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The Last Jedi and Nonviolence

Peace and Purpose:

The Philosophy of Nonviolence in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

   Evan M. Banks

   Spring 2019

 “And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

-Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

 “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.”

                                                       -Yoda, Revenge of the Sith

 “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.”

-Kylo Ren, The Last Jedi

  “Your weapons, you will not need them.”

“What’s in there?”

“Only what you take with you.”

Yoda and Luke, The Empire Strikes Back

    Studying religion and philosophy in the Star Wars universe has been a time-honored tradition among eccentric scholars with a penchant for all things geek since the first film debuted in 1977. What is widely regarded as one of the best qualities of the franchise is that it follows relatable characters and tells relatable stories in a fanciful and faraway place. Moviegoers from all over the globe identify with these characters as they face Earthly problems—love, betrayal, slavery, loyalty, devotion, religiosity, pain, loss, anguish, and triumph. It is in this reality that the developers of the franchise discuss complex philosophical, religious, and moral questions that humanity has struggled with since time immemorial. However, what sets these conversations apart from the human condition as we know it is the ever-present existence of the mysterious energy field that is commonly referred to by Star Wars’ pantheon as, “The Force.” At no period throughout the experience can a viewer reasonably argue that in the Star Wars universe, the Force does not exist. Yet, to what degree does the Force affect itself upon actors within the universe? This is a question that, throughout the stories, the creators of this morality play try and tackle—or at least use to explore the possibilities of what truth is. The existence of an interconnective power that may or may not influence actors’ decisions, thoughts, and actions comes with it the necessity of religions and philosophies within the universe itself that attempt to explain or interpret this phenomenon. These in-franchise vehicles are necessary to characterize the feasibility of the otherwise impossible feats carried out by benevolent or nefarious space-wizards who can harness and observe this powerful Force.

           For over forty years fans and scholars have discussed the subtle and overt nuances in Star Wars and it does not take much to get two fans together to begin arguing about the nature of the Force, the role of government in society, what makes goodness and evil, and even the intrinsic value of a life, i.e. was Han justified in shooting Greedo in Episode IV? But by 2017, forty-one years later, the narrative started to take a turn. Filmmakers were criticized for rehashing the same old stories over and over again—which is wholly ironic considering that George Lucas derived a great deal of his inspiration from Joseph Campbell who posited that many of the Earth’s great myths were of independent invention yet held the same truths, and every great epic story since their advent were variations and derivations of these same morality plays. In light of these criticisms it was essential that the filmmakers explore new ideas and communicate a new message—at least one they had not communicated before. And in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, that message pertains to how effective nonviolent action can be in the face of extreme tyranny. To discuss this relationship, a foundation in established Star Wars philosophy is essential.

There is no better place to start than Joseph Campbell. As a prominent and influential scholar, Campbell posited many theories regarding the nature of myths and their relationships with culture and even one’s own being. George Lucas is known for utilizing Campbell’s mythological models of storytelling.

Star Wars became an immediate, global phenomenon in large part because it portrayed a cosmic struggle between good and evil that was vivid enough to resonate with the audience but general enough so that any person, from any religion or background, could identify with the heroes and root for their struggle against the villains. This universality was completely intentional; George Lucas, adhering to Joseph Campbell’s concept of the mono-myth, believed that all moral teaching share certain core messages about good and evil. Lucas envisioned Star Wars as a galactic version of this one mythic story that would crystalize the basic truths that he believed resided in the heart of every religion or philosophy. For Lucas this was the idea that we all face an internal struggle between kindness, selflessness, and compassion, on the one side, and greed, corruption, and cruelty, on the other.[1]

Campbell himself even cites Luke Skywalker specifically as a mythic hero that the audience is to learn with.[2] Campbell illustrates that aspect of humanity—the need for society to have rightness modeled for it, what that rightness looks like, and how good and evil interact with that rightness. In Star Wars, evil and good are elements brought upon by actors but evil does not exist within the Force itself. Nature does not have the capacity for evil. Nature just is. The Force is. But when individual actors or actors en masse begin to learn to manipulate nature—manipulate the Force, that power is capable of being abused. And out of that abuse, a perversion of the nature of The Force is born—an Evil that is not only physical, but structural, and spiritual. This perversion must be combatted. How best to combat it, not whether one can win against it, is the question posed in TLJ.

Star Wars presents a dilemma in how one associates themselves with power balances and the role of an individual within these power structures.

Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He’s a robot. He’s a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn’t help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That’s something else, and it can be done.[3]

Considering this, Campbell comments on the accessibility of such a humanist philosophy and states that Star Wars asks the question, “…are you going to be a person of heart and humanity—because that’s where the life is, from the heart—or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called ‘intentional power’?”[4] In this question lies the heart of the nonviolent argument that Rose in TLJ articulates. She states plainly explaining the moral lesson of the film, “That’s how we win, not by fighting what we hate, saving what we love.”[5] Campbell argues further that this idea of the “heart” is what is effective at challenging the machinations of evil, or in the case of TLJ, an extrajudicial tyranny. That positive change starts from within oneself and only once one achieves this balance and contentment with humanity and its role in love against tyranny can evil be triumphed over and redemption had.[6]

Campbell is very clearly speaking in the vein of nonviolent resistance much in the same way that Gandhi purports that the means and ends are one—that in order to truly achieve peace through nonviolent means one must embody the principles they preach. “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…We need not wait to see what others do.”[7] This concept of embodying change through a personal and in an inwardly-focused fashion is rife throughout TLJ. This message of inward change permeates throughout the franchise but reaches its most tumultuous as Luke Skywalker suffers a crisis of self when he turns from nonviolent means for a fleeting second as he stands over a sleeping Ben Solo with an ignited lightsaber assuming he can deny his nature and take a life in the interest of goodness. Luke had already learned the effectiveness of nonviolence from his encounter with The Emperor in his quest to change the Satyagraha—Gandhian “Soul Force”—of his father, Darth Vader. When Luke fails his own humanity, his own nature, and betraying his love, the galaxy is once again occupied by a systemic evil promulgated by a betrayed and confused power figure. While Luke fails in this respect, what he has passed on from his experiences with Vader, continue throughout the leadership of The Resistance in Leia.

It is important to note that The Resistance is not a state-sponsored entity but one that stands in protest to The New Republic’s appeasement of The First Order. The aptly named, Resistance’s primary focus in the films has been to flee as they work to destroy weapons of mass destruction. While not entirely nonviolent, these fighters do not entirely belong to the order of the Jedi and are thus not required to adhere to the tenets that Luke Skywalker purports. Which means there are elements of evil among them. Scholar Charles C. Camosy in, Chasing Kevin Smith: Was It Immoral for the Rebel Alliance to Destroy Death Star II, argues that it is a matter of motivation in determining whether taking lives in the interest of removing a WMD from the arena is moral. Essentially, the difference is that while Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, and thus like the First Order in The Force Awakens, is pleased with the destruction of whole planets as a symbol of power with the intention to subdue whole populations to the will of The Emperor and the machine, the Rebellion akin to The Resistance are primarily concerned with the saving of lives and indeed mourn the mass death that came from the destruction of these weapons. In the opening sequence in TLJ, Poe takes out the deck cannons of the dreadnought and as soon as the evacuation is complete, Leia commands that he returns—intending only to secure the escape. A disarming tactic. Poe is to learn that engaging with violence beyond what is completely necessary is unjust. But doing violence even as a defensive countermeasure comes with it some intrinsic badness in that there is harm done. In this line of argument, Camosy is supporting the notion of Just War Theory. Yet, he does acknowledge the conflict inherent to Just War Theory in that there are no clear distinctions between good and evil on Earth as there are in Star Wars.[8]

From the opening scenes of A New Hope, the “culture” of Star Wars conditions us to root for the Rebels. Looking at the movies through this lens can blind us to the questionable decisions of those we are told are the “good guys.” The ability to challenge the dominant cultural lens through which most of us look at the world and ask critical questions of our own “side” is as rare today as it is important.[9]

And here viewers can see the crux of the argument in TLJ. The unnamed Benicio Del Toro character, “DJ,” very blatantly demonstrates to the protagonists Finn and Rose that The First Order does not have the monopoly on evil. Evil permeates society and even their own organization—the Resistance. Finn and Rose had just escaped from the casino city of Canto Bight that that was filled with arms dealers flaunting their spoils. Its not enough that they harm in business but even these arms dealers’ hobby involves enslaving children and harming animals.

After Rose communicates a personal connection to the harm that developing weapons can cause, she shows Finn the dangers of the military industrial complex—a true perversion of nature: metal twisted to destroy as quickly and efficiently as possible. As viewers are enraged with the idea of these developers testing weapons on the same people that built them, they are momentarily ripped from the idea of “good guys” and “bad guys” when DJ illustrates that The Resistance has been buying weapons from these same people, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence. “Good guys? Bad guys? Made up words…Finn, let me learn you something good, it’s all a machine partner, live free, don’t join.”[10] Barry Gan in Violence and Nonviolence takes an in-depth look at “The Myth of Good Guys and Bad Guys.”[11] He deconstructs the notions of the two types of individuals and illustrates that as one perpetuates this myth, they feed a beast that treats others as less than human and in turn justifies the maltreatment of individuals who are, more than likely, just like themselves. And in an interest of defending groups against a “bad guy” that does not actually exist in logic, “we become convinced that it is wiser to spend money on arms rather than education, on training people to destroy communities instead of build them.”[12] By choosing to juxtapose arms with education, Gan is demonstrating that society’s most powerful tool in the promulgation of nonviolent interests is education. This is something that the Jedi religion and indeed, Luke Skywalker’s crisis touches on extensively during the experiences he has in TLJ.

The morality and nature of myth explored throughout Star Wars is typically dichotomized between two entities in conflict with each other wherein either persuasion is plainly categorized as “good” or “bad.” The goodness and badness of entities and actors is more or less hand-fed to the viewer. It is clear who one is supposed to root for in the story. Yet, as the characters become more complex through their story arcs, so does the philosophy and differing opinions on the nature of the Force and its relationship with goodness and badness or good and evil. Indeed, they vary in opinion regarding the nature of good and evil itself. The Last Jedi attempts to bridge gaps in conflicting interpretations of the Force and brings with it the approaches to violence supported by two competing cosmological arguments—cosmotic and acosmotic.

These concepts lend themselves to the conversation regarding evil itself in such a way that is quintessential to Star Wars’ in-universe philosophies that support or denounce the use of violence. In “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi” Terrance MacMullan characterizes cosmotic beliefs as holding “that there is really only one true thing or order in the universe, that is morally good and that evil is just a corruption of this one true thing.” This is best demonstrated by the fact that while the Jedi submit to the will of the Force, the Sith harness The Dark Side. The Jedi do not submit to the will of the light side but just the nature of all that is The Force. The Dark Side is a delineation of the natural and thus requires a modifier. Never once has the term “the light side” been mentioned in the films. Service to the Force is understood by the old Jedi Order to perpetuate the continued dominance of good. This is opposite of the acosmotic.

Acosmotic beliefs consider good and evil both being natural phenomenon and while not necessarily diametrically opposed but exist in tandem as encouraged by Daoist beliefs surrounding the Yin and the Yang.[13] So what does this have to do with Star Wars? In the cosmotic interpretation of Luke’s new Jediism, the struggling Jedi Master is attempting to come to terms with the idea of balance between good and evil instead of inherent good. He is moving the conversation away from the inherent goodness of the Jedi and the inherent badness of the Sith and discussing a more nuanced balance of the Force. “…And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, that’s vanity.”[14] Luke is demonstrating that as actors within a violent system, the promulgation of Star Wars’ equivalent of the Yin, as if the Jedi have agency over it, has resulted in their hubris and this their diminished ability to affect good on the galaxy. That in this, the Yang would also require agents. Supreme Leader Snoke mirrors this sentiment when he encouters Rey aboard his flagship, “Darkness rises and light to meet it.”[15] But the film does not end on this notion of balance; it takes a turn to a different lesson.

This film is not only Luke teaching Rey, it also has a component of him learning that he does indeed, as an actor in The Force, have the ability to affect change in a positive way. And he calls upon his past experiences to draw wisdom. Yoda, when Luke attempts to burn down the tradition of the Jedi, appears as a teacher, and in standard Yoda fashion, delivers yet again, a very powerful lesson—that he need not try to uphold the traditions that he believes damaged the galaxy but simply, “pass on what [he] has learned,” and strongly consider his failures.[16] As Luke reconnects himself with the Force it is possible that he looks back on his greatest successes—times when he was present, yet takes no violent action at all. For instance, when he destroys the first Death Star, he allowed the Force to do it for him. When he defeated The Emperor through Darth Vaders’ redemption, he did nothing but throw his weapon away. These occurrences demonstrate that the nature of the Force is interested in the vanquishing of evil and Luke’s greatest victories came when he released control of his weapons and turned his mind to the Force. But Yoda required he consider his greatest failures. Every time he failed, the Force seemed to very obviously return the harm back unto himself. When Luke turns to weapons and conflict as a means by which he could do good, such as confronting Vader in Cloud City and losing his hand, and when he takes up arms against Ben during his training and loses everything, The Force is telling him that courting violence comes with consequences. It is during these realizations in TLJ that Luke seemingly retracts from the acosmotic and embraces yet again the cosmotic with a newfound understanding of how effective his nonviolent actions can be. So Luke astral projects himself in front of the First Order army and performs the greatest feat ever displayed by a Jedi on screen. It is one of extreme nonviolence and in so doing humiliates those that would do harm and removes entirely the value the First Order places in violence and destruction. This story is the last thing that the next generation of freedom fighters tells—one of “peace and purpose.”[17]

As Rey says those final lines while she and Leia consider Luke’s broken weapon, Leia responds to Rey’s concern about how to move forward suggesting that with the weapon broken, “we have everything we need” thus mirroring Yoda’s warning to luke when he enters the dark side cave in Episode V when he tells him, “your weapons, you will not need them.”[18] While it may have taken 37 years for Luke, Leia, Rey, and the rest of Star Wars fandom to actually heed Yoda’s powerful words, it seems that the overwhelming message in Star Wars: The Last Jedi is that active political resistance through nonviolence and the destruction of weapons is the best way to resist tyranny and promote peace and justice throughout the galaxy. Indeed, that only the Force should be the deciding factor on whether a life is to be taken, or harm done. There is no telling whether this narrative will continue in December 2019, but it is sincerely the opinion of this author that this message needs to be carried through to its ultimate conclusion and that peace come not at the hands of destruction and death but by the promulgation and promotion of passive political resistance.

 [1]Terrence MacMullan, “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi,” The Journal of Religion and Pop Culture 31, no 1, Spring 2019, 103.

[2] Joseph Cambell, The Power of Myth: With Bill Moyers, Apostrophe S Productions, 1988, 23.

[3] Ibid, 178.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Johnston, The Last Jedi, 2017.

[6] Ibid, 23.

[7] M.K. Gandhi, “General Knowledge About Health,” Indian Opinion 13, chapter 153, New Delhi, India, 1913, 241.

[8] Charles C. Camosy, “Chasing Kevin Smith: Was It Immoral for the Rebel Alliance to Destryo Death Star II,” in The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy: You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned” ed by Jason T. Eberl and Kevin S. Decker,” 2016, John Wiley and Sons, 67.

[9] Ibid

[10] Johnston, The Last Jedi, 2017.

[11] Barry Gan, Violence and Nonviolence: An Introduction, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD, 2013, 25-38.

[12] Ibid, 37.

[13] Terrence Macmullan, “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi,” The Journal of Religion and Pop Culture 31, no 1, Spring 2019, 101-102

[14] Rian Johnston, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Los Angeles, 20th Century Fox, 2017

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Irvin Kershner, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 20th Century Fox, 1980.