoiding having to deal with the fact that, on the one hand, Jesus Christ almost certainly didn't literally rise from the dead, while on the other hand evolution by natural selection almost certainly is true (these are just my own opinions!). I mean unless you're speaking in metaphor, either these things actually happened or they didn't*. You can't foist some arbitrary separation on truth claims about the world we live in. 

I think there is certainly a higher order (or truth or principle or force) to the universe which we can't easily perceive, something which you can call God if you wish. And I think that if there is, there is no fundamental distinction between that God and the world which we can investigate with science. It's all part of the same thing. And to the extent that there may be something that is, even in principle, beyond the reach of science to investigate, then it is something about which we could not, even in theory, have any knowledge at all, so long as we are the types of beings that we are. I've personally found that many of the Eastern religions, and the more mystical interpretations of the Western religions, tend to be more in accord with this way of thinking. 

But again, these are just my own opinions and musings. I certainly don't mean for this to turn into a rancorous religious debate, but when discussing matters as deep as these, one tends to run into thorny controversies sooner or later! And I don't mean to imply that anyone's beliefs are ridiculous. I mean, more and more these days I feel myself leaning towards some form of panpsychism or idealism as the resolution to the hard problem of consciousness, so I'm not one to mock anyone's beliefs for their perceived weirdness. 


*(As far as our commonly agreed upon framework for the perception of material reality is concerned, otherwise this statement would be incompatible with my idealist sympathies)

Yes, but Creation is still of a different substance than God. That's not true, for instance, in many schools of Hinduism. That's a meaningful philosophical difference.



Is there really, though? Yes, Yoda says we are "luminous beings," not "crude matter." But even non-dualist Hindus could agree with that statement, because to them the physical world is maya, an illusion created by our limited perceptions--our inability to process the true spiritual reality. However, that does not mean there is a physical world and a separate spiritual world. It means there is one spiritual world, and the physical world we perceive is simply not real. This could be the case in Star Wars. It's, perhaps intentionally, left open to interpretation.




It is a harmonization of sorts, but the mere fact that we can't exercise much control over the Cosmic Force doesn't necessarily imply that it's of a fundamentally different substance. In fact, I think it's clear that it is not, as the Living Force we are composed of is said to flow into the Cosmic Force.


I think the analogous relationship between the midi-chlorians and the Whills is suggestive of something--they are both bacterial in origin, and I think it could be fairly speculated that midi-chlorians were in fact once Whills themselves, before becoming symbionts with our single-celled ancestors and facilitating the evolution of multicellular life. It just seems to me that there's a unified reality that's merely being reflected back to us at increasing levels of magnification.  Even the relationship between Jedi master and Jedi apprentice suggests such a unity--the Jedi master gives a part of themselves to their student so that they may learn and grow, and eventually the student becomes the master and takes on their own student, in an eternal cycle. (The Sith master/apprentice relationship mirrors this as well, but in a perverse way.)

Now this is funny. Found this in an old Lucas interview from 1997:


Never let it be said that Lucas's preoccupation with microbes doesn't run deep.

I've been wondering... going by this, which came first, the Living Force or the Cosmic Force?



Or was it the Midichlorians?

Well, empirically speaking (from a reductionist or logical point of view), the universe came first, and life followed. At least, at present, that's how we think it proceeded. 'Course, the whole universe could be "alive" and/or "intelligent" in some sense (e.g., pantheism / panentheism / pansychism), not to mention cyclical, and/or part of some infinite multiverse or eternal inflation scenario.

And who really gets to say what is "alive" (or "living") and what is inert (or "dead")? 

We probably don't really have the faintest clue what consciousness is or how far it extends.

LOL, nah. That was the Catholic Church when it decided to burn Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for, among other heresies, proposing that the stars were other suns with their own planetary systems (which has recently led onto the exciting field of exoplanetology), as well as speculating that these systems might harbour life of their own (a vastly growing complementary field today known as astrobiology). Some people are just way ahead of their time.

Star Wars itself is partly indebted to Bruno. It also owes a debt to Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli who, in 1877, one hundred years before the release of ANH, mapped many features of Mars with some choice terminology that led to some creative confusion (or epic flights of fancy) a few decades later. As this NASA entry describes it:

mars.nasa.gov/allaboutmars/mystique/history/1800/


Sounds like Star Wars to me...

Anyway, Schiaparelli's "canali" term caused the following to happen:

www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_Canali_and_First_Martians.html


Poor ol' Percival was likely fooled by the eyepiece he was using -- he was perceiving biology with technology, but it was his own biological "networks" he was seeing:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell


A fuller explanation:

web.archive.org/web/20090221175545/http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3306251.html?page=1&c=y


From that bizarre confluence of error and wishful thinking, we got Star Wars and a whole lot else. Lowell may have been too imaginative, and the Catholic Church not open-minded enough, but the search for life elsewhere and trying to understand our own origins continues. 

And like Star Wars itself, it all begins with a dream -- the dream to think big. Incidentally, an early work of science-fiction was published in 1608 by Johannes Kepler (he of elliptical orbits and the three laws of planetary motion). It was called "Somnium" (or "The Dream"):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(novel)

Going back to Lowell for just a moment, one can see that it was perhaps the 19th Century that most forged Star Wars -- not only because of burgeoning interest in Mars, but it being a time of great technological advancement (photography and sound recording were both invented/discovered in the 19th Century). The building of the Suez Canal was mentioned above, but as Carl Sagan notes in "Cosmos", in his chapter on Mars, there were in fact several great engineering projects of similar magnitude around the same time that likely intensified the belief that there were similar technological marvels on Mars:

 
Is Star Wars itself, and all the steps Lucas took to make it, not itself (or themselves) a great engineering marvel? Lucas has also said he is Victorian in many of his sensibilities and basically a man out of time. So, to me, these historical resonances are intriguing.

Moreover, in order to build it, you have to first imagine it. It is fascinating that we are both encouraged and hindered in our exploration of the cosmos, and ourselves, by the technological manifestations and psychological mores and assumptions of the day. Artistic and philosophic speculation are molded by a vast array of external sociological vectors.

It's also a bit interesting that both Luke and Anakin maneuver through ravines / trenches / canals in their opening installments. Luke blows up the Death Star in his X-Wing (pursued by his father), Anakin wins the Boonta Eve Podrace in a slender, proto "X-Wing" of his own making (pursued by Sebulba). Both being impressive cinematic spectacles for their time -- the latter positively rippling in Victorian-era "Look at me!" architectural/grand public attraction/civil engineering flamboyance. Thus, the past is not dead -- it is very much alive and ongoing. Something eternal seems to exist at the root of Star Wars and all human endeavour.