the nature of the \"darkside\"

I disagree. I think the Force is a tool. It is only light or dark according to how the user weilds it. The Force as an entity by itself is neither light nor dark.

So, the hammer you hold in your hand to build is merely a tool, and not a living thing.

It still has a dual nature: it can be used for creation (building a house, driving stakes into packed Earth for a tent, etc.) or it can be used as a weapon. One is the Light Side; the other is the Dark Side.

I also see the Force as more than a tool, more of a living thing with its own will, as well as the capacity for interaction. It is not something to simply be wielded, but something to be worked with, communed with... like taming a wild animal, the relationship that we have can be positive or negative, Light or Dark.

My claims don't make it so, nor do yours: neither of us can be correct or incorrect, since there isn't yet something which is demonstrably true of either Light or Dark.

But so long as we decry the idea that it cannot be Light or Dark, we disclaim the capacity for choice (the justification for this claim is a LONG argument, if you're up to it). In failure to choose, the choice is made for us.

Fire is a tool, but it's still technically alive. Oxen are tools, and they are alive.

Is your Force alive or inanimate?

I agree that the Force is sentient, but can do nothing on its own, so what we use if for, is what makes Light or Dark. The Force is in everything, but it is static until used by its weilder. In order for something to happen in the Universe, a something has to react with the Force.

At the risk of getting into a \"Schroedinger's Cat\" argument, what makes you believe this to be the case?

I believe that because i have not yet pictured it in my mind as any other way. Perhaps if a hammer that was laying on the ground, and through no external forces other than itself, jumped up and bashed somebody in the head, then I would reconsider my earlier statement.

You have a strange idea about what is or isn't alive... I view the Force more in the sense of its being an energy field, like fire.

Fire is energized gas. It is alive, in that it undergoes birth, death, and interaction. It consumes wood. It destroys and creates. It seeks to expand itself.

Are we any more or less alive?

In my minds eye I see the Force as dots or balls. When I see a tree for example, i envision it made up of subatomic sized dots or balls, that I call tthe Force. To me only when the Force has to react to something does it become alive, in that it destroys or creates, or changes into something else.

So... the Force is a chemical reaction, rather than an energetic one?

I think of it as \"dormant\" energy until it is forced to react.

stop me (and correct me please if i am wrong) but it seems as though, Jedi Bael, that you are sort of stating that instead of a Living Force, it's more of a just Reactive Force.

Am I wrong in this assumption? Not a sentient Force with an ultimate will, but something that just exists such as an atom, that goes about it's way until something comes along and stirs it up?