Midi-chlorians, Whills, and the Force

Indeed, that happens to be the key to the path of immortality.


The moment the living Force came into being. And through it living beings became connected to the cosmic Force.


I don't think that's what he did. He admonished Obi-Wan for focusing on the future at the expense of the present, not for being mindful of the future. A Jedi should be mindful of both.



lol

Wouldn't hippies be all about the living Force?

"You're the hippie!" (read that as Anakin's "you're the Sith Lord!")

New video from Rick Worley is up talking about the Whills

Indeed. As the American naturalist John Muir arrestingly put it: 


The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2014):

hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2014/27/3380-Image.html




There's also this other remark from him, which matches well with your observation about forests:


Science is actually a religious vocation (though the tools and methods of science differ from religion). As Carl Sagan said in a lecture originally delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1985:

 
Maria Popova has a short article about the book on her excellent site Brain Pickings:

www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/20/carl-sagan-varieties-of-scientific-experience/

She starts it with the haunting quote (from the same source):


That, to me, is a variant of something George Lucas himself said a decade later:


Incidentally...

Lucas based the concept of midi-chlorians around the endosymbiotic theory of life:

 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis


Expanding on that slightly from the "History" sub-section:


Now, proving how small the world really is -- itself a subtle proof of symbiosis (or symbiogenesis) -- Lynn Margulis was the first wife of Carl Sagan, and Dorion Sagan is one of their children. Margulis was actually encouraged to pursue a career in science by her famous science-populariser husband. They had a difficult marriage, but Margulis became a good biologist and science advocate and something of a scientific maverick/iconoclast (a somewhat real-world heroine in the mold of George Lucas or Qui-Gon Jinn):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis


So there you have it. 

Things have interesting roots.

Or, again, to close with another quote from John Muir:

I think the answer is "all of the above."

But, if you want to go with the Tolkienian conceit that this is all taking place in an earlier stage of our own universe, I suppose you could rationalize that mitochondria literally are midi-chlorians, and we simply haven't yet learned the means to properly communicate with them. 

Now, as for why there is sound in space....

There are reasons for a pushback against organised religion in the 21st Century, though. Monotheistic religion, for instance, which still has a significant grip on the planet, is rooted in core texts that have an easy way with barbarism, bigotry, sectarianism, and chauvinism. Their anti-pluralistic spirit is at odds with modern liberal democracy and the kind of thinking (and knowledge) that gradually emerged in the wake of people like Galileo and the aforementioned Descartes and Hume.

Frankly, in the past few centuries, humanity has grown up a little bit and shed some of its reliance -- or Stockholm syndrome-like addiction -- to a genocidal sky-father that demands total obedience to his whims and diktats (or has to have them interpreted by secular authorities and jealously written into law). Of course, when religion was dispensed with entirely (e.g., Soviet Russia), that didn't go too well, either.

There's definitely a place for some kind of religious devotion in society, but like a lot of things, I think we need to consider what we mean by the term "religion", and if we aren't considerably better off without some of the foolishness and horrors of an ignorant, superstitious past. 

As Arthur C. Clarke once said:


Similarly, as Carl Sagan once lamented:


And as for Star Wars, George Lucas made his intentions clear from the very beginning:


Elsewhere in the book, prior to the release of "The Empire Strikes Back", Lucas is just as defiant that Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction:


And talking about "Return Of The Jedi" (then still titled "Revenge Of The Jedi"):


Even as far as midi-chlorians go, while he based them, in part, on scientific theory, he wanted them more for the metaphorical aspect:

(From my earlier post again):


Even back during the first film, Lucas had the same outlook on the world:


A decade later, with the Original Trilogy now complete, and Lucas in his "movie mogul" phase, he elaborated:


So, yes, there is a kind of unity between the material and the spiritual in Star Wars as in all things, and this union, in Star Wars, is perhaps encapsulated by the midi-chlorians, both in-universe (biological organelles that communicate the will of the Force) and outside of it (as a metaphor that bridges science and religion or science and the unknowable). But on a more urgent/pedagogic level, the midi-chlorians connect directly onto the theme of symbiosis in Star Wars -- which is a means of George Lucas expressing a spiritual conviction that things work better when people choose to care for one another and accept being custodians of the Earth, instead of behaving like greedy/amoral plunderers and despoilers, or fearful social animals clinging to outmoded doctrines and trying to deny change (and voting/believing/behaving accordingly).

As for people rejecting the midi-chlorian concept:

Some of it is probably down to what you expressed in your main point. The success of science over the past few centuries (with intellectual roots in Ancient Greece -- just as, interestingly, the eponymous mode of Greek tragedy, which forms the spine of the PT, derives from Ancient Greece) has clouded over and befogged the "happy marriage" between heaven and Earth. On the other hand, it has also opened a new window on the cosmos -- one far grander and more stirring than what most people were prepared (or even able) to imagine before the development of telescopes (and microscopes, which opened up the microcosm, to the "macro" of telescopes). Indeed, the Earth is no longer held to be at the centre of the universe, the focus of all creation -- which, in my opinion, we're still (as a species) trying to recover from and understand.

Although humanity has always been a race of sky-watchers, there is no evidence that anyone could observe the sky in any detail, much less study what appears through the aperture of a telescope as immense physical objects found at vast distances (and also vastly back in time for very faint/distant objects), until the telescope was invented. That means, in some real, objective sense, our knowledge has genuinely improved -- and at quite a pace -- in only a few hundred years; and before that, we could coddle ourselves in our ignorance, sublimely unaware of the true extent of the universe and Earth's relatively meagre place within it.

The major religions of the Earth were formulated long before the modern scientific epoch, and are curiously averse (by and large) to undergoing serious revision. Science may step on religion's toes, but religion still tries to ignore science or cast it in shadow -- and, to be perfectly honest, it has already lost that battle. It would be better for religion to accept defeat and try and work with the findings of modern science, rather than continuing to engage in elaborate ad hominem and talk about science with ignominy and regret.

That said, I think some of the resistance to midi-chlorians also comes down to a casual, me-me-me narcissism in a lot of people (the very egotism and sloth the midi-chlorians are designed to push back again). Some would rather believe that they are just as capable as someone else of doing X or Y -- or, even more perniciously, everyone is equal and can just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, with no systemic injustice ever really acknowledged, much less countered. In other words, "Use the Force, Luke" is a comforting aphorism: a paean to self-actualisation. In truth, we should strive to actualise ourselves (or, as Joseph Campbell counselled, "Follow your bliss"). But we also have obligations to one another; and, just like Anakin, I don't think a lot of people were quite ready to accept that message. They wanted the old message of the OT -- inferior and incomplete -- to go on unsullied.

Of course, the burden of knowledge is in realising the consequences of our actions (and inaction), which is as true when it comes to the metaphors of Star Wars as the discoveries of science. However, if you have a simplistic metaphysical way of engaging with the word and negotiating a path through life, it's easy to retreat into group dogmas: "The world is only 6,000 years old! You can't prove otherwise." Or: "The Force worked better before Lucas ruined it with science." You see the problem in both instances. People have a hard time dealing with anything that suggests their earlier views are insular and not in accord with reality. So they often cling to those views all the stronger. Humanity is better at discovering deeper truths and imagining broader realities than in accepting those things. It is almost like those things are seeing into us and we refuse to be corrected and awakened to greater maturity. Or in the words of Padme: "All mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we'd like. It's the only way we grow."

Ha! I bought that copy of the OT on VHS in 2000 with saved-up lunch money. When checking out with it at my local Best Buy, the cashier asked if I was purchasing the set because of the exclusive "Episode II" preview. I truthfully responded that I was primarily interested in owning the OT in letterbox widescreen for the first time. Still, I loved that preview.

To address the quote, I think what motivated GL to pull the immense weight involved in making the PT was knowing how cosmologically powerful the ending of ROTJ was and how worthy it was of being recontextualized or further buttressed.

This is a jumping off point for discussion of all the references to the force as Lucas developed it, using all the publicly available writings that lead up to the script of the theatrical SW77. If this is a least wrong take, the Bogan of the early writing connects least wrongly to the Cosmic Force. The complement would be the Ashla, but, that doesn't mean it is the least wrong counterpart to the Living Force.

George Lucas: We all have our own talent, go discover what's yours and develop it to its full potential.

Fans: No, that requires work. I want that guy's talent because that guy gets to do cool stuff. By the way, I don't care how much time and work it took to reach that point.

Great point about Obi-Wan and the saga in general, Gen ! Preoccupation with Force potential is usually a sign of power hunger; among GFFA characters and fans IRL.