PT "Mourn them do not; Miss them do not."-Good advice or bad advice?

In addition to his upbringing outside of the Order, Ani has also gone through three years of war on an interstellar scale. And the war is still going on all over the galaxy, with no end in sight. It wouldn't be a stretch to think Ani is heavily stressed out; anyone, even a Jedi, would be. Yoda should've taken even greater care to make sure Ani understood exactly what was meant, and that the message is not, "Let them die, be happy they die, and forget they ever existed." That is certainly not what Yoda means, but anyone might misinterpret it. Especially a worried, tired vet in the middle of the worst war in at least a century.

 

@Kenneth Morgan yes, well said.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

Over a thousand years. My recollection is that this is the first galactic war they’ve had in over a thousand years. Yeah, anyone would be pretty stressed out about that.

What baffles me about Yoda’s response is that he’s, what, 880 years old? You’d think at this point he’d have learned about what makes humans tick — we’re insanely sensitive over the thought of our friends and loved ones dying. Our own history shows this. We do crazy things, things we never thought we’d do to protect those that we love — even if it means we screw over someone else because they’re not family.

That’s...just human. It’s human emotions and I’m shocked Yoda, after all those centuries, apparently doesn’t even have a basic grasp as to how human emotions work. We don’t think rationally when it comes to our friends and loved ones facing harm or death.

 

This is the most baffling thing to me. How would that have helped? You think all Anakin needed to hear was that it was okay to grieve and he would have stopped worrying about Padme dying? That's ridiculous. Anakin's problem isn't that he's repressing his emotions. His problem is that he can't let people go. He doesn't want to grieve over Padme, he wants to stop her from dying or leaving him, ever.

 

True, but as it has been noted, Anakin was impatient and took the quick and easy route to solving his problems by seeking out more power. It's not that Yoda didn't understand where Anakin was coming from. It was that Anakin withheld facts from him about his situation, which in turn makes it difficult for Yoda to help him. After all, Ben hid his true feelings from Luke, who had to sense his thoughts while his nephew was asleep. But he only does that because he knows what his father had done and how he had not been forthcoming with the Jedi.

But he sees that she's dying somewhere in a medical facility. She still dies despite that. Medical science will fail and that is why he looks to the Force.

Ahsoka is more forthcoming with Yoda than Anakin was.

Bingo. People who think Yoda screwed up keep missing that it isn't what Yoda did or didn't say, but what Anakin has already decided. He said out loud that he will do whatever it takes to make sure that no one he cares for dies again. He would become the most powerful Jedi ever and that he would stop them from dying. He's already made up his mind that day to turn to the dark side. He just hadn't realized it yet.

You know how recently the victims of the Parkland shooting said that they don't want people's prayers, they want action. Well, that's precisely Anakin's mind set with Yoda telling him to let go of his fears. He didn't want his sympathies, he wanted the knowledge to cheat death.

 

Which makes Yoda's advice important. If he'd phrased it differently, if he'd held out some hope that the future predictions could be avoided, if he'd just asked Ani, "What exactly did you see?", Ani might've calmed down. He'd have been left with some hope and been less of an easy target for Palpatine. Instead, Yoda sounds like Padme is already dead and she should be utterly blanked out from memory.

Ani was not fated to turn any more than Luke's friends were fated to die at Bespin; it was a possible future. Up until the moment he took that last step, Ani could've found a better way and avoided the Dark Side. Yoda could've helped him in that effort, but the words he chose had a bad effect. Something closer to, "Try what you can, but prepare for the worst," would've been better. It might've even been enough, for all we know.

Ani was not utterly desperate and ready to toss it all away until he switched on that 'saber and swung at Mace. Before then, he still had a chance.

 

And what if the visions couldn't be avoided? Anakin isn't wiling to take that chance. But in order to be a Jedi he has to be able to accept that there may be nothing he can do to prevent the future he saw.

Padme is already on Coruscant with ready access to the finest medical care the galaxy can provide. Anakin is already assuming that her death is something that medical science won't be able to prevent. The idea that Yoda could just say, "Well let's just stick her in a hospital 24/7 until the babies are due" and calm Anakin down, as if that's not something Anakin would have already considered and rejected, is just as ridiculous as the notion that Anakin could have been turned around by a nice pep talk about how it's natural to grieve.

Yoda hears what's going on with Anakin and correctly gets to the root of the issue, which is Anakin's deep-seated fear of loss. That's what he tries to address, in the best way he possibly can. But Anakin decides he can't follow Yoda's advice. He convinces himself that he doesn't have a choice, when he really does.

 

You sound like Kenobi should've gone into Ani's room while he was asleep and just hacked him to death with his 'saber and saved the galaxy a lot of trouble.
It's clear that, while Ani is unwilling to just let Padme die, he's not yet ready to go over to the Dark Side. There's still a chance to give him constructive advice in how to handle the situation, both positive (keep her safe and under close medical observation) and negative (don't sell your soul for a lie). The problem is that Kenobi is too occupied to offer help, Yoda's help is phrased in a way to seems to offer no hope, Mace doesn't care, and Palpatine's a con artist. If anyone had given Ani advice that was good, comforting and understandable, the whole thing might've been avoided. If Ani wasn't ready to listen at all, he'd have abandoned the Jedi much earlier than he did. Ani was not a lost cause, as Luke proved decades later.

 

I think there are two different scenarios that are getting mixed up in a lot of these answers -- Is Yoda's advice best for Anakin? And is Yoda's advice best for us?

The 2nd answer is more difficult than the 1st. In Star Wars, they live in a universe where there is obvious physical evidence of a spiritual world and life after death. They've witnessed what powers the Force can give those who can tap into it and they've seen people return as ghosts after death. Anakin has every reason to believe that Padme will live on forever unified with the Cosmic Force. That type of assurance of a future afterlife is a luxury that we don't have. So, given Anakin's Buddhist type upbringing, he should be able to accept that if Padme dies, she'll simply pass on to another plane of existence, a plane of existence that he'll join in the future where, in some sense, he'll be reunited with her. His desire to keep her in his life is purely selfish. He knows that Padme's existence will not end with her death. He just wants to keep her in his life anyway despite the negative consequences his actions will have.

In fact, Yoda isn't merely giving Anakin advice. He is placing in contrast the consequences of Anakin's selfish desires with the consequences of not acting selfishly. After Anakin admits that he fears losing someone close to him, Yoda warns, "The fear of loss is a pathway to the dark side."

Anakin responds, "I won't let these visions come true, Master Yoda."

It's at this point that Yoda tells him to rejoice at the idea that Padme will be transformed into the Force, and not to miss her passing, or mourn the loss of her.

In this way, Yoda is contrasting these two possible alternatives. The first alternative is to accept that Padme will live on after death in another plane of existence where she will be at peace. The second alternative -- interfering with what is destined for Padme -- will force Anakin to embrace the dark side. When you factor this in, it's obvious that Yoda's advice is sound. It's either accepting that Padme will be transformed into the Force and live happily and eternally in that form or turning evil to prevent that.


When it comes to our world, I don't think the issue is as clear cut. First, we have no proof that there is life after death, and the idea of a soul doesn't seem to meld well with the way our brains seem to function with its complex interplay of a 100 billion neurons, which certainly seems like a purely biochemical process. We don't have the luxury of having proof of an afterlife or of any aspect of the spiritual world for that matter. The best that some of us have is the faith or hope that there is something more than the physical world that we see around us, and some of us don't even have that. So, death in our world doesn't guarantee eternal bliss. It could just be lights out, and nothing after that. Since living longer is better than an immediate cut to black, our loved ones have more to lose when they die, and so, we have much more to fear if a loved one is facing death. If one has strong faith in an afterlife or reincarnation, then these fears are diminished, and people of some faith traditions celebrate when a loved one passes away, though certainly most feel some bereavement or loneliness after a death.

Our mindset towards death is not merely limited to its affects on others, however. In comparison to our materialistic hedonistic / Christian-influenced society, the Buddhist mindset and the ascetic mindset leads people to respond to death quite differently. Asceticism encourages one to give up all earthly pleasures. Strangely, this doesn't seem to make ascetics any less happy than the rest of us. Buddhism teaches people to let go of their desires and attachments because the ego is an illusion and striving for illusory goals causes unnecessary stress, anxiety, and suffering; thus a Buddhist can enjoy earthly pleasures in moderation as long as one doesn't form an attachment to any of these pleasures. (Yes, these are great over-simplifications of these spiritual practices.)

The Jedi are essentially laser sword-wielding Buddhists, and Yoda's words of advice would not seem particularly exceptional or unusual to most Buddhists I would think, and I imagine that someone like the Dalai Lama responds to death in much the way Yoda describes. The Buddhist mindset takes training and somewhat goes against some of our most basic psychological impulses, so it's not easy to reach this level of detachment. Some confuse Buddhist detachment with a lack of empathy for other, and this is not the case. As the concept of a personal ego disappears for Buddhists, they feel compassion for everyone, as the line that separates an individual's suffering and the suffering of others falls away.

Personally, I respect the Buddhist outlook and incorporate some aspects of it in my life. At the same time, its benefits requires sacrifices in other areas of my life that I'm not willing to give up, including my strong attachments to my loved ones. For me, Yoda's advice still has some value. For someone who has fully accepted Buddhism, it probably has more value, and conversely, for someone who rejects the basic ideas of Buddhism, his advice probably has little value. All the same, we should recognize that this spiritual outlook offers a worthwhile path to follow even if it is not as helpful to those of us from very different belief systems.

 

funny thing about the quote is that later in the movie Yoda tells Chewbacca "miss you i will"

 

There isn't an afterlife in SW. When a person becomes "one with the force" they cease to exist as a person. Yoda and Obi-Wan were granted immortality, and it was unique to them. The Jedi of the Clone Wars era didn't know of such a thing.

 

There is sort of an afterlife in SW. The Sith cease to exist when they die and don't become one with the Force, per the Clone Wars Yoda Arc. Everybody else becomes one with the Force. It seems that when an individual becomes one with the Force, their consciousness ceases to exist as a separate entity but they continue to live on, not individually, but as part of a whole, one with the Force, or something like that.

I also believe that Lucas said that individuals can't remain Force ghosts forever. At some point they become one with the Force as well.


@JEDI-RISING, Yoda was just being polite to Chewie.

Yoda: Chewbacca, miss you I will not.
Chewie: Wrrrrr?
Yoda: Miss you I should not. Attachment leads to jealousy -- the shadow of greed, that is.
Chewie: Wrrrrr??????
Yoda: The fear of loss is a path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
Chewie: Wrrrrr!!!
Yoda: Never mind, you should. Misspoke I did. Miss you very, very much I will.

 

There is no other advice that would have made Anakin change his mind. Anakin isn't looking for comfort, and he wouldn't accept it if it were offered. He's looking for a solution. He's looking for a way to cheat death. That's all he's after.

Like I already said, the notion that Anakin hadn't already considered keeping Padme under close medical observation and rejected the idea as futile is ridiculous. Anakin isn't a simpleton. That's the first thing literally anyone would think of. Anakin has clearly come to the conclusion, based on what he felt in his premonition, that Padme's death in childbirth is something inexplicable which can only be prevented through supernatural means (which turns out to be true). Nothing that Anakin says or does makes sense otherwise. I don't know why people continually offer that up as a solution when everything in the movie points toward it being a non-sequitur.

And no, Obi-Wan shouldn't have gone into his room and preemptively murdered him, because that's morally wrong regardless of what Anakin might do in the future. In fact, that exact kind of thinking is right at the beating heart of why Anakin ends up making the choices that he does.

I also never implied that Anakin was a lost cause. The power was within him to make the correct choice, he simply had to be shown how to do it. Mace, exemplifying the hypocrisy of the Jedi in the Clone War, failed to do that. Luke, years later, succeeded. The problem was Jedi hypocrisy, not Jedi philosophy.

e:

Yes, and in that sense the theology of Buddhism (and by extension Star Wars) is fairly compatible with a purely secular worldview. When I die I don't expect to survive in any meaningful sense. The matter that composed my body will return to the universe and ultimately become something else. Depending on how you choose to look at it, this is a sort of reincarnation, but the "me" that once was will never be again. And this is just as true in Buddhism, even with its more literal notion of reincarnation. So the calm acceptance of death that comes from a Buddhist view of the world isn't due to any notion that your consciousness or personal identity will survive your death, because that's not really what Buddhism teaches. There's a continuity between the person you were and the person you reincarnate as, but it's akin to the continuity between a person as a baby and a person as an adult. We consider the adult version of the person and the baby version of the person to be the same, but in reality the baby version is long gone. Its subjective experience of its existence likely doesn't survive beyond a very few fleeting, distorted impressions which remain within the current subjective experience of the adult. And even the adult's subjective experience is constantly shifting and changing and, ultimately, dying; how much of yourself from a year ago do you really retain in the present moment, if you really think about it? All those memories from last year have been altered and consolidated and for the most part straight-up deleted in order to create a more manageable cognitive amalgam which you can call "yourself" from moment to moment. This is getting really off into the weeds, but the point is that everything is change, and you've already experienced a functionally infinite amount of deaths throughout your lifetime without even realizing it. So why bother worrying about one more?

That said, I still do worry about that one last death that comes at the end of all the other deaths. I do think it's possible to conquer that worry, but that doesn't mean I've actually done it yet.

 

Much of what you wrote otherwise makes sense, but this is where I strongly disagree. How Anakin was treated by the Jedi, how little understanding and compassion they showed him, had everything to do with how he became later. What makes you so sure absolutely nothing the Jedi could have said would have had any effect whatsoever on Anakin? Besides "cheat death" is a phrase Palpatine came up with. How can trying to save someone you love be "cheating" in any way? Do you feel taking a family member to a hospital for treatment would also be "cheating death"? Of course Anakin knew Padme like everyone else would eventually die. What he tried to prevent is that particular death, in childbirth. Just like he would have accepted losing his mother some day, only not in such a particularly cruel and painful way. Is that not normal?

 

The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that the talk with Yoda was something like a call for help from Anakin. The topic itself wasn't that important, everything besides was. The talk reminds me of those when a suicidal person looks out for help a last time. Yoda's advice and attitude in that moment is more or less the aquivalent "Sleep tonight, tomorrow everything will look better."

Personally I see nothing about the wish that someone should not die, as obsession or cheating death. Not letting a person die, even if it's better is a bad. But not trying to prevent someones death in a everyday situation. That's like saying everyone who does get a child in a surgery because the natural way is too dangerous, cheats death.

Yeah, he should have been more forthcoming with Yoda, but how could he? At that time it was Padme who still didn't want anyone to know.

I find it hard to believe Anakin is obsessed with not letting people die at this point. Up to this point he has had one real experience with someone dying and that was his mother. And from this experience there is actually only one thing that he could take away and act now on: Not listening to orders, stupid advices (dreams pass in time), but act. Or tell someone about the dreams/visions and hope for a better answer than the stuff he's got. (I'm not defending the slaughter, I'm talking up to the point he's found his mum).

I think both the Jedi and Anakin have somewhat self-fulfilling precognitions/dreams. And both act completely on it. Anakin because of what he sees is the result of his acting (something that he doesn't know), the Jedi because they act on their feelings concerning him since their very first meeting. They should have handled him slightly different instead of telling a child that missing its parents is a bad thing. No nine year old understands the meaning behind it - the natural reaction is missing them secretly and never talk about.

And then comes the "lovely grandfatherly figure" with lots of sweets, cookies and nice, understanding words ...


(I hope this is somewhat readable. There isn't enough caffeine in the world for me today.)

 

Some of the Jedi (namely Mace) treated Anakin a little coldly, it's true. And Obi-Wan was always a little hard on him. But how does that take away Anakin's personal responsibility? None of the Jedi ever did anything that bad to Anakin. They accepted him into their Order and treated him just like any other Jedi. Obi-Wan cared for Anakin like a father and was always just trying to look out for Anakin's best interest. No one forced Anakin to do any of the horrible things he did. That was a choice Anakin made of his own free will. He knew the stakes and he knew the consequences. He knew there was an alternative. But he chose to do those things anyway.

And within the cosmology of the Star Wars universe, preventing death using supernatural means is an inherently unnatural thing. This is made pretty clear. If Anakin could have found a way to save Padme's life using medical science, that would be one thing. But what Anakin is looking to do is some weird **** from out of the Necronomicon. He's convinced that nothing less than that will save her. But that's going too far out of the natural order of things. It's an obscenity against the universe.

Well then at this point I'm not sure you and I are watching the same series of movies. Did you even watch Attack of the Clones? "Someday I will become the most powerful Jedi ever. I promise you. I will even learn to stop people from dying." "I wasn't strong enough to save you, Mom. I wasn't strong enough. But I promise, I won't fail again." Come on. Things are in movies for reasons. We know because the people who make movies talk about it.

Anakin going to Yoda wasn't a cry for help except in the sense that he wanted help finding a way to cheat death. He thinks Padme is fated to die and he wants to learn the power to alter fate. The fact that Padme dies during childbirth in his vision is significant because it's a representation of the natural cycle of death and rebirth which so frightens Anakin. Anakin wants to gain enough power to exercise control over that cycle. He essentially wants to become a god. Lucas himself has described that scene in mythological terms as Anakin appealing to the gods for the power to conquer death, and being denied. And so he turns to the devil instead.

The problem, as I've said many times before, is that everyone is viewing all these events and imagery in much too prosaic a fashion. The issue here isn't the efficacy of Yoda's therapeutic technique. That's like focusing on a single mote of dust while trying to interpret the meaning of a design on a tapestry. There's much grander and more meaningful stuff going on in the scene. What's going on is that Anakin (and the audience) is being confronted with the most significant statement in the entire prequel trilogy: "Learn to let go of everything you fear to lose." Anakin must look deep within himself to discover if he's capable of doing this (just as the audience must look within themselves). Nothing is more interesting than this. Everything else falls away.

 

But here, despite what you says later, you do argue that Anakin is a lost cause, that there is nothing that the Jedi can say or do that could prevent this. That he could never do other than what he did.

Also, consider the situation, which the Jedi don't do but I will get to that later.
He had visions about his mother in pain and he did the proper Jedi thing and ignored it for as long as he could. But then he could not ignore it any more and he went to help her. But he was too late and she died, after suffering horribly. And he exploded in anger, hate and death.
Had he gone to help her sooner, he might have been able to save her life.
So to Anakin, inaction did not help but action might have done so.
His mothers death was not a natural death, she was beaten and died from that violence.

Anakin does not know how exactly Padme will die but given his last experience, some form of outside cause is not just plausible but even likely.
So he is looking for some way to prevent this specific death but Yoda brushes him off.
And thus he gets interested in the idea to stop death in general.

To me, Anakin is quite the simpleton. He makes several bone-headed choices and he swallows, hook, line and sinker, all of Palpatine's talk about stopping death. Never once asking for some kind of proof.
And even after he finds out that Palpatine is a sith and thus not trustowrthy, he still goes along with it.
The best excuse is that he is so desperate that he is willing to try anything. But that does not speak very highly of his inteligence.

[/QUOTE]

To me, outside events, can and did influence his choice. It was his choice and he is responsible but I don't think the Jedi can shirk responsibility here.
They knew about his mother but did nothing and that caused problems later.
They did not seem to consider Anakins unique circumstances and that he had a different background than their other students that had never known their parents.
They did not alter their teaching in any way and just expected that their "One-size fits all" approach would work.

This is why what Yoda said was not good advice nor was it wise.
Proper teaching is not only about what knowledge you want to impart, it is also about trying to make sure that the recipient understands it and learns the correct lesson and not the wrong one.
And here it is very clear that Anakin learned the wrong lesson. He learned, "The Jedi are uncaring and cold and will not help me in any way, screw them."

Part of good teaching is trying to phrase the lesson in ways the student can understand and grasp.
To that end, trying to find out how the student thinks, what they know and try to put yourself in their position is quite important.
Yoda does not do that, he simply spouts jedi dogma.

And if Anakin isn't telling him enough, then say that.
"Anakin I need more information in order for me to help you. If you are not open with me, I might not be able to give you the correct aid."

Also, Anakin has been a Jedi for over ten years now. This is pretty basic Jedi dogma and surely Anakin would have heard this many times before.
But clearly he has not learnt that lesson.
And this should be clear to Yoda. But what does he do, he gives the same lesson again.
Never considering the problem was not that Anakin had not heard this before, but that the problem was that he had not learned it.
So then trying an alternate approach is good teaching.
Simply repeating a lesson over and over again in the same way is less like to work than trying to phrase the same lesson in a different way.
Or take Shmi, he had bad dreams about her in AotC and apparently have done so for some time.
Should this not be a warning sign that Anakin has not been able to let go of his mother and that the Jedi teaching isn't working?
But Obi-Wan dismisses it and hopes it will go away on it's own.

Also, compassion, sympathy and understanding, did the Jedi not know about that?
That a person is more likely to listen to advice from someone they feel cares about them, understands them and so on.
That is what Palpatine did, he was the open ear and the sympathetic shoulder for Anakin.
So no wonder he listened more to him.
And this does not mean that the Jedi can not be strict, they can and should but temper that with some compassion and understanding.
Like with his mother, scolding nine year Anakin for missing her when that is very normal was not a good start.
I have seen plenty of examples in fiction where you have commanding officers or superiors that are quite strict and gruff but still have a heart and show that they do care.
And Obi-wan did show some sympathy at times so he at least seemed to have some understanding of this.

In closing, the basic idea, don't let grief consume you, is sound advice.
But phrased badly.
And trying to ignore feelings or suppress them, which is what Anakin did, can cause far more harm than allowing you to grieve and mourn and say your goodbye and then move on.
It is proper to mourn, to say goodbye, the dead person is dead and does not care. The mourning is for the living and grief can serve you, make you let go and thus be able to move on.

Lastly, the Jedi do have funerals and they seem somber affairs. They had one for Qui-Gon and I saw no rejoicing there, and it seemed about saying goodbye and letting go.
So it sounds a bit like the Jedi don't practice what they preach.

Bye.
The Guarding Dark

 

He said those things in a state of EXTREME upset, grief, shock, rage, guilt and sense of failure. Who after just losing his mother doesn't think or say "I wish I could have helped her, I wish I had done more" etc.? This is normal. Anakin did not literally think he would ever stop people from dying. Even in his grief he knew that is impossible. It wasn't until that talk with Sidious that he first had hope this might actually be possible. But no way he was serious in the Lars garage.
Other than that, I can only agree with @Ash_Satine and @Samuel Vimes here, and there isn't much I could add.

 

What he said in then was surely not literally. It was a wish of someone who just holds his death mother in his arms. Who is able to say any coherent thing in this situation? We are still talking about a 19yo. I'm sure many people, who just find a parent/their kid or wife/husband after a car crash and hold them in their arms while they die, would say many stupid things. My father said a lot of stupid things the day my mum died. I said that I want her back. Am I obsessed now with bringing death people back, just because I said that once? And I said that without any attachment issues and after not living with my parents for a couple of years and after moving to another part of the country.

Anakin's actions after his mother's death (one situation) and after his fall were bad. Before that he was desperate and desperate people can easily become dangerous. That is why that advice is dangerous for Anakin in this situation.

 

Exactly the way I see it!

 

I feel that Yoda telling Anakin not to mourn/miss them is wise, as that is consistent with their views on attachment, and it sounds like they could still one day be with them and all...But I do feel that Yoda telling him that is kind of unrealistic. It's like telling a young child not to want a piece of candy when it's offered. You can withhold the candy from them, but you can't make them not at least WANT it...It's essentially telling someone to feel (or not feel) a certain way. Not that easy!

 

So essentially you're arguing that he's saying those things for no real reason that have any bearing on the larger plot of him pursuing the power to cheat death. They're just random words in the script. Well, we clearly consume media in totally incompatible ways. I analyze fictional works in literary terms, while you seemingly approach them as if they're unedited recordings in which people just blurt things out which don't necessarily have any greater significance to a narrative. I see no further reason to continue this discussion.

Anakin isn't a child. He's a man. A Jedi Knight.

 

Which Anakin knows is not what Yoda meant. Anakin knows that what Yoda said, which is the same thing Obi-wan has always taught him, was the correct thing to do. The problem for Anakin is what is right by the Jedi standard is not what feels right to him. This is how Palpatine was able to twist him to the dark side.

But Anakin did believe it was fated to happen because it happened once before and he failed. When Yoda says that failure is the greatest teacher, he was right, but only if you understand what the lesson from the failure is. Luke learned his lesson by being more patient when it came to rescuing Han. Anakin, on the other hand, took the wrong track. Instead of learning to deal with his attachment issues, Anakin doubled down on his attachments by vowing to keep them no matter the cost.

Anakin was already desperate to stop her from dying the minute he woke up from his nightmare. He failed Shmi, he would not fail Padme. His worst fears were coming to light again and this time, he would not fail.

Yoda isn't attached to Chewbacca and Tarfful. He can feel a bit of sorrow for leaving his friends behind, but he is not obsessed with trying to save them from the Clonetroopers. If they died, he will be able to move on from their deaths.

There is a difference between fighting to survive something that is fatal which could be cured, versus using a natural power in an unnatural way. Palpatine tells Anakin that to use the Force to stop others from dying is unnatural, something that Lucas himself also states.

"When you get down to where we are right now in the story, you basically get somebody who’s going to make a pact with the Devil, and it’s going to be a pact with the Devil that says, 'I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Styx, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it, so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the Dark Lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the very person I want to hang on to.' You know, it’s Faust. So Anakin wants that power, and that is basically a bad thing. If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s not a good thing. That’s as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept that natural course of life. Of all things. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself, but death for the things you care about."

--George Lucas, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005.

Medical science is the evolution of natural work, done in a natural way. It doesn't involve selling their souls for power. People pray to God or whatever their deity is, in order to hope for a positive outcome. I've done it myself. But I would not pray to Lucifer for his intervention in saving my brother and stepfather.

Yes, he was.

"The scene in the garage here, we begin to see that what he's really upset about is the fact that he's not powerful enough. That if he had more power, he could've kept his mother. He could've saved her and she could've been in his life. That relationship could've stayed there if he'd have been just powerful enough. He's greedy in that he wants to keep his mother around, he's greedy in that he wants to become more powerful in order to control things, in order to keep the things around that he wants. There's a lot of connections here with the beginning of him sliding into the dark side. And it also shows his jealousy and anger at Obi-Wan and blaming everyone else for his inability to be as powerful as he wants to be, which he hears that he will be, so here he sort of lays out his ambition and you'll see later on his ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku's. He says "I will become more powerful than every Jedi." And you'll hear later on Dooku will say "I have become more powerful than any Jedi." So you're going start to see everybody saying the same thing. And Dooku is kind of the fallen Jedi who was converted to the dark side because the other Sith Lord didn't have time to start from scratch, and so we can see that that's where this is going to lead which is that it is possible for a Jedi to be converted. It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful, and control things. Because of that, and because he was unwilling to let go of his mother, because he was so attached to her, he committed this terrible revenge on the Tusken Raiders."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

"The key part of this scene ultimately is Anakin saying, "I'm not going to let this happen again." We're cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi. The only way you can really do that is to go to the dark side, because the dark side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side which is the dark side, but ultimately it would be your undoing. But it's that need for power and the need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and to allow the natural course of life to go on, which is that things come and go, and to be able to accept the changes that happen around you and not want to keep moments forever frozen in time."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

 

Actually he says "the dark side is a pathway to many abilities that SOME may consider unnatural", meaning he himself does not share this opinion. As for the comparison with the "devil", it sure is Lucas' right to write his story that way. I personally don't believe in the devil, so the statement has little meaning for me.

Of course for a reason, but as I already explained, those words were said by someone in an emotionally extremely upset state of mind. If you find the very concept that someone in that situation may say things they don't mean totally unacceptable then indeed there is no point in continuing this discussion. You may also want to read Ash_Satine's comments. He/she put it very well.
Oh, and I simply don't believe in the concept of "cheating death", see above. Sorry, but this is my world view and belief system. You are entitled to have your own.

 

I doubt Lucas believes in a literal devil either. The devil is just a metaphor for evil. Do you believe in evil?

This isn't a documentary. This is a fictional story. Try to understand that. When Charles Foster Kane says "Rosebud" at the end of Citizen Kane, it means something. It's not just random neurons firing in his brain for no reason as he dies. That might be the case in real life, but it would be a nonsensical and meaningless end to a story. Do you understand? I'm talking about the distinction between a narrative, which is told with a purpose, and real life, which unfolds however it may. Do you get it?

And I don't care if this story doesn't reflect your worldview. It's not your story. Just because you don't agree with the meaning of the story doesn't mean that it means something else. For example, if you happen to be a Nazi sympathizer, it doesn't suddenly make Schindler's List a pro-Nazi film. Right?