Angela Foltz

S Lowry

Paper 3

Angela Foltz
S Lowry
Paper 3

Midi-what ? : The Force as Religion or Symbiotic Beings

            At some point after the very first showings of Episode I:  The Phantom Menace, fan grumblings of, “What the hell is a midichlorian?” began to sweep throughout the internet and the globe; possibly the universe. I know they sure as heck swept through my home and on throughout our little band of Star Wars geeks, uh, friends. What had our heretofore leader, George Lucas done when he had unleashed this unholy mess of contradictions on us? The Force, THE FORCE as Yoda had proclaimed surrounded us, it was in everything. It was not, could not, and would not be a midi-effing-chlorian. Whatever that was. After all, we all knew that the Force was something that penetrated us and bound us together. Something that was bigger than us, not something you could measure on a blood test and get Ewan McGregor saying, “His midi-chlorians are even higher than Master Yoda’s!” (The Phantom Menace)
            So of course, in my search for essay three’s dueling experts, I was led to the midi-chlorian debate. Actually, it’s more of a debate on the Force in general. In the right corner we have Matthew Bortolin, of “The Dharma of Star Wars” who discusses the Force in terms of Buddhist lore, likening the Force to Nirvana. He artfully sidesteps, two-steps, and quicksteps his way right over the subject of the midi-chlorians in a sentence and a half. Which made me wonder if he really was all that concerned with them. In the opposing corner we have Elizabeth Cooke, who writes from an ecological standpoint, and at first I was unsure of whether I could compare the two pieces, but as I got further into her essay—farther away from the environmental issues and more to the Force, it became apparent that she had a good solid point about not just the Force as it surrounds and binds us, but what she thought about the change from the viewpoint of the Jedi Council of the Old Republic with their midi-chlorians to their paradigm shift in belief that the Force surrounds us like Bortolin’s Nirvana during the fall of the Empire due to the Rebellion.
            Bortolin writes that the Force is the same as Nirvana, and like Nirvana it is not something to be attained, it simply is. To put it in another way, he directs us to the speech that Yoda gives Luke in “The Empire Strikes Back.” “Its Energy surrounds us and binds us… You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you… me… the rock… everywhere!” (Bortolin 125) and then goes on to juxtapose the Force against the Buddhist idea of Nirvana, in that he describes Nirvana as being “the very absence of ideas and conceptualization.” Or that Nirvana is that it IS. In other words, Nirvana is all around us, it flows through us, it is us and we are it. (Bortolin 123) We cannot attain Nirvana anymore than a wave can attain water, because a wave is already made up of water. Likewise, a Jedi cannot attain the Force because the Force is already the Jedi.
            Cooke, while using the very same quote from “The Empire Strikes Back” argues that it isn’t a case of “mind over matter” so much as “mind and matter acting as two parts as a whole” or, as we will get to, a symbiotic relationship between the Force and the user of the Force. (Cooke 87) She argues that the Force works through living creatures, biological creatures and only those, although, this is where I have to ask, is a rock a living, breathing creature or is it a mineral? She is in favor of the “midi-chlorians;” the microscopic symbionts that were introduced in “The Phantom Menace” as having a major part in the Force. “Control of one’s mind […] kind of listening to, one’s body so that mind and body and be one.”(Cooke 88)  She argues that the Force is part of the symbiotic relationship between the host (the Jedi) and the symbiont (the midi-chlorian) and that without the relationship the Force would be nonexistent.
            I’m more prone to believe Bortolin, and it’s not strictly because I am a diehard Star Wars fan who thinks that George Lucas should be drawn and quartered for coming up with the idea of midi-chlorians, much less allowing them to taint his movies. I won’t fall back on meagerly saying, “His argument makes more sense” while pointing in his direction either, I promise.
Bortolin starts out by taking a subject that I don’t really understand, Buddhism, and helping me understand it. Then he likens it to the Force. This helps in a number of ways. By making connections between Nirvana, Buddhism, and the Force I can see where his rationale is coming from. It comes off as a coherent plea that the Force simply issomething that surrounds us, binds us, and helps us be one with the universe. It makes sense that those of us who are more in tune with the ways of the Force, or the ways of Buddhism are going to find a way to tap into the path of enlightenment, and those of us who are not or cannot—won’t.
            He eloquently makes his case for the Force. He gracefully balances his use of his two subjects: Star Wars and Buddhism, off of each other in such a way that they neither detract from one another nor outweigh the other. He makes his case precise and to the point. If I had to pick out one thing negative, it would be on my part. I may have been unfair in choosing to compare a chapter of a complete book to an essay from a compilation of essays. However, it was harder than I thought to find warring opinions on Star Wars, even with my massive pile of resources.
            Cooke was… somewhat less eloquent in the writing of her essay. Put that aside for a moment and let me be perfectly frank and honest since part of the assignment was to “face our emotional, personal biases honestly.”  I didn’t like her essay. It left me cold. That’s not a fair assessment of an essay, and you can’t really say you judge something’s validity based on whether or not you liked it. However, that aside, I have a hard time equating the Force with something that is a symbiotic relationship between two beings (living creatures and midi-chlorians) when Yoda himself claims that it is everywhere. If it is in the very air we breathe, the rocks, the trees, and everything, then it cannot only reside in living creatures. Unless I am devaluing life forms and categorizing them into groups based on whether they have respiratory systems. It would be a nice thing to believe that control over one’s self and the ability to be still and listen, to open yourself up to hearing another being—that supposed metaphysical symbiont within—would help you release the powers of the Force.
            At the end of the day however, I am going to turn to the idea that in the end we are all nothing and everything at the same time. The Force isn’t some construct of tiny little midi-whatevers that didn’t even come up until some crack-potted director who is high on his God-like status in the world woke up one night at 3 am and decided that what the Galaxy Far Far Away really needed was a complicated and bizarre definition of what the Force really was. It simply is because we are. Much like way the phenomena of Star Wars continues to grow long after it should have faded away into the dim recess of our memories, or why it lasted after the dual tragedies of Episode One: The Phantom Menace and Episode Two: Attack of the Clones, it exists because we exist. We want it and it lives. We are Star Wars and Star Wars is us.
           
           

Works Cited
           
            Bortolin, Matthew  The Dharma of Star Wars   Boston: Wisdom Publications 2005

Cooke, Elizabeth F. “ ‘Be Mindful of the Living Force’: Environmental Ethics in Star Wars.”  Star Wars and Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine. Ed. Kevin S. Decker and Jason T Eberl. Chicago: Open Court, 2005. 80-92.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace  Dir. George Lucas Perf. Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, and Pernilla August. 20th Century Fox 1999