An Other Retarded Star Wars Meme: (Deconstructed!)

It is self-evident that the Sith have taken over the Internet when it is proliferated with this meme: a seemingly embarrassing photographic portrait of a fictional character or other pop culture icon, with a heading employing one of a pair of opposites, and a subtitle that depicts the other.

At first this strikes one as a charming reminder of the Grandeur of Paradox. As every true philosopher has reminded us time and again, the philosopher LOVES the paradox.

It reminds me PERSONALLY of the I Ching, whose sixty-four hexagrams attest to all of the conditions of Human Life and each of which is a different permutation of Yin and Yang.

Yet over time one undergoes one’s own private Yuga Cycle and comes to the understanding that these memes are misunderstood, even by the humanoid internet entities that produce them.

There is to the unenlightened person a tendency to SQUIRM when met with contradiction of any sort.

Enter Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Obi-Wan insists that only a Sith deals in Absolutes.

Yet this APPEARS to be an Absolute statement on the part of the Jedi Master.

Of course, Obi-Wan is not wrong. So why point out the obvious?

I want to settle this matter once and for all, with all due academic rigour and with the Sword of Discretion…:

1.    It does not matter that the statement is classified as an “Absolute Statement”, especially if one considers that such a classification is made by a Sith Absolutist. What is sufficient to ascertain is the TRUTH of the statement. One cannot simply PRECLUDE its Truth based upon offense and the logic that offense produces. So what we must conclude is that IF IT IS TRUE then it would be the FAULT OF THE SITH. Obi-Wan is simply elucidating it. By describing it he becomes it, but he all so becomes MORE than it, not unlike he would do so metaphysically when the same interlocutor strikes him down and he joins the Living Force.

The Living Force can all so be called the Tao, which is the basis for the I Ching.

2.   The BURDEN OF EVIDENCE does not rest upon Obi-Wan. He has at that moment only to put his philosophy into action to prove that he has the High Ground. The Jedi do not belong to the Intellectual Side, but to the Fluid Way of Nature (Tao, The Force.). Joseph Campbell, the mythologist who mentored George Lucas, said of Darth Vader that when the brain takes control of the body “you get this Father who has gone over to the Intellectual Side.”

Whilst the Jedi ARE adept at intellect, they do not resort to mind games as Palpatine does. Their “mind tricks” DO work on the weak-minded; they are adept at persuasion. Yet only a Sith Lord can corrupt the heart of some one as naturally gifted as Anakin Skywalker.

Beware that you are not likewise fooled.

3.   The meme does not attack him via EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE, but rather LOGIC. Yet the LOGIC CHECKS OUT.

a.   Only a Sith deals in Absolutes.

b.   To deal in Absolutes is to deal in them ABSOLUTELY.

c.    Ergo a Sith deals ONLY in Absolutes.

d.   Obi-Wan is not a Sith.

e.   Obi-Wan does not self-identify as a Sith.

f.    Obi-Wan says that only a Sith deals in Absolutes.

g.   OSTENSIBLY Obi-Wan’s statement is an ABSOLUTE statement.

h.   It would follow that Obi-Wan is a Sith.

i.     Obi-Wan cannot both be Sith and not-Sith, UNLESS HE HAS CONTRADICTED HIMSELF.

j.     Contradiction is the OBVERSE of Absolutism.

So basically: BY CONTRADICTING HIMSELF Obi-Wan PROVES that he is a JEDI, and he all so PROVES that the Jedi are GREATER THAN the Sith, because they TRANSCEND AND INCLUDE the Sith.

That the Sith constitutes a PART of the Jedi was never a matter of contest. The Dark Side of the Force is still a PART of the Force. It is simply a part that has become parasitic to the Whole.

The JEDI represent the WHOLE.

Obi-Wan’s APPARENT “Absolutism” is in fact the very ANTIDOTE to Absolutism. And as is the case with all cures, it contains an ASPECT of the poison, even if only in semblance.

Hence in the Tai Chi symbol each of two opposites contains in the eye of its fish its opposite. So it is even with the Jedi and the Sith. (Though one would be wrong to attribute the entirety of yin or yang to the Sith. Sith would rather be best described as an IMBALANCE of yin and yang. The Jedi are the Whole represented by the circumference.)

Carl Jung, whose work inspired Joseph Campbell, said that “one-sidedness, while it lends momentum, is a mark of barbarism.”

Absolutism on the part of the Sith lends them momentum and makes the Dark Side “more seductive”, as Master Yoda attests. Yet it ALL SO makes the Sith WEAKER.

Taoism emphasizes the Gentle Way, or Judo. Obi-Wan employs the Force of his deviant pupil’s own weight against him. It is because Anakin tries to leap OVER Obi-Wan that he gets maimed. So it is all so in Obi-Wan’s intellectual Judo. He uses the Sith’s Absolutism and the momentum that it lends to bring about the Sith’s downfall, time…

And time again.

Dm.A.A.

Post-scriptum: It bears mentioning, looking on the Bright Side (joke intended; insert laughter here.) that THIS photograph, conversely, made me guffaw from my diaphragm:

Dm.A.A.