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By Root 473 0

basis here. The Force speaks through living creatures and only to other living creatures. This may be explained by what Qui-Gon Jinn says to young Anakin Skywalker, that “midi-chlorians” are a microscopic life form residing in all living cells. We have a symbiotic relationship with them—“living together for mutual advantage.” As Qui-Gon puts it “Without the midi-chlorians life could not exist. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force.” This implies that we already exist in a symbiotic relationship with these messengers of the Force, and when a young padawan learns to quiet the mind he can learn the will of the Force by feeling it through the midi-chlorians in his cells. Control of one’s mind then is also control of, and a kind of listening to, one’s body so that mind and body can be one. So when a Jedi says, “May the Force be with you,” he really means, “May you be with the Force—and may you quiet your mind to listen to it, to be aware of it.”

Learning to listen to the Force also connects the Jedi with other living things, creating a kind of harmony with them. And in this sense, Jedi training is training in respecting nature—after all, it is a respect for the living Force. The Jedi learns to recognize symbiotic relationships of the natural world.66 Once he learns this, he grows in wisdom by understanding the entire natural world and his proper place within it.

“Mudhole? Slimy? My Home This Is”: Jedi Living in the Natural World

The natural world confers powers of wisdom and balance, and it’s natural environments in which Jedi feel most at home. During the “dark times” of the Empire, the surviving Jedi retreat from the city-planet Coruscant to hide among the natural caves of the Tatooine desert or the swampy marshes of Dagobah. They live with nature, rather than against it, in sparse, simple dwellings.

And when a Jedi gets into trouble, he consistently finds an ally in the natives of some very natural environments. The “ecocommunities” of the Gungans and the Ewoks are very much at one with their environments. The Gungans are less technologically advanced than most other nearby cultures, while the Ewoks have virtually no technology. Ewoks live within the trees and their homes, clothes, and weapons are made out of simple materials directly from their environment. Right away Leia and Wicket the Ewok are natural allies against the stormtroopers. There seems to be no genuine evil found on Endor. Never mind that the Ewoks originally captured and planned to eat Han, Luke, and Chewie—it was nothing personal! In Star Wars there’s a big ethical difference between violence done out of duty or necessity (the Jedi and the Ewoks, respectively) and violence done out of anger or greed (Anakin slaughtering the Sand People in revenge and the bounty hunters, respectively).

Strangely enough, the Jedi are fighting to establish what these “natural” communities already have—a unity and harmony with the world. For if we asked ourselves what the galaxy would look like after balance is restored to the Force, we might guess that it’s a galaxy where democracy reigns, but an intergalactic democracy that lets eco-communities like the Ewoks and the Gungans live harmoniously and maintain their distinct identities as “peoples.” In other words, it would be a galaxy where harmony and diversity are supreme, which are the very ideals of environmental ethics.

Only biological creatures are in touch with the Force in this way. Here we learn of a key distinction between “artifacts” and “organisms” in Star Wars. And Rolston makes this same point, first made by Aristotle: A machine doesn’t have its own natural goal, but instead receives its purpose from humans.67 A machine has no self-generating or self-defending tendencies. In our world, as of yet, only biological creatures have this. Robots can’t reprogram themselves the way that even earthworms or algae can in order to adapt creatively to a change in the environment.

And time and again we see that for all the threat and intimidation of the technologically advanced stormtroopers,