"The Beauty of the Dark Side" An Anonymous Letter.
The following article was published to a roar of controversy in 3,671 BYY, during the height of the Great Galactic War between the Republic and the Sith Empire. The author was eventually discovered to great scandal to be a Jedi scholar greatly respected by both those within his order and without. The individual disappeared immediately after his identity was revealed and was never seen again. The order officially closed records concerning this individual and his fate is open to speculation.
Hello and greetings kind readers. I give not my name, for it is dangerous time for a name to be attached to these words. Know that I am simply one who seeks good in the galaxy, the ultimate good, and that is why I am Sith. Well no, I am not Sith, the Sith are an organization in which I lack membership. You'll have to forgive me, I have something of a dramatic flare, and 'Sith' sounds a lot better than 'Jedi who happens to academically agree with certain aspects of Sith philosophy.'
I suppose I should give my proper credentials. I am not some dark master in a hooded robe, plotting the overthrow of the galaxy from some dark crypt on Korriban or a flagship in the stars. My face, while not particularly beautiful, is not a wrinkled mask of death from overexposure to dark forces. I am a Jedi of middling age and middling strength. My employ is as a custodian of Jedi knowledge in one of our many libraries. As is true for most any academic, the story of my life and 'fall' would be painfully boring if I were to extend it to any real length. Still, the summarized version may, I hope, hold some interest to those who would read it. All I ask is that you suspend the instincts of war which would have me automatically labeled 'enemy' and my words 'enemy propaganda'. and give me an honest hearing.
As mentioned, I am officially a Jedi librarian. I have trained two padawans in my life. I would have taken a third had I not felt it disingenuous to myself and to my benefactors to instruct in my particular philosophy on the force and call it Jedi training. Though a light saber is not completely alien to my hand, my true calling has always been for our libraries, sifting through the practically infinite sea of knowledge and learning contained within our holobooks. It is here, away from the battlefields, that I discovered the truth of the dark side.
It happened one day all of a sudden. I was reading a record of the Mandalorian wars, Revan's rhetoric still shining bright through a hundred readings and a thousand responses. I was only half into it though, and while my eyes passively danced the words, my mind juggled other thoughts as a counterpoint to what I read. The train of thought bumped along slowly until it all came out into shining luminosity. History, beyond the view point of any given perspective, nature, in all its glorious workings and mechanics. The very galaxy, wherein planets and stars are born and die in that infinite sea of space and time, are all indubitably of the dark side.
The realization shocked me to my feet, and I mean that quite literally. I am grateful that it was a late night and I was in a private corner, or else I should have looked quite silly. I pondered over my new discovery for the next few days, desperately trying to refute it and convince myself of the given Jedi dogmas. It could not be done however, I was convinced, and my honesty at least to myself kept me from falsely taking any argument I considered less than convincing. I was very afraid for those next few days. When I passed Jedi, I wondered, 'can they feel it, the dark taint undoubtedly awoken within me?'
Even though my 'fall', and I use that word very loosely, seemed sudden, I later realized it to be simply the logical conclusion to the nature of my life's search. My teacher taught me when I was young to listen past the countless individual strains of voices in the galaxy, and to hear them together as a universal harmony. This great whisper, he told me, is the voice of the force. To know the voice of the force, to know the very truth of reality and the universal good has been my mission.
I had been listening for a very long time, trying to understand the galaxy untainted by perspective. I eventually found what I was searching for. I found it first in astronomy, through the birth and death of stars who collapsed in on themselves, creating the heavier matter of planets. On those planets I found biology, and the death of countless species so that from their corpses the few great and intelligent may rise. I found amongst those intelligent species politics, economics, science, technology, art, each one competing to give rise to the next greater part of themselves. Amongst all these I found the force, the living manifestation of that terrible and beautiful will of the galaxy. This, I know to be good.
The Jedi reject this view of the force, be it in part or full. Some will argue that the force is by nature benevolent, the dark side being an unnatural corruption. Others state that it simply does not care, dark and light being mere assignments to it by its practioners, and that we cannot look to the force for the morality with which we use it. Both of these arguments hold a part of the truth. The force is dark, but it is not malevolent, it does not kill pointlessly but for growth. It does not 'care' one way or another for individual beings as you and I might, but only as forms to its ultimate and austere good.
Both philosophies make the quintessential mistake however of thinking that the force will or can bring about their flawed concepts of mercy and justice. It gives only an unwavering and unmerciful justice of its own, wherein weakness is sin and strength is virtue. All those who would disagree with me, I ask you simply this; If the universe is by nature benevolent, or if by the common will of species it can be peaceful, passive, and cooperative, then why is it, generation after generation, that we find ourselves with light sabers at our sides, in our hands, and through our hearts?
I must confess that I think the Sith philosophy is the most correct. The Sith seek for growth through battle in a beautiful mirroring of the way the universe functions. Note that I say it is merely the most correct. Sith always place the self as the center, that single immortal greatness which the universe wishes to pick out of the common rubble. This leads them to turn a blind eye when they are quite often not that great, cowering like bugs under the strength of their hierarchies while still claiming themselves singularly deserving. This is why Sith Empires are always so laughable. When they fail from infighting, they show the Sith's stubbornness to see themselves as part of a greater whole. When they succeed (for a time, as is the current generation.) they succeed as a laughable hypocrisy, a herd of independent minds.
The force takes both of our flawed views on it and weaves them into its purpose however. It contrasts Jedi against Sith, one altruistically concerned for the impure whole, the other egotistically obsessed with the imperfect self, and from their conflict breeds the next stronger generation. The Jedi civil war left our numbers just next to extinction, and look at what has emerged from that bare remnant. The Jedi today are stronger, smarter, and more organized than those hundreds of years ago. We are sharpened to a hard point by the war.
It has been almost ten years since I came to this conclusion, that the universe is steeped in conflict, that the force is inherently dark. In all honesty, I suppose I myself may be a bit of a hypocrite. I stay cozy within the bounds of our Jedi study, neglect my light saber training, and myself do nothing to further this universal drive I have perceived. I suppose it is not inaccurate to say that I understand the dark but I do not feel it, I am not driven to practice it as the council and our teaching dogmatically assert I inevitably will. I do not think the galaxy will horribly miss just one quiet old Jedi in its designs, and besides, I enjoy being a spectator more than anything. Some might say I am grey, but do not be deceived, grey is an anomaly. The galaxy is formed through the brilliant contrast of black and white, not through its mix.
I suppose the point I am trying to make in writing this is that we should not be caught up in the polarization of our conflict to see the metaphysical hand driving it. We who meet the Sith in battle are serving the purpose of providing the conflict they need to grow as they provide the conflict we need to grow. Whatever may come of this years long war, be it a Sith empire or a stronger Republic, I am assured it will be of a greater more beautiful phoenix which emerges from the ashes of war, and an even phoenix shall emerge when that bird inevitably dies as well.