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. Goodness knows they swept throughout my own somewhat peaceful little suburban home, and throughout our little band of Star Wars geek 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, everyone 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 midichlorians are even higher than Master Yodas!” (The Phantom Menace)
So of course, in my search for essay three’s dueling experts, I was led to the midichlorian debate. Actually, it’s more of a debate on the casual use of the Force, or 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 midichlorians in a sentence and a half making 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—father away from the ecological standpoints 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 and their midichlorians to their belief that the Force surrounds us like Bortolin’s Nirvana.
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.” “It’s 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.” She argues that the Force is part of the symbiotic relationship between the host (the Jedi) and the symbiont (the midichlorian) 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 midichlorians, much less allowing them to taint his movies. I won’t fall back on the meager argument that, “his argument makes more sense” and point in his direction either, I promise. Bortolin makes his case wisely, starting out with 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 rational is coming from. It comes off as a coherent plea that the Force simply is something that surrounds us, binds us, and helps us be one with the universe. 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 is not pedantic or repetitive. He doesn’t use things that would distract me overmuch from either side, meaning he doesn’t use too much Star Wars fact belaboring his essay to the point where if I were reading it for the Buddhism side I would be bored, but if I were reading it for the Star Wars side and he was heavy on the Buddhist falafel…you get the picture. He makes his case precisely and to the point. I do have one thing to say and that is I may have been unfair in comparing a chapter of a whole book to an essay from a book of compilations, however, it was harder than I thought to find warring opinions on Star Wars, even with my massive pile of books.
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 summation of an essay, and you can’t really say, I 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 midichlorians) 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 simply be 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, the 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. That the Force surrounds us and exists because we are it and IT is US. The Force is within all of us. I’m with Bortolin on this one. 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 why the phenomena of Star Wars continues to grow long after it should have faded away into the sunset or why it lasted after the 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.
Final Revised Copy
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
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