Passions, a Sith Perspective - Part 1 of 5

[Bob Hubbard]

Passions, a Sith Perspective
by Kaith Rustaz


"Fear leads to anger."

What is fear truly? Fear is a feeling of anxiety or apprehension when confronted with stress. To feel fear is normal, natural, healthy. Do not allow fear to immobilize you. Fear must be mastered. Fail, and your enemy will dominate you, defeat you. Channel your fear, focus it, let it strengthen you. Let fear turn to anger. Focus your fear, let it flow through you, and strengthen. Strong fear focused becomes anger.

"Anger leads to hate."

What is anger really, but fear intensified and focused towards a single purpose. Let your fear of the situation, become anger at the situation. Such sharp focus will fortify you. Like a fine blade, your anger must be honed, given an edge. That focused edge, will become hate. Let your hatred burn through you, and strengthen you.

"Hatred leads to power."

Hatred is powerful. It makes you powerful. It energizes you. Hate is a feeling of intense dislike, so strong it calls you to action, fuels you and makes you powerful. What you fear makes you angry. What angers you, feeds your hatred. That hate, will make you powerful against your enemies.

"Power leads to victory."

To be truly powerful, one must be capable of achieving change, of controlling events. The powerless exist at the whim of the powerful. To be powerful, one must harness the strength that fear, anger and hatred give you.

"Let your anger flow through you."

Do not sit meekly by and let things happen. Focus your anger, let it flow through you, strengthen you, and then become the sword with which you will smite your enemies.

"Your hate will make you strong."

Hate will fuel you. Hate will drive you, push you, empower you. Focus you hate, become powerful.

"True power is only achieved through testing the limits of one's anger, passing through unscathed."

Only by mastering fear, hatred and the fires of anger will one become powerful. Fail, and your anger will consume you, burn you, destroy you as unworthy.

"Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable."

Let your rage flow, focused to a pin point, strong as steel. Once focused, nothing can stop your intent.

"The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power."

Master your emotions, then use your passion to give you power. The Light wants you to suppress them. That way lies weakness. All creatures are creatures of passion. Only by mastering passion and harnessing it, can you obtain real ultimate power.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

"The dark side is stronger than the light."

Darkness smothers the Light. In the void of space, darkness is the norm. Light may come, but light will eventually go. In the end, only the Dark can remain.

"The weak deserve their fate."

The weak, fall prey to their fear. Never do they master it.
The weak, allow their anger to abait, to fade, to blind them.
The weak, forgive and never see the power the true Hatred can be.
The weak, are slaves to the Strong, and never rise above their wretched existences.
In the end, the strong control the weak, and consume them, as it should be.


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]===[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Bob Hubbard also known on various on-line forums as "Silent" Bob, "Kaith Rustaz" and just "Kaith", is a long time sci-fi fan. Currently head of the I.K.V. Devisior, an independant science fiction, anime and fantasy fan club, he has held positions with numerous other groups. He has organized activities at Media Play and Barnes & Nobel, worked con security, participated in club challenges for charities, and participated in masquerades, art shows and model shows at several Toronto conventions.
You can reach Bob at his website, http://rustaz.com[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Copyright [/FONT]©2007 Bob Hubbard - Copies of this article are free to distribute, provided all text is retained intact.

 

[tellner]

Works for me. As a toad my philosophy is simple:

Eat what is smaller than you.
Poison what is larger.
Breed prolifically.
Hop quickly.
It works.

 

[grydth]

Sounds soooooo good, but often just isn't true.

You do not wield hate as a weapon. The hate controls you. Learned this the hard way.

Power is no guarantee of victory, the proof being Tai Chi and Aikido.... the proof being the Russian Front. Let us smash your power on a rock and counterstrike when you have just become exhausted - Georgi Zhukov outside Moscow, at Stalingrad and Kursk.

Rage is not unstoppable, it only binds you into a course. I have had two very different SIFU teach slap strikes when an attack is certain - go ahead, stop thinking and become enraged while I make a final plan. Unstoppable? Your clock is seconds away from being permanently stopped.

The weak deserve their fate? That philosophy never survives the strong individual experiencing their first moment of weakness.

You know, the SS marched into Russia thinking very much like this.... and their rotting bones scattered across a million obscure locales should teach us something.... the operative word being 'should'.

 

[Cryozombie]

Ya know Bob, the full thing (both parts) has been my mantra for some time now...

Fear leads to anger, Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power, Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you. Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through testing the limits of one's anger, passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power. The dark side is stronger than the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
There is no peace, there is anger.
There is no fear, there is power.
There is no death, there is immortality.
There is no weakness, there is the Dark Side.
I am the Heart of Darkness.
I know no fear, but rather I instill it in my enemies.
I am the destoyer of worlds.
I know the power of the Dark Side.
I am the fire of hate. All the Universe bows before me.
I pledge myself to the Darkness. For I have found true life, in the death of the light.

 

[Empty Hands]

For all their piety, I always thought the Jedi with their code were just as great of fools as the Sith. I always thought Yoda was a great fool in the first 3 movies, never wise. Neither unleashing your emotions nor denying their existence is a useful way to exist as a human - maybe if we were Vulcans! Both extremes make you brittle, weak to challenges that will face you. The Jedi are always vulnerable to emotions when forced upon them - look what happens when Anakin loves and loses. The Sith with their extremes of emotion have little control over them - thus their unrelenting clashes for dominance which weakens and leaves them vulnerable. If they worked together, the Sith could easily obtain the dominance they crave.

Only a balanced warrior, one who feels their emotions but is not mastered by them can resist all the challenges they will face. We see this process beginning with Obi-Wan, who becomes a lot wiser than his master. The process is completed with Luke, who feels his emotions, is tempted by the Dark Side, but rises above it all to achieve his final victory.

 

[thardey]

For all their piety, I always thought the Jedi with their code were just as great of fools as the Sith. I always thought Yoda was a great fool in the first 3 movies, never wise. Neither unleashing your emotions nor denying their existence is a useful way to exist as a human - maybe if we were Vulcans! Both extremes make you brittle, weak to challenges that will face you. The Jedi are always vulnerable to emotions when forced upon them - look what happens when Anakin loves and loses. The Sith with their extremes of emotion have little control over them - thus their unrelenting clashes for dominance which weakens and leaves them vulnerable. If they worked together, the Sith could easily obtain the dominance they crave.

Only a balanced warrior, one who feels their emotions but is not mastered by them can resist all the challenges they will face. We see this process beginning with Obi-Wan, who becomes a lot wiser than his master. The process is completed with Luke, who feels his emotions, is tempted by the Dark Side, but rises above it all to achieve his final victory.

Could this be the "balance in the force" that Obi-wan was looking for?

 

[Empty Hands]

Could this be the "balance in the force" that Obi-wan was looking for?

Yeah, I think so. When they first find Anakin they mention a prophecy about one who would bring "balance to the force." As is usual for the prequels, this idea wasn't much explored. However, I think it would be easy to argue that this prophecy applied to Luke (although maybe Anakin balanced the force by equalizing the numbers of Jedi and Sith! )

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Which leads to the idea of "Grey Jedi", those who walk both paths.

 

[Empty Hands]

Which leads to the idea of "Grey Jedi", those who walk both paths.

I hadn't run across that, is that from the extended universe fiction?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Think so.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grey_Jedi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Jedi

 

[thardey]

Passions, a Sith Perspective
by Kaith Rustaz


"Fear leads to anger."

What is fear truly? Fear is a feeling of anxiety or apprehension when confronted with stress. To feel fear is normal, natural, healthy. Do not allow fear to immobilize you. Fear must be mastered. Fail, and your enemy will dominate you, defeat you. Channel your fear, focus it, let it strengthen you. Let fear turn to anger. Focus your fear, let it flow through you, and strengthen. Strong fear focused becomes anger.

"Anger leads to hate."

What is anger really, but fear intensified and focused towards a single purpose. Let your fear of the situation, become anger at the situation. Such sharp focus will fortify you. Like a fine blade, your anger must be honed, given an edge. That focused edge, will become hate. Let your hatred burn through you, and strengthen you.

Anger and Fear are not the opposites of Love.

Neither can exist without love. Fear is the possibility of losing something you love. Anger is the grief expressed at having that love destroyed. If you love noting, as the Jedi would say, you fear nothing, and nothing will make you angry.

Apathy is the opposite of Love.

However, Apathy is a negative motivation. Apathy will not motivate you to do good, it will only motivate you to survive. Survival is a far cry from living.

Believe me, I went on this path of chosen Apathy once. I very nearly succeeded. I survived quite well, and was wonderfully safe, but I had nothing to live for. It was quite true that I had nothing to fear at that point, but only because I had nothing to protect. My life was hell. In fact, when I think of Hell, I think first of absolute loneliness, not fire and brimstone.

"Hatred leads to power."

Hatred is powerful. It makes you powerful. It energizes you. Hate is a feeling of intense dislike, so strong it calls you to action, fuels you and makes you powerful. What you fear makes you angry. What angers you, feeds your hatred. That hate, will make you powerful against your enemies.

Hatred is only as powerful as the love which was the seed of it. I hate that which separates me from my wife.

If, however it is love for myself that is the most important thing in my life, that my "love" is truly a selfish manipulation of others for my own comfort, then I will begin to hate anything that hurts me, even if it is for my own good.

Anakin began with an unselfish love for his mother, and he set out to save her. But once that failed, he began looking for various things to make himself feel better, and eventually his "love" for Padme was nothing more than a selfish manipulation of her to stop the hurt of losing his mother. His fear was not in losing Padme, but in losing his source for his selfish love.

This kind of hatred is powerful in that it is single-minded, but it is also impotent in that it is easily controlled by another.

Hatred born from selfless love, on the other hand, cannot be manipulated, and it is powerful on many fronts.

"Power leads to victory."

To be truly powerful, one must be capable of achieving change, of controlling events. The powerless exist at the whim of the powerful. To be powerful, one must harness the strength that fear, anger and hatred give you.

But the truly powerful are those who have the power of someone above them at their disposal. There is very little power in a individual, but power can be brokered, it can be traded, bought sold, stolen, and borrowed.

"Let your anger flow through you."

Do not sit meekly by and let things happen. Focus your anger, let it flow through you, strengthen you, and then become the sword with which you will smite your enemies.

"Your hate will make you strong."

Hate will fuel you. Hate will drive you, push you, empower you. Focus you hate, become powerful.

"True power is only achieved through testing the limits of one's anger, passing through unscathed."

Only by mastering fear, hatred and the fires of anger will one become powerful. Fail, and your anger will consume you, burn you, destroy you as unworthy.

How can one master fear and hatred unless one masters the source of those feelings? Once cannot choose to be "not angry" or "not afraid", one can only choose to suppress it. That is not mastery, that is compromise. However, one must choose love (not the emotional "falling in love" stuff, but the real, unselfish, live a life of passion kind of love), and in choosing love, one can master all that love brings.

"Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable."

Let your rage flow, focused to a pin point, strong as steel. Once focused, nothing can stop your intent.

Not even you.

"The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power."

Master your emotions, then use your passion to give you power. The Light wants you to suppress them. That way lies weakness. All creatures are creatures of passion. Only by mastering passion and harnessing it, can you obtain real ultimate power.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

The problem with passion is that is usually hurts too much to actually pursue it. If you feed your passion, you let it grow, it will give you tremendous, positive power in your life.

Unfortunately, most people don't pursue their passion, but settle for partial fulfillment, which ends up as a selfish way to stop the pain that comes with having a true passion. This is the essence of sin.

"The dark side is stronger than the light."

Darkness smothers the Light. In the void of space, darkness is the norm. Light may come, but light will eventually go. In the end, only the Dark can remain.

Dark does not exist, other that as a state of being. Cold does not exist either. None of them have power.

Dark and cold are simply the absence of energy. Evil is only the absence of good. Apathy is only the absence of love.

Love, hate, fear, passion, these are not characteristics of dark. These are characteristics of energy, which is light and warmth.

That is: the "Light side" is actually dark, when it requires the loss of these things.

The "dark side" taken to extreme is like a laser, focused, intense energy, but it is only useful for destruction. There is no warmth, only heat.

"The weak deserve their fate."

The weak, fall prey to their fear. Never do they master it.
The weak, allow their anger to abait, to fade, to blind them.
The weak, forgive and never see the power the true Hatred can be.
The weak, are slaves to the Strong, and never rise above their wretched existences.
In the end, the strong control the weak, and consume them, as it should be.

Those who live a life on survival and comfort are weak, and their reward is a life of survival and comfort, which is punishment enough. These people will always be mastered by something, wether religion, work, money, alchohol, pseudo-power, gossip, manipulation, whatever. They are the herd animals fighting each other for pecking order.

The strong may die young, poor (but does anybody truly die rich?), and bloody, but they have lived! They may have actually had a taste of what life is for, and pursued that to whatever end it offered. I would rather die as a Tiger, than survive as a sheep.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Its not your "anger" or your "peace" that matter in the end. Its your deeds that matter. What disturbs me is peoples admiration for the evil characters. The Sith, the "Gangsta", the criminal, the school shooter. What have we become when characters like these are more popular than the "white hats"?

Its about the weak desiring power over others IMO.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

The problem is that both sides of the argument look for the extreme. The removal of emotions and the resulting artificial peace of the Jedi, or the seeming uncontrolled and run amok passions of the Sith.

The other problem is, the false perception of the Jedi as "Good" and the Sith as "Evil". Neither were absolutely that. The Jedi were ruled by their fear of the Sith, a fear that they denied. The Sith were consumed by their desire for revenge against the Jedi, a revenge for wrongs that were of their own doing. Neither were good nor evil. If anything, the Sith were a least honest about themselves, to an extent.

But where someone like Sidius did what he did seeking power, and Maul out of rage, Anakin did out of Love. But in the end, Anakins fears took over and brought him down, leaving only Vader a remorseful shell of the man he once was, who through himself fully into his regret and sadness.

In the movies, all of the Jedi and Sith fell far short of their philosophy's. Yoda for all his Zen Master like wisdom, was blind to what was really going on.

"Its your deeds that matter."
True. This is what determines if you are truly good or evil I think.

Anakin became a Sith because he feared losing that which he loved, and fell in order to preserve it, in the end becoming the cause of that which he feared the most. His fear, consumed him.

A soldier on the battlefield will feel fear, but he will master it. He will instead channel that fear and become angry at the situation, focus that into a hatred of the situation and use that resulting adrenaline rush to get him through the conflict. Once the crisis is over, he will then dump that rush, and therefore remain healthy. Those that don't, eventually burn out or get themselves killed.

In the comics, the Hulk is the physical form given Dr. Banners rage. It is uncontrolled, savage, and destructive. But it is short lived, and once spent, dissolves away. If that release didn't happen, the Hulk would burn himself out in short order, as prolonged rage is not healthy.

 

[JBrainard]

The Sith with their extremes of emotion have little control over them - thus their unrelenting clashes for dominance which weakens and leaves them vulnerable.

This is why "the rule of two" was put into place. When there were scores of Sith, half of the time they were fighting amongst themselves.

The OP immediately reminded me of The Book of Philosophies from the Devils Apocrypha: http://www.geocities.com/wolfstorm70/book.html

Yeah, I think so. When they first find Anakin they mention a prophecy about one who would bring "balance to the force." As is usual for the prequels, this idea wasn't much explored. However, I think it would be easy to argue that this prophecy applied to Luke (although maybe Anakin balanced the force by equalizing the numbers of Jedi and Sith! )

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Luke was the completion of the prophecy acording to Lucas.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Lucus has said a few times that it was Anakin, though I think his rediscovered love of his son was the catalyst to overcoming the darkness within himself.

 

[thardey]

What disturbs me is peoples admiration for the evil characters. The Sith, the "Gangsta", the criminal, the school shooter. What have we become when characters like these are more popular than the "white hats"?

Its about the weak desiring power over others IMO.

There is a strong draw for weak people to want to be "bad".

But I think in general, people want to be dangerous, and bad people are dangerous. Ideally, we want to be good, dangerous people, but let's face it, once you put on the "white hat", people demand that you become safe, or they label you as a "bad guy in a white hat" (or a wolf in sheep's clothing), which is worse than simply being a "black hat" which will always be cool.


There's a line from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" about Aslan, the Lion who rules Narnia with an unpredictable method, to say the least.

"He's a lion, of course he's not safe, but he's good".

Most people equate "good" with "safe". A "good Man" is someone who is reliable, dependable, secure, predictable, safe, and sane. A "good Man" fits into the status quo of the society he is in. A "good man" follows the laws of Kant, which includes the ideals of duty, is a "model" for people to copy, and if everybody did what he did, the world would be a better place.

The idea of "good" meaning righteous, moral, ethical, etc. is usually limited to philosophical and theological debates. Practically, "good" look like the Jedi. You know exactly what you can get from them, so that you can plan what you are going to do. We never see any teachings that the Jedi were righteous, they were just patient, dependable, calm, rational. In short, highly predictable, which is comforting in others, and despised in ourselves.


But nobody wants to be the safe one, they want to be dangerous, and expect everybody else to be safe.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Dungeons and Dragons I think said it best, with their alignment matrix.

One could be any of several combinations:
Lawful Good
Neutral Good
Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral
Neutral
Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Evil

Each with it's own set of quirk, etc.

 

[thardey]

Dungeons and Dragons I think said it best, with their alignment matrix.

One could be any of several combinations:
Lawful Good
Neutral Good
Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral
Neutral
Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Evil

Each with it's own set of quirk, etc.

The character that often gets overlooked in the debates between Jedi/Sith is Han Solo.

The "Chaotic Good". Unpredictable, a Scoundrel, the "Anti-hero", he will do good only on his own terms. You want to see him learn about the Force, but nobody wants to see him become a Jedi, or a Sith.

He doesn't need the framework of either, and is confident enough to take risks and make mistakes.

Unfortunately, no one will teach him how to use the Force, even if he could, because he would refuse to submit to the kind of control required for anyone to be comfortable enough to teach him.

However, Han Solo is portrayed as a "lower class". He is not of "noble birth" -- that is, one who "has the Force" which is apparently passed on by lineage.

An interesting thought just occurred to me.

The Jedi were stable, with many checks and balances, so that the Old Republic could have freedom. That is, they provided the anchor so that the the individual races and systems could still be individual. The upper class was forced to be stable, and the lower classes were free to be chaotic.

The Sith were unpredictable, with much "freedom", but in balance, the Empire needed to be extremely stable, predictable, and ordered. Individual freedoms were lost so that the Sith could be free. While the Sith pursued freedom and power, they could not tolerate it in others. The upper class was free to be chaotic, and the lower class was forced to be stable.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

There is a strong draw for weak people to want to be "bad".

But I think in general, people want to be dangerous, and bad people are dangerous. Ideally, we want to be good, dangerous people, but let's face it, once you put on the "white hat", people demand that you become safe, or they label you as a "bad guy in a white hat" (or a wolf in sheep's clothing), which is worse than simply being a "black hat" which will always be cool.


There's a line from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" about Aslan, the Lion who rules Narnia with an unpredictable method, to say the least.

"He's a lion, of course he's not safe, but he's good".

Most people equate "good" with "safe". A "good Man" is someone who is reliable, dependable, secure, predictable, safe, and sane. A "good Man" fits into the status quo of the society he is in. A "good man" follows the laws of Kant, which includes the ideals of duty, is a "model" for people to copy, and if everybody did what he did, the world would be a better place.

The idea of "good" meaning righteous, moral, ethical, etc. is usually limited to philosophical and theological debates. Practically, "good" look like the Jedi. You know exactly what you can get from them, so that you can plan what you are going to do. We never see any teachings that the Jedi were righteous, they were just patient, dependable, calm, rational. In short, highly predictable, which is comforting in others, and despised in ourselves.


But nobody wants to be the safe one, they want to be dangerous, and expect everybody else to be safe.

Excellent discussion. I agree, most young people want to be "unique" and stand out, a lot of that involves being rebellious and part of the counter culture. What does disturb me though is how easily they can overlook the evil deeds and ideas that these characters represent and instead concentrate on how "cool" they are. Movie characters not quite so much, but the real criminal and school shooter idolaters...those concern me.

The "bad guy in the white hat" quote was really insightful, and dovetails with a thread I was on that was recently locked concerning police corruption. For some reason the "good guys" are discounted as not "really" being heros (government hacks, corrupt, power hungry, "thin blue line", not really a heroic job, out of shape doughnut eaters, etc. etc.). The bad guys are looked at as "cool"..BUT a bad cop (if you leave out "The Shield") doesnt get the same glamour as the outright "bad guy"....one thing we cant tolerate is someone we believe to be "safe" turning out "bad". If you were always "bad" that seems somehow easier to accept. An interesting, but true point.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Sounds soooooo good, but often just isn't true.

You do not wield hate as a weapon. The hate controls you. Learned this the hard way.

Power is no guarantee of victory, the proof being Tai Chi and Aikido.... the proof being the Russian Front. Let us smash your power on a rock and counterstrike when you have just become exhausted - Georgi Zhukov outside Moscow, at Stalingrad and Kursk.

Rage is not unstoppable, it only binds you into a course. I have had two very different SIFU teach slap strikes when an attack is certain - go ahead, stop thinking and become enraged while I make a final plan. Unstoppable? Your clock is seconds away from being permanently stopped.

The weak deserve their fate? That philosophy never survives the strong individual experiencing their first moment of weakness.

You know, the SS marched into Russia thinking very much like this.... and their rotting bones scattered across a million obscure locales should teach us something.... the operative word being 'should'.

Bah. Hate is an incredibly useful weapon in the short run. Just not your own. However, turn allies upon on another, and you merely have to pick up the remains. Use someones hate as a carrot. A person's hate may be directed to an outside threat, yourself, or themselves. Either way, that hate can be used to direct their actions.

Throw a string of biting insults at someone who hates you and likely they'll charge. But as an animal. Animals make easier meals than men.