You Know This, But Can You Hear It?

Yoda, Luke Skywalker, C.S. Lewis and recognizing the Right path

Knowing good from evil, and Right from Wrong, all too often gets turned into a complicated affair. What is this so-called good? What is Right? Isn’t it just a matter of your point of view, culture, or lived experience? That’s the heart of the lie told to Anakin Skywalker, in one of his many rounds of temptation by Chancellor Palpatine. The Sith Lord in hiding had a singular goal in Star Wars: Episode III, which was to turn Anakin away from the Jedi Order and toward the dark side of the Force.

“Good is just a point of view Anakin. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power,” Palpatine says softly.

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

There it is, in plain sight.

The nectar of the intellectual.

You know ‘Right’ in your bones

Anakin is moved by this. His faith in the Jedi has been shaken by years of unceasing war, where the Jedi have served as captains in the trenches of the conflict. So much for “keepers of the peace”.

I’ve been in this place before. My twenties were a time of wandering this same intellectual darkness, cloaking Wrong action in relativism and contrived uncertainty. I affirmed lies with “Who’s to say” and covered for a handful of evils with the warm blanket of unconditional empathy. It feels very good to win the battle of who is more “open-minded”.

I feel for Anakin Skywalker in his descent into evil. I’m vulnerable to that type of appeal put forward by Palpatine. Are you?

Years later, in Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker is training with Yoda on Dagobah and he wants to know about the dark side. He asks first, “Is the dark side stronger?”

Yoda answers, “No. Quicker. Easier. More seductive.”

Luke goes on, “How am I to know the good side from the bad?”

Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Here Luke is asking a different type of question. Star Wars sits at the intersection of many cosmic faiths and religions, drawing on Dualism and Monotheistic stories about our own universe, all at once.

There are moments at which Star Wars tells us (namely in Episode VIII: The Last Jedi) that the light and dark are not necessarily good and evil, but two estranged halves warring for balance.

One is not necessarily good and the other necessarily evil. They work in tandem and can be used for either purpose.

What is good? Luke is asking.

Yoda is clear in his response. “You will know — when you are calm. At peace. Passive.”

The Law of Nature

C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) spoke about this very idea on-air during the German air raids over London during World War II. He broadcast a series of talks between 1941 and 1944 which are now collected in the book, Mere Christianity, wherein Lewis works his way through ethical questions about human existence that led him to believe in God.

C.S. Lewis, who broadcast what is now known as Mere Christianity on the BBC from 1941 to 1944 as Britain suffered through Nazi air raids

His first observation is that we human beings know Right from Wrong innately. He calls this the Law of Nature. Beginning with simple indecencies such as, “Hey you took my seat, I was sitting there first,” and “Leave that person alone, he isn’t doing you any harm,” human beings appeal to one another’s sense of what the standards of behavior should be. We almost expect people to know it.

“The other man very seldom replies: ‘To Hell with your standard.’ And if they do, a special excuse is about to follow,” he continues.

Lewis then asks if there is a civilization known to us where people are admired for running away in a battle, or where a man is held as a hero for double-crossing all those who had been kind to him? Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Americans, Brits….such a place has not been observed that he knows of.

And yet, double-crossing, lying, murder, and cowardice in battle, these things occur everywhere and at every time in history. It’s just not celebrated.

Stay with me here. The outcomes are what may be celebrated. A murderous coup may be called good, but only in that it was something that had to happen. We call those things “necessary evils”, or “worth it”.

We can artfully justify deeds that defy the Law of Nature, a sensibility that resounds within us from birth which we hear echoing between our ears each day as we move from action to action.

In Lewis’ wartime radio talk, he says, “What is the sense in saying the enemy is in the Wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at the bottom (their core) know as we do, and ought to have practiced?”

Remember, the Nazis tried to conceal and cover up the Holocaust in the final months of the war. You don’t try to conceal from the world something you sincerely think is Right.

What do we make excuses for?

We make excuses for a short temper, that time you screamed at a child because you were “tired and hungry” (AKA hangry), we broke our marriage vows because we were “lonely”, “drunk” or “resentful”.

No one makes excuses for Right action, such as helping a person up off the ground when they’ve fallen down or not screaming at a child when they’re tired. When we do Right, we ascribe that virtue to ourselves in a self-congratulatory manner.

Wrong things: we finger-point and blame.

Right things: we pat ourselves on the back.

Because we know what is Right.

As Yoda said, when you are still, listening, calm, and at peace — you know what the good side is and can distinguish it from the bad.

You’ve always known.

The key is creating space in your life for calm, peace, and necessary quiet. Find it, or build it into your day. Guard it with prejudice.

Have a happy New Year my friends.

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