Where is a Sith Lord When You Need One?

A Note On How I Mean "The Force"

One of my greatest, though briefest, teachers, used the Force incredibly well. He used it to what many though not all, but all good people, would consider extreme good. So I say that he used the Force to what one would consider “the Light”, yet I call him a Sith Lord.

Why?

I do not mean Dark Side or Light Side to mean good or bad. I’m glad that in recent series and even movies Dave Filoni and others have started to dismember that awful 1970’s way of looking at the world (though we could use a bit more of it… another day’s entry.) I mean one’s way of using the Force, as well as the way one understands people and the world.

My Sith Lord had no attachment to anything but one purpose. That made him powerful. Rarely have I seen anyone move anyone or any group of people like he could. I could speculate as to why, and his life experience would be a large part of it, but it is hard to figure out how anyone gets their powers. If you knew their master, how they were trained, in what lineage, you can start to put the pieces together. But if you want to learn from them, you watch how they move, how they respond to subtle cues around them, how they handle crisis.

When I say wield the Force, you can take it to mean change the world around you, specifically change people’s minds and behavior.

All you Light Side people are freaking out. That’s why I need a Sith Lord right now.

Those on the Light Side, the Jedi, claim to renounce their attachments: love, grief, anger, fear. They say they do not want power. Their actions tell me otherwise (your thoughts?) because they use a great deal of power. We think they are the most powerful in the galaxy yet we see how the Jedi Order completely failed to stop the rise of the Empire because they had too much confidence in their own system.

They would reject people with too much anger, passion, or fear. Except when they didn’t.

Well, to each their own. But those who learn that raw emotion, whatever it is, is how you move people, do become more powerful.

Those I have seen who finally embrace their darker side, or can’t get away from it, have often turned out to be far more powerful than any Light Side-er. We are human, whether we like it or not. The amount of time spent denying that could make up for the time the planet will lose when we destroy ourselves.

Yet there is a place for the Light Side-ers. Let me give them a moment of respect. They are much less likely to turn against you, breathe fire unexpectedly, embezzle from organizations, or fail to read an Excel spreadsheet.

In all of us there is a balance. The key is to find it. I find it largely through relationships. Not romantic, all relationships. I need people who readily embrace passion (love to my brother Mark Judge!) in my life. People who don’t misunderstand my narrative or mistake my quoting of Game of Thrones for a death threat (that was a funny one… “My enemies will die screaming.” I have noticed though that my enemies often go through a long run of unemployment…) We speak the same language. We are often organizers.

Of course we need the Light Side. Those who can wield logic, reason, and computer programs like light sabers. Balance.

Without balance, things can get either “out of control” (as my old colleague used to say, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”). Or they can get stale, slow, unable to act. Balance.

So when I use terms like “the Force” or Dark and Light Side, you may take them as a metaphor if that makes you more comfortable, if that is how you see the world.

Or you can just give in.