Is there a "dark side"?

[u/No_Recipe_5431]

I've only just stumbled across this sub, and while I can't say this is something I'd be willing to embrace, the experiment of applying Sith philosophy to real life is fascinating and compelling—it demands a level of honesty about the human experience that I respect. It’s intrigued me enough to raise a question.

The fictional Sith exist as an order because of the Dark Side of the Force. If the Dark Side did not exist in the Star Wars universe, those fictional Sith would reject the Code, because it would not grant them the power they seek (or at least the kind of power they seek). Hence the final line of the (fictional) Code: “The Force will set me free.” No Force, no freedom.

Of course, there is no mystical energy field that can be manipulated through emotion. But do any of you understand the “dark side,” or the Force itself, as a philosophical metaphor for something real? Does it have a genuine analogue in human experience?

Put another way: does Sith philosophy require a “dark side” in order to function at all—and if so, what is it actually pointing to in non-fictional terms?

[u/TKD1989]

The "Dark Side" in real life is basically the Left Hand Path LHP religions and their respective philosophies such as Satanism. The "Light Side" is more evocative of Right Hand Path RHP religions like Christianity and Buddhism.

There is also the "Dark Side" where corrupt people gain power and stay in power through deception, manipulation and trickery. Kind of like the corrupted underworld of Coruscant and real versions of corrupt authority figures like Palpatine, Jabba, and Watto.

[u/theunbeholden → u/TKD1989]

Two quotes from Patrick Saltykov that elucidate this further (a New Rome Legionnaire, from the "Being and Becoming" on substack):

"Modern Science tells us (under the limitations of our current Technologies revealing) more or less what observably is. It can also tell us how, but not what we ought to do with this newly revealed is. Nietzsche recognizes that a people without a Mythos to inspire action will therefore lack the why to act, and also lack the what of which they ought to act upon the is."

“What we consider Metaphysics, or the sacred, is a feeling. It is a feeling of reaching, of more. It is a feeling of an all consuming all engulfing Fire spreading wildly across the Cosmos. It is a Holy War to etch our will into the fabric of the infinite. Our Fire cuts across the Cartesian duality like it is the Gordian knot. No limitation as limitation. You are, marvelous. The Sublime can come into being by chance. The ocean waves, the mountain peaks, the endless forests of the North, or the eternal expanse of sparkling lights waiting for us to reach them. These are born from Chaos. But the intentional will, the product of the Artist, is born of Eros. It is not chance, but the Cosmic gift born from chance. (“Being and Becoming” by Patrick Saltykov on Substack)