Holocron of Kronos

What is a Sith?

It would be a man. A man bloody-scarred from the countless victories and failures he’s had to endure in his lifetime. Each time coming to the brink of destruction. Each time achieving what he sought at the cost of his foes' ambitions. That would be true freedom.

0. A Sith has experienced darkness.

1. I. A Sith spends each waking moment ruthlessly pouring [I]everything[/I] into the pursuit of passion.

2. II. A Sith cultivates strength and power through the ability to withstand strife. Strife is generated through the pursuit of milestones where you have the [i]ability[/i] to fail.

3. III. A Sith can only achieve total victory through the honest self-reflection of the scars left from victory and defeat.

I In the darkness you stand alone. Most people do not realise this, and flitter their lives away chasing one vague fancy to the next. A Sith consciously decides upon the purpose of their life.

The pursuit of my passion, the foundation of being Sith. First to find and define my passion, the overarching goal for my existence, and secondly to create a plan towards achieving it. This is the Will of the Sith.

The Will of a Sith must transcend all other things. No other person, state, or entity has authority that supersedes that of the Will of the Sith. Even those thoughts a Sith may have in the moment, where you might be feeling lazy or don’t “want” to do a task, these thoughts are secondary in importance to your own Will. Just as a solider who disobeyed their commanding officer would be called a traitor and punished accordingly, so should these sorts of thoughts should be pushed aside and mentally scolded when they arise internally.

The Sith path is one of [I]action[/I] and [I]results[/I] - even if those results are failures.

The world should be viewed as hostile. Everything and everyone that is not helping you towards your goal is, at best, benign and at worse, dangerous. The universe is an unfathomable amount of wills each trying to achieve their own objective, whether they consciously know it or not. This leads to what looks like chaos, with random wills often bumping into each other as they seek goals that are opposite.

By everything, I really [b]do[/b] mean everything. Your physical, mental, and spiritual resources - or what I class as your strength resources, and your ‘power’ resources, like; assets and people you have direction over.

Those that are more likely to offer to help often have their own motives for doing so. In the end, you can only really trust yourself to have your best interests at heart. And if you succumb to helping others achieve their own goals before yous - then no one has your best interests at heart.

I decided upon “ruthlessly” specifically. Success breeds excess, and the more you achieve your passion, the more likely you’ll be to stop pushing the medal to the floor. A Sith has to continuously re-assess and "cut the fat" from their life. If a habit, person, or action is inhibiting your ability to achieve your purpose, it should be dropped in favour of a habit, person, or action that does.

A Sith must cultivate ruthlessness in all things - it’s not a natural state of being. Self-discipline is not a natural state of man. It takes work.

Living in a “natural” state of being is overrated. Skyscrapers are not natural. Fire places are not natural. Humanity's entire existence has been us unnaturally putting our will above that of an indifferent universe. You can’t expect to one day be the 1%, when you spend the [I]now[/I] (your every waking moment), living like the 99%. Looks at Musk’s lifestyle. Look at any Olympic swimmers day to day. They live un-natural lives.

II For a Sith, strength is its own reward, and weakness its own punishment. Weakness means that you cannot achieve your passion (the punishment), and so the cultivation of strength and power become cornerstones of any Sith’s philosophy.

A Sith knows that strength can only be cultivated through conflict, competition, and strife. If a conflict has no stakes, then it is not a true conflict. It is the fear of losing that enables the drive of success. Would poker be the game it is today if everyone equally won at each round?

I believe that each Sith should draw a roadmap from where they are now to where they’d be once their passion was achieved, and on this roadmap should be “milestones” - finite goals that if achieved, would mean you’re metrically closer to your passion. You must be able to fail at these milestones. For example, a bad milestone if I wanted to be a CTO would be "become a Senior Developer". As a Junior Developer now, I’m all but guaranteed to eventually be a Senior Developer. A good milestone would be “I’ll be employed as a Senior Developer by June 2018”. I can now fail at this milestone, and it is the [I]fear[/I] of failing and the clearness of the goal that will allow me to work towards achieving it.

Much of advancing as a Sith is maintaining your ability . There is a mis-conception that life should be easy. Easy means you’re not pushing yourself as hard as you know you could - you’re giving it everything. You need to develop grit - your passion, resilience, and ability to bear pain and suffering.

Total victory is the attainment of your overarching passion. Some passions are cyclical, in that you can never achieve a final victory, but only constantly improve. Total victory here would be reaching the maximum you think you’re currently capable of, and consistently re-setting the goalpost to a higher pinnacle. When seen this way, most finite goals are actually cyclical.

The honest pursuit of total victory could be seen as the real attainment of freedom. Freedom from any influences apart from one’s own.

A passion that is not cyclical or attainable is not a real passion. “Passions” like, “always be happy” or “never worry about money” are feelings, not passions. A true passion should be objectively measurable externally from your own mind.

Strength and power are distinct. I view strength as control over the self, and power as control over others. This is disputed. Some passions will never require control over others - I think this is okay. But [I]some[/I] will. I think the real issue is there have been few Lords (so far) with experience of managing others, and so power has been relegated to the same as strength in most lectures. My belief is that power is power, and should be rightly separated into its own field of study.

III Constant self-reflection is key to expanding your understanding of the Sith path. Having the constant vigilance of locating and breaking chains that are holding you back, is one of the hallmarks of a true Sith.

Failures leave scars. If you let yourself believe the excuses about why you’ve failed, you will never advance. You have to be honest with yourself about why you failed, and take ownership that it was [I]you[/I] that failed. Blaming someone else, or blaming your environment only takes ownership away from yourself, and means you can’t make the changes to succeed next time. Even when it is someone else’s fault, I’d urge you take ownership of how that person was able to interfere with your own goals. I had a business partner who didn’t do his side of the business. The business failed. Is it his fault he didn’t do the work, or my fault for choosing the wrong partner? By taking ownership - next time, I’ll be more careful choosing a partner.

Victories too, leave scars. To finish an app, I had to sacrifice sleep - and that lack of sleep caused health and relationship problems. The next time I want to build an app, victory has taught me how to achieve it, but also the [I]cost[/I] of another victory. By being honest about the scars left from victory, I can not only aim to achieve a victory again, but find ways that I can improve upon that victory and plan for ways to minimise the downsides.