Star Wars, The Force, and Religious Extremism
What can the Star Wars universe and The Force teach us about the reality of religion and religious extremism? It’s easy to see that each religion contains its own Jedi and Sith, and also many who sit somewhere between on the spectrum, either upholding their particular narrative, or being indifferent towards the religious culture they belong to. All of us have been born into cultures that have significantly been influenced by religion whether we believe it or not. All of us sit somewhere on the spectrum between Jedi and Sith in our participation in life.
Star Wars is one of the greatest science-fantasy film universes of all time, inspiring many to engage with its lore, buy into its merchandise, and dress up for conventions with similar fervour as devout religious folk, except, for fun and not from a misplaced sense of mandatory uniform.
The Force is the mysterious power that gives life and permeates every living thing. The Force is not a person, it is not an anthropomorphic entity that can be appealed to by prayer. The Force just is, and those who wield it without being consumed by fear or attachment are the Jedi, and those who wield it for power and to dominate others are the Sith. Two sides of the same coin, with very different and opposing agendas. The Jedi and Sith are not fixed as individual absolutes, as one can become the other over time, just like humans can transform from one position of devotion to another depending on our personal transformation throughout life.
The beliefs that humans wield are very much like how the Jedi and the Sith wield The Force. Although one can’t levitate objects with belief alone, the primordial feelings of faith, hope, desire, and fear run deep within the human experience and empower the focus of our lives. How our beliefs are focussed depends on our environment, upbringing and personal engagement with our interpretations of life. We could live from a place of love and joy, or a place of fear and hatred. The reality is, life is really a mixture of both, but we will lean slightly or even massively in favour of one extreme or the other depending on how we are doing in our lives.
Religions exist in the form of organisations of people who feel very deeply connected to their group mythology, history and the vision they possess for themselves. Religious extremism is one of the hottest topics of modern times. It can manifest as an unwavering commitment to a particular dogma that has oppressive and restrictive codes of behaviour, impoverishing the mind and quality of life for those born into it with little or no choice to question it or make an informed choice of their own. Some remain within such groups for their whole lives, some gravitate away slightly, some leave, some even return. These organised groups continue to exist and impact wider society around them, it’s an inescapable reality of human civilisation.
Look around at any religion, particularly the ones taking up the majority of the media coverage on the airwaves and on our algorithms, and this Star Wars-related analogy appears to easily transpose on the various factions within each religious community. Those whose fear, anger, and hatred distinguish who they are, can become a liability to the wider world, and in the most extreme cases such groups can participate in and benefit from a massive political and militant machinery that supports their greatest fears and anger, just like The Empire. Then there are those who resist them for freedom from such tyranny. Many on the receiving end of this organise to form broader coalitions who seek to build bridges amongst themselves and overcome such oppression together. Both are imperfect, but both are locked in a tension that continues to transform and get stronger over time.
All religions manifest communities that involve the range of human behaviours which characterise us as light or dark in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Ultimately, a critical mass manifests, the dark side of The Force births a group asserting hateful organised violence under an exclusionary ideological unity, and the light side forms those who are compelled to resist it. All of us are in this game, playing our parts to whatever degree of effectiveness we commit to (or don’t). This is a perennial game of all human civilisations, the social dynamics that pervade human relationships transform over time to the point of what seems to be an epic unavoidable confrontation that has to come to pass before peace can emerge.
After great difficulty comes ease, but whilst we are in this difficulty, what we each do will impact the magnitude of the ease that can come about in the future for the next generation and beyond. We might benefit from asking ourselves where we are amongst this moment’s confrontation between the Jedi and the Sith. All of us wield The Force to some degree, and what we do with it contributes to building an era of fear or joy for others who will inherit the world from us.
