I want to know, what is The Force?

  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
4 years 4 months ago #345470 by
A lot of people have said that The Force is just everything. But I dont see how that can be? If it is everything why pull it out as something that can be put a name on it? like The Force, understand? we already have a name for everything, its called the universe, right? so why is there two names for the same thing? I just dont think the force is everything.

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago - 4 years 4 months ago #345472 by Brick
Lesson 8, Essay 5, of the IP asks us to answer this very question.

It may be interesting to see what people wrote (for those of us who have completed the IP), and perhaps also to see if our opinions are still the same?

Below is what I wrote at the time. My opinion of the Force is still more or less the same.


Brick, in his IP, wrote:

Lesson 8: Jediism Essays (Continued)

Essay 5: The Force

There are many different, and personal, views of The Force.

What is The Force to you?

What connection, if any, do you feel you have to It?


....................................................................................................................................................................................................


I had a right old chew on with this task.

Initially I thought it close to impossible to accurately describe my thoughts on The Force. To attempt any kind of real description would, IMO, mislead. Whatever answer I give, it is likely to be wrong. I am bad enough at finding words to explain what I mean, but to use a finite number of words to describe something which is infinitely indescribable? Buggeration :laugh:

Its also very difficult to explain things that really have to be observed/experienced purely in words. For example, WW2 children in the UK were evacuated from the cities to live in the country, many of these children had never seen farm animals before and so wrote letters home describing them. One boy famously described a cow as looking like a

milk-carton on its side with four legs and a brush for a tail.

Now I personally don’t think that’s a very good description of a cow. I would said it looks like a fat black and white horse. Then again, if these people hadn’t seen cows before, maybe they hadn’t seen horses either. So, a really big, less hairy, black and white dog? That doesn’t really sum up what a cow is, does it? :laugh:

Though perhaps I’m being a tad unfair, I did actually find what I think is quite a good description by another child evacuee:

The cow is a mammal. It has six sides, right, left upper and below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With this it sends flies away so they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with and the mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people milk the milk comes and there is never an end to the supply. How the cow does it I have not realised but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it far away. This is the reason for fresh air in the country. The man cow is called an ox. It is not a mammal. The cow does not eat much, but what it eats, it eats twice so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos and when it says nothing it is because it is all full up with grass.


My point is that these descriptions, no matter how good, conjure up very different images of what a cow looks like, but they’re all describing the same thing. And this is what happens when someone tries to describe what The Force is. You’ll get an infinite number of answers that conjure up totally different images in one’s mind, even though these descriptions are all talking about the same thing. They’re attempting to describe something that is indescribable, and they’ll all be warped in some way by our thoughts and pre-conceptions. It doesn’t matter how accurate a description one may be able to provide, it’ll never be quite there.

It’s the same with the name. I look at it’s name as any other word, just in different languages. For example a dog in English is ‘dog’, in German it is ‘Hund’ and in French ‘chien’. It doesn’t matter what we call it, it’s still the same thing. That too applies to The Force. We can call it ‘The Force’, ‘God’, ‘The Tao’ etc. It’s still all the same thing (though perhaps interpreted slightly differently). But ultimately its just a name for something that does not have a name.

The Force transcends words and thought.

Perhaps the best way to explain my understanding is to pinch Sonya’s from the ‘Mindwalk’ Lesson earlier on in the IP. Now, I am no physicist, but the descriptions of how one part of a system depends on that of another, how these things around us seamlessly blend and connect and change slowly together over time, all depending on one thing, which depends on something else, and on and on. That just makes sense to me. I can see it in patterns all around and within me.

I have never really considered the idea of the earth as a giant organism until watching Mindwalk. For me, to talk about The Force is to talk about that ‘connection’ to that giant living, breathing THING that we all are together. Like Watts’s ‘cat through the fence’ example, event ‘head’ does not lead to event ‘tail’. Its all ‘Cat’, just as I/you/cat/dog/earth are all ‘One’ or ‘All’. I don't feel that ‘All’ forms a sentient or has a secret plan for our lives or some meaningful destiny that it's taking us towards. I don't believe you can pray to it, it can’t hear you (and even if it could, it couldn’t do anything). I don't believe that it is guiding us in any particular way. But I have no choice but to be connected to it through The Force because it's part of what we all are. To suggest otherwise would be like a limb claiming to be a separate entity to the body. I can however become ‘in tune’ (for want of a better phrase) with ‘All’. Be as one with my surroundings. I’m not entirely sure how yet, but I think that over time I will come to know this.

Or perhaps its all just Dark Matter



:laugh:

We shall see

End of Lesson 8: Essay 5


Apprentice to Maitre Chevalier Jedi Alexandre Orion

Moderator | Welcome Team | IP Team

IP Journal | IP Journal 2 | AP Journal | Open Journal

'The only contest any of us should be engaged in is with ourselves, to be better than yesterday'

- Knight Senan
Last edit: 4 years 4 months ago by Brick.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Gisteron, Skryym, Kobos, Jake Nislan

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago #345473 by Brick

Fyxe wrote: A lot of people have said that The Force is just everything. But I dont see how that can be? If it is everything why pull it out as something that can be put a name on it? like The Force, understand? we already have a name for everything, its called the universe, right? so why is there two names for the same thing? I just dont think the force is everything.


I agree with this Fyxe. The Universe is just a bunch of 'stuff' stuck together, in the same way that the human body is just a bunch of organs stuck together.

For me, the Force is to the Unvierse what the spirit/soul is to the human body. If that makes sense? Its the 'life' bit.

Apprentice to Maitre Chevalier Jedi Alexandre Orion

Moderator | Welcome Team | IP Team

IP Journal | IP Journal 2 | AP Journal | Open Journal

'The only contest any of us should be engaged in is with ourselves, to be better than yesterday'

- Knight Senan
The following user(s) said Thank You: Proteus, Amaya, Kobos, , Jake Nislan

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago - 4 years 4 months ago #345474 by forestjedi

Carlos.Martinez3 wrote:

forestjedi wrote: The Force is everything that is.


If I may ask, for whom?


For the Force, because the Force is all that is. It's you. It's me. It's your mailman. It's the dog barking down the street. That's the point.

All the things you spoke about there, all the complexity, variety and "subjectivity"... all of those are aspects, facets we project upon the larger whole.

The universe? No, that's not everything that "is".

Thats one of the hardest things in modern day Jediism I find... how to be you with YOUR OWN definitions while other be THEM -WITH THEIR OWN definitions. Kinna like life but thats a sermon for another day.


The implication here seems to be, if you believe your thing and I believe my thing, how can we both be right? The answer is usually, we can't. "When a man falls in a puddle, he gets wet - whether he believes in water or not". I don't believe any opinion other than mine is correct, but that doesn't mean I don't believe any opinion other than mine is valid. I think I'm right (thus, this is my belief), and I recognise and accept that I might be wrong, and that others are entitled to their own opinions. That said, the more inclusive your view, the wider you cast it, the less likely you are to be wrong. When I say the Force, I mean all that is. No-one can turn around and say "wrong! When you say the Force you don't mean that!" - I do. When someone else says "the Force", they might mean anything, and that's fine.

Why two names for the same thing? Because we often have two names for the same things, or for things which appear identical until we approach them with a different perspective. It's a ball. It's a tomato. A tomato is kind of a ball, no? But when we understand that it's a tomato, we engage with it in a different way.

The difference between "everything" and "the Force", from which all things spring, is like that. You are dead to "everything", it's too much, too unknowable. "Everything" doesn't matter to you because you've lived your whole life with it. But taking a different perspective on it, changing the way you view it, learning to see it with fresh eyes, ideas, purpose... that matters.

You want to be pure to the fiction, Fyxe? "It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together." Sounds pretty damn ubiquitous, no?

Agree, don't agree, not my circus nor my monkeys. But there are many here who talk of the Force as the fundamental substance of "being", and I am one of them. For me, pretty much every other analogy or explanation of it quickly descends into pure unadulterated woo.

Brick wrote: The Universe is just a bunch of 'stuff' stuck together, in the same way that the human body is just a bunch of organs stuck together.


I don't disagree with this. But when I ask you to imagine a big heap of meat, bones, skin, hair... then ask you to imagine a person. Same thing. Different.
Last edit: 4 years 4 months ago by forestjedi.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Skryym, Kobos, Brick, Jake Nislan

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
4 years 4 months ago #345475 by
I think you are good in your idea brick. more on that in a bit.

A ball and a tomato are not the same thing. a tomato is not a ball, a tomato and a ball are similar only because both are round. but one is not the other. and surrounding us, penetrating us and binding us sounds like something pretty different to us, right? I mean what we are and what binds us together has to be two different things.

Sort of what brick was saying, an arm cant claim its seperate from the body when it is attached to the body but if you cut that limb off it does not stop being a limb and then it can claim it is seperate from the body. now there is a body and a limb, two seperate things where before there was just a body!

So if the force took a life energy and shattered it into a million pieces they are all sperate things but still part of what used to be one thing. does that one thing exist anymore? well no, its not one thing anymore. now it a million things that used to be one thing. and if the thing that shattered that one thing took a string and hooked them all together then all those things would be connected but still seperate things. the breaker is the force and the hooker of the string is the force. but the parts are us! our job is to use the string to put ourselves back together, make sense?

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
4 years 4 months ago #345476 by
If the Force is everything
There must be a Nothing aswell
because if there is an everything there must be a nothing to compare it with right?

How would we call that nothing?

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago #345477 by forestjedi
Any definition of "everything" which doesn't include "nothing" (whatever we mean by that) isn't really a definition of "everything".

I believe that the Force includes whatever "nothing" means, yes - because I don't believe there is existence outside of the Force, because if it exists, my definition of the Force includes it.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Kobos, Jake Nislan

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago #345479 by Gisteron
What is this "everything" thing you are referring to, anyway?

Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
The following user(s) said Thank You: Kobos, Rex

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
4 years 4 months ago - 4 years 4 months ago #345480 by OB1Shinobi
For me, the Force is the web of cause and effect by which the universe moves. Is it mystical or metaphysical? Magical, even? Well, maybe. Certainly to the degree that these words mean something which exists in reality then they are an aspect of the Force. I perceive and interact with my immediate environment. Lets say, all the sounds that i can hear and everything i can see within my field of vision; this is the piece of the universe that I have some degree of access to. Potentially, I can affect and be affected by anyone and most anything in my immediate environment. But Im also immersed in a web of circumstances which are the result of my personal experiences and choices. I chose to be a Jedi, I chose to do the job that I do and to pursue the degree that I am pursuing and the hobbies and interests that I explore in my free time. All these choice immerse me in processes and relationships which shape my personality and offer me new opportunities. I also have effects on the people and events that I interact with and while my impact on the Fore may be minimal, it is real.

Every single thing about me (and all of us) from my height and weight to my belief structure to the circumstances that have me at this computer in this place right now as i type this, can all be traced back to a cause or a set of causes. Following this process of tracing back to find the cause/s will take us, eventually, all the way back to the very birth of the universe (we are made of molecules that made stars). All of this is what the Force is, to me. Some of the causes and effects going on in the universe may be magical, definitely many are purely physical but whatever they are, they constitute a web of causality of which i and everything else in existence is a part. This web of cause and effect is large and complicated beyond my comprehension and the vast majority of it is completely out of my reach, but some small piece of it responds directly to me and my behavior and influences me and my behavior. I am in a relationship with Reality. This is what the Force is, to me.





Fyxe wrote: A ball and a tomato are not the same thing. a tomato is not a ball, a tomato and a ball are similar only because both are round. but one is not the other. and surrounding us, penetrating us and binding us sounds like something pretty different to us, right? I mean what we are and what binds us together has to be two different things.

Sort of what brick was saying, an arm cant claim its seperate from the body when it is attached to the body but if you cut that limb off it does not stop being a limb and then it can claim it is seperate from the body. now there is a body and a limb, two seperate things where before there was just a body!

So if the force took a life energy and shattered it into a million pieces they are all sperate things but still part of what used to be one thing. does that one thing exist anymore? well no, its not one thing anymore. now it a million things that used to be one thing. and if the thing that shattered that one thing took a string and hooked them all together then all those things would be connected but still seperate things. the breaker is the force and the hooker of the string is the force. but the parts are us! our job is to use the string to put ourselves back together, make sense?


It looks to me like you have your own idea of what The Force is. If you expect anyone else to give up their own idea of what the Force means and accept yours, instead, im afraid youre going to be disappointed. If you are settled on your interpretation then I would say your question is already answered and theres no need for you to ask anything of anyone else. However, if you are open minded and curious enough to learn something new and/or to see things in a new way, then you may benefit by asking us what we think.

People are complicated.
Last edit: 4 years 4 months ago by OB1Shinobi.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Kobos, Jake Nislan

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
4 years 4 months ago #345481 by
No ob1, I asked the question what is the force? because I want to know what people think it is so we can discuss it and see what we can decide it is. I have an idea and you have an idea but when ideas get shown that make no sense why cant I disagree with them?

Please Log in to join the conversation.

Moderators: ZerokevlarVerheilenChaotishRabeRiniTavi