Star Wars is Taoism in American garb

George Lucas's multi-billion dollars Star Wars franchise, now owned by the Disney Company, is going to be very popular in China, too. That's because Star Wars is basically a metaphor for Taoism.

Star Wars is a space saga with aliens and superhumans. The superhumans are called "Jedi knights" who mastered "the Force" and embarked on the "Jedi's Way". Taoism is a 2,500-year-old cosmic Chinese philosophy about the force (qi), the way (tao) and superhumans - the junzi (or daojun) - embarking on the "Way of Tao".

Those who have studied Taoism know about its fundamentals. In the beginning there was the Tao, then the Tao beget the two opposing forces: yin and yang. In Star Wars we have the "Force", which begets the two opposing forces: the "Light Side" and the "Dark Side" of the "Force". The practitioners of the Way (or Tao) are heroes and antiheroes (called Jedi Masters and Sith Lords in Star Wars).