Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Every time I see someone complain about how the Midichlorians “Demystify” The Force, all I can think about is how limited the modern West’s conception of Mysticism has become thanks to the influence of Pythagorean Dualism and Platonist Idealism.

These same people will mention how The Force as a concept drew on ideas from Eastern Mysticism, the Yin-Yang of Taoism and hints of Shintoism Lucas may have picked up on in all those Japanese Samurai films he watched, for example how he defines The Dark Side as being an infection or virus fits Kegare better then it does Taoism.  But they failed to do their homework on all of that, if they did they’d know this idea that factoring anything biological into explaining how The Force works somehow makes it less Spiritual couldn’t be any more alien to Taoist or Shinto ways of thinking, to them Biology is Spiritual and Spirituality is Biological.

I myself have often been one of those who keeps saying Star Wars is Fantasy not Sci-Fi.  But I’ve come to realize that the Anti-Midichlorians mentality that has always annoyed me is a product of the exact same limited western mindset that lies behind making a hard distinction between Sci-Fi and Fantasy.  Now it is still useful to point out how core aspects of Star Wars’ narrative and thematic intentions are more similar to LOTR than Star Trek.  However sometimes even Star Trek Metaphysics are rather Spiritual and even Tolkien can be more scientific than you might expect.

So ScreenRant has an article called 15 quotes about The Force that when quoting Obi-Wan's main Force exposition in A New Hope and Yoda’s in Empire actually has the gall to claim The Midichlorian reveal “retconned” them, but fortunately it quotes them directly allowing me to refresh my memory.  Both quotes talk about The Force being generated by Living Things, not only is that compatible with the Midichlorian reveal but it pretty much proves something like that was how it worked all along.

Rick Worley has a video called What are The Whills that goes in depth into this aspect of Star Wars lore, but if you want a shorter cliff notes version on just one aspect of it watch MrSundayMovies video on Symbiants.  However I myself am a White American Christian whose understanding of Japanese spirituality comes mostly from all the Anime I watch.  So I have no desire to claim to be some great expert on Eastern Mysticism.  Instead this post shall focus on the implication in what I said at the start that the West didn’t always have this problem, at least not so nearly universally. [Update: I really regret recommending this video now that Worley has gone full Terf.]

Star Wars fans getting so offended by the Midichlorians, insisting The Force is no longer something spiritual if you’ve also made it Biological or Physical or “Carnal”, wreaks of Gnosticism to me.  It reminds me of when I watched this YouTube video from a Full Preterist responding to the accusation that their de Physicalizing of The Resurrection makes them Gnostic, he said he’s not Gnostic because he doesn’t believe the Physical world is fundamentally totally evil, thing is not all ancient Gnostics necessarily exactly believed that either, this video went on to talk about his distinguishing between the Spiritual and the Carnal.  And then in the comments section I saw someone express how they found it so disturbing that Futurists (and by implication also Partial Preterists) want the Resurrection to be Carnal, they saw it as a rejection of Spirituality that so many Christians have an attachment their fleshy carnal bodies, they think Christians should want to Let Go of them.

Now Star Wars has been accused of being Gnostic.  Ryan Reeves in one of his videos (I don’t remember which one) references a quote from Yoda in Empire Strikes Back where he says “Luminous being we are, not this crude matter” and yeah that sounds pretty Gnostic out of context, like how some quotes from Paul and the Fourth Gospel are taken out of context to make them sound Gnostic.  But even the immediate context of Yoda’s fuller quote undermines that Gnostic interpretation, much less how utterly Anti-Gnostic the Midichlroian reveal is.  Perhaps this quote wouldn’t have been so easy to misconstrue if only a “just” had been added, I do consider the OT not as precisely and carefully well written as the PT.

In April I made a post about Gnosticism in Anime where I also brought up Stoicism in the context of Final Fantasy VII.  I talk about this stuff more on my main Theology Blog, in posts about the Pagan Greek Origins of Puritan Sexuality and Stoicism in Early Christianity.  It is my view that Gnosticism is Pythagoreanism and Platonism taken to their logical extreme, and that New Testament Theology, if you want to compare it to any pre-existing School of Greek Philosophy, was closest to Stoicism.  Many are surprised to learn this, but during the first century proper Platonism was a minority position, Plato’s influence was felt in all schools to an extent, but among Greek Philosophers who believed in mysticism at all, Stoicism was the dominant perspective.  Though it was a form of Stoicism in some ways detached from the founding principles of Zeno.

But one of the core differences between Christianity and Stoicism is that Stoicism has no Resurrection, instead the Stoic view of the afterlife was the individual Soul eventually fading back into the World Soul, as well as a belief in endless cycles of destruction and rebirth. This is basically the After Life view of Star Wars as expressed by Yoda to Anakin in Episode III and further delved into in those season 6 Clone Wars episodes, the Personal Force equating to the Individual Soul and the Cosmic Force equating to the World Soul.

It is the cyclical aspect that is key to what makes Stoicism similar to Eastern Mysticism.  When I was watching the Netflix Anime film Bubble on April 28th with this post both above and below this paragraph mostly already written, I was reminded of all of it.  It uses the modern Big Bang Theory based scientific understanding of the Universe to evangelize this cyclical mysticism

In Stoicism the word Pneuma (which is the Greek word translated Spirit) was NOT a word for something intangible like Plato’s world of forms, Pneuma is Hyper Corporeal rather than non Corporeal.  And their sense of the word is what was dominant in the first century.  And when you really dig into it, I feel it can very much be compared to both the Lifestream in Final Fantasy VII and The Force in Star Wars.

There is a YouTube channel whose avatar is a low quality picture of Rika Furude from Higurashi and whose username is simply a Period.  This mysterious YouTube channel has a video called The Foundations of Star Wars, this video digs into the moral philosophy of Star Wars and what the channel finds horribly wrong with it.  This Moral Philosophy is basically the same as that later Roman Stoicism I spoke of, Stoicism after allowing itself to draw too much influence from Plato especially The Laws.  And I think the fact that neither this YouTuber or George Lucas himself can find a way to make the existence of the Force compatible with a more pro pleasure pro attachment morality is tied to just how lost and forgotten the original Stoic Morality has become.  Zeno was a Free Love Hippie who even defended Incest, he did not intend to create a Philosophy that would become synonymous with being an unemotional Vulcan.  Likewise Diogenes and the original Cynics would hate the connotations that word now has.

Zeldom has a series of videos on The Legend of Zelda’s Force which are interesting.  But perhaps the Sci-Fi/Fantasy media that truly is Zeno’s Stoicism in contrast to Star Wars’ Roman Stoicism would be the Magical Girl genre of Anime.