Contradictions in Shadow/Vorlon behavior

[SpooRancher]

In rewatching the B5 DVD's for about the 7th time, I began really nitpicking the Shadow and Vorlon behavior.

Not nitpicking, perhaps, more noticing some inconsistencies between their philosophies and behavior.

The Vorlons are the lords of order, yet when they deal with other races, their behavior is incomprehensible, as is their language. Need I suggest that it is....chaotic?

On the other hand, the Shadows, the lords of chaos, demand from their "associates" blind loyalty, and complete submission. Need I say that they actually have a more defined heirarchy than the Vorlons?

I have wondered in the past about such things in our own governments. In a government's attempt to impose order, sometimes they actually create more chaos than before. And when England withdrew from India, after an adjustment period, the actual relaxation of imposed order (allowance of chaos, if you will) allowed a new social order to come to the surface, one which with a few exceptions has been relatively peaceful.

Does anyone else have any theories as to JMS's thoughts in this? Has he spoken or written on this subject?

[Andrew_Swallow]

I have wondered in the past about such things in our own governments. In a government's attempt to impose order, sometimes they actually create more chaos than before. And when England withdrew from India, after an adjustment period, the actual relaxation of imposed order (allowance of chaos, if you will) allowed a new social order to come to the surface, one which with a few exceptions has been relatively peaceful.

Since Britain left India:
India split up on independence.
India and Pakistan have been to war with each other several times.
East and West Pakistan had a civil war leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
Ceylon is involved in a civil war in which one side calls it Sri Lanka.
Burma has basically reintroduced state slavery.
There are periodic Muslim V. Hindu riots in India.
Pakistan keeps having military dictatorships.
Bribery and corruption is rampant.

Yes, nice peaceful place.

[SpooRancher]

OK, perhaps India was not the best of examples. However, that does not address the basic question.

[Kloreep]

I generally don't think of them along the lines of "lords of order" and "lords of chaos" because, as you say, it doesn't always hold.

I generally define them instead by their opposite question. What the Vorlons want is to be the revered, guiding gods among the Third Ones - by Third Ones I mean Humans, Minbari, Narns, Centauri, etc. (And it seems they'll do pretty much anything to secure that. They don't seem to really care who they are, what they do.) The Shadows seem to see themselves as a group whose role it is to be the provoker, the antagonist, to push the Third Ones forward. (But forward toward what? What do they want, ultimately? They don't seem to know or care.)

This view of them sort of snapped in to place for me when I was reading through the JMSNews archive and came across a message. I don't remember what JMS' reply was, but he was responding to a message that remarked that the Shadows don't seem to know what they want and the Vorlons don't seem to know who they are.

[Radhil]

JMS has actually addressed this. He has done so right within the series.

"In all this time I've never heard you answer those questions. Who are you? What do you want?" Capt. Sheridan to the Lords of Order and Chaos, Into The Fire

That was kind of the whole point really. They no longer believed their own identities, or purposes. All they saw was victory, rather than any goal regarding the races they claimed to be shepherding. They no longer understood themselves, and in so doing, were no longer themselves. It was that simple, and obviously to the superpowers so afflicted, nearly impossible to see.

EDIT - I think one of the characters in the novels (and I can't say more for spoilage fears) actually points this out more explicitly than the end of the Shadow War did - the way the Shadow tech works, the enslavement and imposing of their maker's order on the living beings within.