Saga Clarification on how the Jedi "recruit" other Jedi

Not exactly how it goes down, IIRC. Obi-Wan is claiming to negotiate a surrender with Loathsom, but he's actually stalling for time, and as such refuses to call off his troops. Loathsom is completely aware that Obi-Wan hasn't called off his troops yet, but continues to engage with Kenobi regardless. Finally, Loathsom loses his temper and has his droids detain Kenobi, as is his right. Then the shield finally comes down, and Kenobi fights back against the droids who are detaining him, as parlay has clearly ended. Obi-Wan was negotiating in bad faith, obviously, but unless I'm mistaken, I don't think he at any point did anything that was a clear violation of the laws of war.

 

It looked like Obi-Wan had personally surrendered himself, and was (pretending to) negotiate for the surrender of his troops as well.

 

Yes, but negotiating for a surrender while fighting is still going on is a thing that happens all the time. I'm not an expert on the laws of war, but I don't think there was really any deception going on. Both sides were still fighting full force. It's not like Loathsom had told his droids to stop fighting while negotiations were ongoing, and Obi-Wan was just waiting to give the clones orders to ambush the unsuspecting Separatist forces. Obi-Wan hadn't surrendered his forces yet. He was negotiating terms for a theoretical surrender which may or may not happen in the future. If conditions changed on the battlefield while negotiations were under way (like, say, if the Separatists' shield came down), Obi-Wan could ultimately choose not to surrender and parley would be over. Which is what happened.

Obi-Wan had indeed surrendered himself, for sure, and so he would be prohibited from using the act of parley as a cover to launch a surprise attack against Loathsom or his droid guards. Ultimately, though, that didn't happen. Loathsom broke the parley first by having his droids forcibly detain Obi-Wan and by implicitly threatening his life. At that point, Obi-Wan was free to try to escape and to defend himself.

I think what Obi-Wan was doing was probably a bit morally suspect for a Jedi, but I think he was clever enough to avoid breaking any laws, technically. I admit I could be wrong, though. I read over this Wikipedia article and it seems like Obi-Wan neatly side-stepped all the prohibitions. The most relevant part seems to be Article 37, Section 1a. But I don't think it applies to Obi-Wan because he wasn't acting under a flag of truce or surrender, except when it came to his own person.

 

You're still not showing any causation here, you're just making statements without explaining why.

Somehow, being like Luke, or just being raised by families and trained a bit later in life (which apparently automatically gives one the qualities of Luke Skywalker), would prevent stagnation, make them less affected by the dark side, and able to see through the brilliant deception of Palpatine (the latter being the most important).

Okay, how?

I can sorta see a point coming along about being flexible in their training methods making them less prone to stagnation overall (however insignificantly), but you're not presenting it.

The Trade Federation, The IGBC, and the Corporate Alliance are not "the Republic", they're not the system, they're people. Palpatine was not the Republic (or at least he wasn't supposed to be), he was a person who was supposed to be working for the Republic. All governments require that its servants act in good faith for the system to work.

Ironically, the problems you've pointed out with the Republic (Palpatine and the corporations) were the very things the Jedi were fighting against, the things you say they should not have fought.

What forms next would still be the Republic, so I'm not sure why it has to die, only to be reformed in the same way, minus a few people who the Jedi were trying to remove anyway.

You're not making much sense here.

The thing is, I can understand the merit behind the idea of blowing up a broken, corrupt cesspool of government, but you're not explaining why very well.

If the Republic is only going to be reformed by the Rebels anyway, I think it would have been better to preserve the Republic in the first place and just remove the people causing the problems (and modify it if necessary), not allow the rise of the Empire and all its evil, not let it descend into civil war and all the unnecessary death and destruction that will come with it.

 

Fair enough.

The The Jedi Path recruiter references were:

pp141-143

ENLISTING NEW MEMBERS
BY MORRIT CH'GALLY, JEDI RECRUITER

The Jedi, as you well know, forbid romantic attachment. We do not marry, nor do we breed powerful lineages from our greatest members How then do we survive from generation to generation, or rebuild our numbers after the decimation of war?

The Force supplies the answer. Any being, regardless of homeworld, species, wealth, or the social status of his or her family, can be born with the ability to touch the Force. These beings have a gift, and if we don't teach them how to do it, the Jedi Order is responsible for squandering that gift.

In fact, those who don't learn to harness their talents at a young age may come to view the Force as a curse. On some planets, those who are Force-sensitive may be persecuted as demonic magicians, or may become so enamored with their otherworldly powers that they may become exactly the monsters their neighbours fear. Once they have reached this state, it is difficult to bring them into the light of Jedi teachings, which in past decades has made them easy marks for the Sith.

The responsible use of power takes a lifetime to perfect, and therefore the Jedi Order only rarely accepts members who are older than a few years. Most of you came to the Temple as infants.

Locating Force-strong newborns is a straightforward process, at least within the Republic's borders. Mandatory blood tests performed at birth record the concentration of midi-chlorians in an infant's cells, and positive results are forwarded to the Jedi Temple for follow-up. Because midi-chlorian analysis is not always definitive - particularly among older children or beings with unusual physiologies - special tools or puzzles may be employed instead. These include the testing screen, a tool that records a subject's ability to read minds or view images remotely, and the mental maze, a test which determines whether a subject can use rudimentary telekinesis.

MISPERCEPTIONS OF THE JEDI

The job of a Jedi Recruiter can be thankless. While many families are proud to have their offspring chosen by the Force, the practical reality of taking a child away from his or her parents is messy and unpleasant. We Jedi firmly believe that Force-strong beings have a right to receive the best training available, and our way requires shunning emotional commitment, especially toward one's birth family. Yet something that seems self-evident to us has been characterized as monstrous in the Holonet. I admit that while we recruiters are vital to the continuation of the Order, we don't do much to burnish the Order's reputation.

The following are perennial slurs levelled against the Order. As a Jedi Knight you must do your part to counter these lies, not by arguing but by setting an example of selflessness and service.

The Jedi are sorcerers. Popular on primitive worlds and among adherents of certain religious sects, this belief betrays a misunderstanding of the Force's presence throughout the universe. The Force is a real, demonstrable phenomenon, not a twist of forbidden "magic". Through our connection to the Force, the Jedi are the agents of life itself.

The Jedi are kidnappers. An all too familiar accusation for Jedi Recruiters, this charge springs from the pain of emotional attachment. It is also technically false. Within the Republic, the Jedi Order has the legal authority to take custody of Force-sensitives, and some Masters have argued that the Force's presence in a child indicates that child's consent to join the Order even before he or she is able to speak.

The Jedi are brainwashers. The belief is in part due to the secrecy surrounding Jedi training and in part due to a widespread misunderstanding of the so-called Jedi mind trick. Some claim that the Order is responsible for mass hypnosis and mind-control. Patently untrue.

The Jedi are elitists. It is fashionable to equate the presence of midi-chlorians with genetic superiority, but the Force chose to manifest itself through the symbiosis in our cells. The Force can call anyone, and is thus the very definition of egalitarian.

 

This is pretty unsavory logic, and I doubt the Jedi were ever meant to have operated in this way. I'd be very interested to know where Daniel Wallace came up with this idea.

 

I wonder that myself. In Outbound Flight Obi-Wan claims that normally it's the parent who decides if the child is to join, or not.

Maybe it's a mix of the two - it's traditional to ask the parent, but not required.

 

Looking at "The Jedi Path", it seems more of a commentary on fan criticism of the PT than anything.

The Sith survived because they adapted their methods. They stuck to two Sith at a time and worked more covertly to gain power, rather than just taking it by force. This makes the Sith stronger than they ever were before. Likewise, by having families the Jedi would have a greater connection to the Living Force which as Lucas said makes them more in tune with other people. More sensitive to others thoughts and feelings. So in their own way, the Jedi weren't as sensitive to others because they made such a staunch effort to prevent the fall of anymore Jedi, by not letting them learn about family life first and thus be able to adapt better to the Jedi Arts.

The problem was that at the point of the Clone Wars, the Senate was too far gone to be saved. It needed to crumble for the people to see what giving up their freedoms for security would entail. So that they're better able to judge how to proceed in the future. Sometimes the only way out is forward.

No, but they were fighting to save something that needed to die in order to be reborn.

 

It's possible that that particular part might be.

 

The Republic was the ideal government until the corruption set in. The concept of the Republic wasn't a problem, but what it had become was. Their mandate to protect the Republic was sound, but that was also the problem. They focused on the narrow and didn't look at the larger picture. That sometimes a purging fire is necessary to yield new life.

 

I can't follow that reasoning. Obi-Wan, raised as a traditional Jedi, didn't seem to have a problem to be "in tune" with others. He had friends outside the order, he even fell in love (per TCW). Same thing with Qui-Gon. Having an ongoing connection to family is not necessarily a problem, but it can be, and will inherently make the training and service more difficult due to attachement when they were supposed to train themselves to let go. We see in each trilogy what happens when Jedi are let attachment affect their judgement. The Jedi, logistically, couldn't take a chance with that. And it seems to have worked for thousands of years.

So instead of fighting the corruption, the Republic should cease to exist and be created again? The same corruption that existed will eventually settle in sooner or later.

 

And is why they fell. Yoda even cops to it in the novelization when he says that continuing the methods that his Master and the other Jedi had used was wrong. That the Jedi needed to be trained differently and due to continuing that which no longer worked had resulted in their decimation. Obi-wan and Qui-gon were only two such aberrations. Many of the other Jedi were not like them. This is why Qui-gon was considered a maverick and Obi-wan used to consider Qui-gon's efforts to be futile. Even calling Anakin and Jar Jar a pathetic lifeform. The only reason he wasn't like that as he aged was due to his emulating Qui-gon. This is also why he could sense that Palpatine wasn't trustworthy before the other Jedi had. Likewise, had he been trained differently, he would have been even stronger than he was.

The Republic's fall serves as an example of what will happen when rot and decay sets in. When it is reformed, it will be with new rules, new checks and balances to prevent the corporations from taking over again. As well as enforcing a stricter governmental regulations that would prevent someone from doing what Palpatine did.

 

They fell because "the dark side of the Force has clouded their vision". That 'blindness' happened to every Jedi, those who were more adept of the Living Force and those who weren't.

What are those wrong methods? What didn't work in their training? Everything they did had a reason and their ways helped the order prosper for thousands of years.

His criticism towards trusting a politician was applied to everyone, not just Palpatine. Ironically, it was Obi-Wan as a Padawan who could sense "something elsewhere, elusive", while Qui-Gon quickly dismisses it and isn't able to sense anything.

 

Not all of them were adapt at the Living Force. The dark side grew strong in part because of their stagnation.

The methods of letting the Jedi be raised without truly understanding emotions first, instead by training them to feel what they should feel. Luke does a better job than any Jedi when it came to saving the day. And that is because he was raised by the Lars. He could sense the good in Anakin, when Obi-wan couldn't. Yoda even dismisses the possibility of trying to save Dooku.

Right, because he's still a product of a Jedi Order that hadn't changed. If it had changed, he would have felt it and realize much sooner that something else was at play.

 

Oh, come on, Qui-Gon Jinn is Mr. Living Force, the guy who returned from the Netherworld of the Force, if he can't sense anything, maybe it's because Palpatine was just so good at deception it's unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to sense it (even though Yoda may have caught a whiff of it), identify it, and defeat it. Even if something is sensed, the whole mystery has to be unraveled, and then the whole plot has to be defeated.

Luke, this shiny product of the new way, almost fell for a grossly overconfident Palpatine's lazy, uninspired tricks, which were nowhere near the level of complexity as his performance during the PT, when he was still relatively humble and definitely very hungry for success.

I think you're underestimating Palpatine's competence and overestimating the Jedi's flaws.

 

But where were they stagnant? What could they have done to avoid the growth of the dark side?

They have emotions and feelings anyway. They aren't trained to be emotionless, they are trained to not let emotion affect their judgement.

Luke was in a very particular situation. If Yoda or any other Jedi had done the exact same thing he did, it wouldn't have worked.

How was that related to the way he was raised? If he didn't know Vader was his father, he wouldn't sense anything at all, let alone try to save him.

When?

It's because he was too focused on the moment.

Sorry, but without an explanation for how and why they should change and what should they have changed into, I can't understand that line of thought.

 

The Three Stooges of Stagnant Dogma, Yoda, Mace and Obi-Wan, all sense something out of place, they just can't quite figure it out.

Obi-Wan senses it early in TPM, and again in ROTS. Mace senses a plot to destroy the Jedi. Yoda gives Palpatine a good, long look.

Anakin, the emotional family man raised by his mother, is completely oblivious, even as Palpatine is spelling it out for him, it takes him forever to put it together.

You don't have causation here, you don't even have consistent correlation.

 

Destiny's Way sums up the PT Jedi problem fairly well - without any condemnatory language:

The old Jedi had personified the rule of order and the will of the state. But they were also secretive, and removed from the people and their representatives. Their link to the outside was through the Supreme Chancellor, and once a malevolent figure like Palpatine became Chancellor, with his disciple among the Jedi, the Jedi were cut off by the secret enemy, isolated, and destroyed.

The Jedi should never be so isolated again.

 

They engage on secret missions, but I don't see them as secretive. Same with being "removed from the people". When do we see that?

The Chancellor and the senators are their link to the senate, not to the Republic citizens.