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By Root 380 0

battle droids, AT-AT walkers, and the Death Star, ultimately they can’t outdo biological creatures working in harmony. When battle droids collide with the Gungans, and stormtroopers with the Ewoks, the biological creatures always have the surprising advantage: They work with nature to defend nature, and nature is one with the Force. By doing this, they can respond to new and challenging environments. Jedi know this and while they use technology, it’s always in the service of the Force of nature. So, while the Dark Side moves closer and closer to overcoming the natural world, it fails in the end. When push comes to shove, the natural processes in the biological world can always overcome human creations of technology, even if it’s the “ultimate power in the universe”—the Death Star. As Darth Vader admonishes one Imperial officer: “Don’t be too proud at this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”68

Culture versus Nature

Environmental philosophers differ when it comes to whether human culture is part of the natural world or is significantly distinct because it’s a product of deliberate behavior and not the spontaneous processes of nature. This is also left unclear in Star Wars. On the one hand, the Jedi are cosmopolitan. They find the city-planet Coruscant comfortable enough to base their Temple where they reside, meet, and educate young Jedi. On the other hand, many cities in Star Wars are full of corruption and decay. Obi-Wan warns Luke as they enter the urban world of Mos Eisely, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The upside of cities is that they allow different people to meet, live, and come together for intergalactic deliberations. The downside is that they offer anonymity which shelters and disguises dark characters, like shape-shifting bounty hunters and Dark Lords of the Sith. Consequently, in cities, people try to mind their own business—no one is bothered in the slightest by Han killing Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. And as Qui-Gon says of Mos Espa, “Spaceports like this one are havens for those who don’t wish to be found.”

Of course, for all the dangers of living in one of the major cities, the dangers of not living in them can be just as great—if not greater. The humanist values of the Republic, manifest in its anti-slavery laws, are simply ignored on Tatooine. The remote world, apart from civilization, can become its own breeding ground for evil. To reconcile the values in the natural world with the humanist values of the Republic, we might look to Obi-Wan’s explanation to Boss Nass, the ruler of the Gungans. In order to convince him that he should be concerned for the Naboo during their time of crisis, Obi-Wan reminds him that the Gungans have a symbiotic relationship with the Naboo: “What happens to one affects the other, you must realize this.” Later this natural alliance between the two peoples proves vital for saving both from the Trade Federation. Indeed, the Force’s fundamentally symbiotic relations exist not only at the microscopic level of the midi-chlorians, but among different cultures and forms of beings. As Padmé is quite aware, once this point is conceded, an even stronger organic relation is possible—one capable of fighting an entire droid army.

For an environmental philosopher like Rolston, natural communities are held together by causal relations, whereas human communities are held together by additional meaningful relations. 69 Perhaps Obi-Wan’s description of the relationship between the Gungans and the Naboo is only a metaphor, since there’s a similar split between the natural world and the cultural world of the democratic Republic. After all, when traveling through the planet core on Naboo, Qui-Gon doesn’t make such a big deal when his little sea craft nearly gets eaten by a fish, which in turn gets eaten. “There’s always a bigger fish,” he says calmly. Yet, he wouldn’t so casually describe the Trade Federation’s pressure on the Naboo in this way. Despite his respect