PT {+The Misconception Of The JEDI ORDER+}

Lately, I have seen more and more fans having a narrative that he Jedi were "dogmatic" "incredibly flawed" "Too detached" in the Prequels. While to the extent that is true, has some of it(or most of it) of the interpretation been a bit exaggerated? Despite me being quite talkative about the prequels, this is one area where I don't normally have discussion in, nor much experience in(I'm so embarrassed to admit it)!

It has been quite a long while since I've seen the PT and I feel there has been some misrepresentation of them.

Rather looking at their merits and flaws, it's an odd way of demonetization to make the Jedi look far more "bad" if not the same as the Sith.

What about the factoring that Palpatine was putting them into a corner? Doesn't that constitute anything to the narrative?

Excuse my "Newbie" like questions. I just need some more refreshers before I start to discuss them more.

 

It's sadly something that has been going on for a while and not something the first six movies (or Lucas himself) supports at all.

From the flawed logic of them having values, ideals and ways = dogma = flaw. To pretending that the Jedi way (what makes them Jedi to begin with) is something they should disregard. To the idea that their involvement in the war was something they could avoid (while completely ignoring the circunstances and consequences). To the idea that they had to be part of a war to "learn" that war is bad. To pretending that because we know that Palpatine is a Sith Lord (something we only know because we've seen the movies) they should know too. The list goes on and on.

 

I agree, that like any religion the Jedi have dogmas. However, I think we should look at the evolution of the Jedi order in a different way. Sidious was able to erode the Republic's faith in the Jedi, and their ability to use the Force, and ultimately almost completely destroyed the order with the help of their brightest student. I think it's only natural to ask yourself the question, what could the Jedi have done different to prevent such a disaster? Does the order's philosophy have inherent flaws, that make it vulnerable?

 

What is so hypocritical is that for a THOUSAND generations this so called corrupt and evil, selfish jedi order reigned with peace and justice throughout the Republic. Yes eventually after all that time a powerful Sith lord was able to manipulate the political landscape and scheme away power. And only because their star pupil fell to the darkside did the order actually fall. How is this suddenly not worth anything and all the millions of jedi that followed the jedi code and ethics of the light side of the force suddenly irrelevant and "had it all wrong."

I feel like its conflict for the sake of conflict and a way to add drama to the sequel trilogy by crappy on the prequel jedi order. I hope im wrong but the Last Jedi trailer looks like more subtle disney prequel distancing if you ask me.

 

I agree that they shouldn't be deemed evil, that Palpatine's genocide of them wasn't some kind of reckoning they deserved, and that their order's death is not somehow a part of the balancing of the Force. Though the idea of them having some pronounced flaws, though again not necessarily ones so terrible so as to deem them villains like the Sith, that helped contribute to the Sith being able to get by and overthrow them was a fascinating idea to me. The notion that even our well-meaning mentors/leaders didn't have it all figured out and what not. But yeah, I think I agree with your central idea.

 

My argument is simple, they maintained peace, aka no war, for a millennia. They must have been doing something right.

But yes I do find the demonization of the Jedi ideals as "dogmatic and wrong" or however they say it, is silly.
They did the best with what they had, they were "human" if you pardon the turn of phrase.

They make mistakes, some were arrogant, or troublesome as individuals, though I have seen no real evidence that the order as a whole was corrupt. Yet in the end it was only the Sith, working from behind the scenes, that was their downfall. From their vantage point I don't blame them from responding as they did. Its easy to criticize them when you have all this hindsight on their actions, but based purely on what they knew, I honestly can't think of one way they could have avoided their downfall.

Its truly tragic how it all went down, they were good people, fought for peace and justice as best they knew how, and it worked, until the vile conniving and treachery of one Sith outflanked them. And yet they suffer under an irrational amount of flak for it.

I'm going to give TLJ the benefit of the doubt for now, but I have a bad feeling about this.

 

While I don't think the Jedi are evil at all, I do believe they, like everything else, have flaws that ended up being their downfall.

I do think they were portrayed as being overly arrogant and overly dogmatic at times. This is perfectly summed up in Jocasta Nu's line "If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist.", which indicate the Jedi's unwillingness to engage in the unknown. Qui-Gon's struggles against the Jedi Council embody this as well. We learn in TPM that he disobeys the Code often, because he feels that it hampers his ability to truly connect to the Living Force.

I don't believe that any of this is a sin that made the Jedi comparable to the Sith. Afterall, the Jedi do need rigid practices and unyielding discipline to ward off the dark side. I do believe that their dogmatism and detachment have caused them lose a bit of empathy and compassion towards their fellow beings. Such as when Obi-Wan chides Qui Gon on why he befriended the hapless Jar Jar Binks, and how Anakin gets scorned sometimes by the Jedi (esp Windu) on his emotional outbursts, yet no one is willing to connect with him on a deep level to get to the bottom of his fears. This of course ends up being their downfall.

Its one of the things that I loved about the PT, how the Jedi Order was not just a simple order of badass warrior monks, but a complex order steeped in wisdom, yet still flawed and in the end as victim to their own flaws as Palpatine's machinations.

 

You're pointing out specific instances of individual jedi who may have strained from the true Jedi Path. One of Knowledge, Serenity, Peace, Compassion for fellow beings, as others mentioned the code of the Jedi MUST have worked if it lasted for thousands of years of peace and prosperity in the Republic. To point out the flawed individuals who didn't follow it doesn't make it inherently wrong. Nor does it mean that some "new way" will inherently be the right way.

 

It is exaggerated in the sense of people interpret it their own way as people do. If people dislike the overall flavor of the order they tend to exaggerate. People like black and white. Unfortunately Lucas liked it too which bites the perception of the Jedi in the rear sometimes as it fuels the fire. Some of the way he portrayed them is very easily run with to build the narrative of 'Jedi are the true egotistical order who deserved to fall because they were so blinded and so flawed.' I don't believe this is true myself but I definitely see how it can be shifted that way.

But another thing I notice is people tend to swing the opposite way when others get overly defensive which is what I see the majority of the time when they are having a Jedi versus grey versus Sith argument. One person points out a flaw of the Jedi and they get defensive. The discussion quickly devolves because the Jedi are being argued as sanctimonious versus a humanised order of Force users who are capable of being flawed. Then the person arguing gets more ammunition from them acting that way because their arguments tend to focus on the holier-than-thou side of the Jedi and all the good they did, how they could never be flawed.
Does that make sense? I am not sure I am illustrating it right.

The people arguing for the Sith are usually not much better though and they often take the arguments to the worst place they can go. I have argued on both sides because I do not have a strong affiliation and discussed on both sides and I definitely think that both sides have great flaws even though we all know one side was worse. In the interests of humanity (maybe that should be galactic survival) they both did some really unfortunate things but the Sith obviously did it intentionally which is the important tipping point.

 

No that's a good point, there was peace for thousands of years, which is an amazing achievement. But I am simply trying to analyse the part of the Jedi Order that we actually got to see, which admittedly is a very short, but crucial period. And let me clarify I don't think the Order had become such corrupted and evil thing that it deserved to fall, they were still unquestionably the good guys, but I think it was Lucas's intent to portray the Order as imperfect and unwilling to change their ways to meet a new challenge.

And it is true that I selected a few individuals out of the many in the Order, but those are really the only Jedi that we followed with any depth in the movies, and most of them are Council Members, so I have to believe that their actions are indicative of the entire Order. Again I am not saying that Yoda, Mace Windu, and Obi-Wan are evil at all, I think they are genuinely wise and benevolent people, but perhaps the war started to affect them, or they were too busy trying to get out of Palpatine's Web, but they started to lack empathy and understanding, especially towards Anakin as the war progressed.

 

Whilst the Jedi were benevolent, and had maintained peace for many centuries, I don't think it's unfair to describe them as at the very least verging on dogmatic. There is much talk of the Jedi Way but no-one questions exactly what that may be, or whether they should keep doing what they've done for centuries simply because they've done that for centuries whereas times have changed. The Force presents to them the Chosen One but they initially turn him down out of hand because of his age, they don't wonder if there is a way to accommodate or adjust in order to account for his older age than most initiates.

It's Palpatine who tricks/forces them into the really sticky decisions they sometimes make but he's able to do that simply because he can predict with 100% confidence EXACTLY how they'll react and their actions - because they stick so rigidly to ''The Jedi Way."

They weren't evil and they weren't even necessarily wrong - but they made mistakes and they had flaws.

 

And I'm sure whatever new order Rey creates will be perfect, never have flaws and or make a mistake just by abandoning the "Jedi Way"?

 

Nah...we thought that Luke was going to do that before the filmmakers opted to make him a complete failure instead!

 

Given the original Jedi lasted for a few millenia before their collapse and Luke's lasted maybe twenty (at most) not sure he's going to be in a position to tell anyone anything about how the Jedi should operate...

 

To be fair to Luke, he had personal experience with 2 Jedi - both of whom lied to him, misled him and gave him bad advice. They tried to get him to kill his own father without him finding out that the guy he was being asked to kill was indeed his father. Once he found out that Vader was his father they told him that he had to kill vader anyways or the emperor had already won... and that vader was completely evil and never coming back (although I suppose that is somewhat understandable from their point of view).

If Luke had followed the advice of Obi-Wan and Yoda he very well would have fallen to the dark side.



Also - Qui Gon thought many of the precepts of the Jedi were a crock and he's the guy who figured out how to merge with the force and come back from death.

 

It's amazing Luke even became a Jedi with the little training he had. I still want to know how got more powerful between episode 5 and 6.

 

There's a difference between a Jedi having flaws and the Jedi way being flawed. Jedi are not perfect, some of them do have flaws. That's stated in the movies themselves by one of their own. Some Jedi are arrogant.

The difference is that the Jedi don't let their arrogance affect their actions. The difference is that arrogance is not part of the Jedi way, it's against it.

I'll just quote two recent posts from theraphos that accurately address the whole mindset that "the Jedi are wrong and should change" argument:

 

There's always the Star Wars On Trial interpretation, which argued that Lucas intended us to perceive the PT Jedi way of "emotional detachment" as flawed, and Luke's "loyalty to friends and family" as being what caused Vader to turn, not Luke's "emotional detachment".



So much, then, for the prequel trilogy, a murky series of events in which few characters, even the survivors, manage to cover themselves in glory. The Jedi display an almost callous disregard for the emotional comfort of the boy who grows up to lead their slaughter - even Anakin's closest friend, Obi-Wan, is capable of turning a remarkably cold and dismissive shoulder toward him. Consistent ethical behaviour is nowhere to be found ... and the Galaxy suffers for it.

By contrast, the ethical core of Episode IV-VI is almost ebullient; the unpretentious message enshrined at the heart of the original trilogy's story boils down to "stick with your friends and loved ones even when the whole universe seems to have it in for you." In A New Hope Luke rushes off alone the moment he realizes his aunt and uncle might be in danger - a foolish but highly compassionate decision. He then elects to stay with the Rebellion and participate in a suicide mission rather than escape with Han. In the end, his example inspires Han to return as well, postponing his vital reckoning with Jabba the Hutt for the sake of saving his friends and their cause.
The displays of loyalty in The Empire Strikes Back are heartbreaking. Han risks a bitter, lonely death for a slim chance of finding Luke alive. Luke stubbornly ignores Yoda's pleas to finish his training in favor of rushing off to help his endangered friends. Lando Calrissian, in the hope of redeeming himself, gives up his entire Cloud City mining operation while trying to save Han, Leia and Chewbacca. Most strikingly, Luke chooses to fling himself to a possible death rather than accept Darth Vader's offer of a partnership to rule the Galaxy - a partnership that would surely destroy his friends and everything they've fought for as members of the Rebel Alliance.
Luke's moral resolve is an inarticulate and even shortsighted thing, but it shows him to be ethically superior to his teachers - he will not allow his friends to suffer while he stands by and does nothing for them, and he won't even consider using them as chess pieces in some far-ranging game of Jedi against Sith in which the lives of the non-Force-sensitive do not count. The Jedi of the Old Republic discouraged the emotional connections of love and friendship; Luke is defined to his very core by those connections. The efforts of Luke's mentors to mold him in the fashion of their generation of Jedi - more ascetic, more detached - more aloof - fail continually, and while they are cranky about this failure, events prove them wrong in every respect.

Luke, driven by compassion, holds out hope for the redemption of his father in Return of the Jedi even as a ghostly Obi-Wan grumpily continues to assert that Vader isn't worth redeeming. Kenobi seems to want Luke to atone for his mistakes in the quickest, crudest way possible - by killing Vader so Obi-Wan won't have to think about the problem anymore. Of all Obi-Wan's faults, this one seems the most petty and grievous. Even after the full revelation of every lie Obi-Wan and Yoda previously fed to Luke, Obi-Wan continues to begrudge Luke the feelings that define him: steadfast love, undying loyalty and unquenchable hope. Nowhere is the contrast between the Old Republic Jedi and Luke more apparent; never is Luke's commitment to his own ideals more critical.
A more arrogant and detached Luke, an Old Republic-model Jedi such as Yoda and Obi-Wan might have forged out of a more complacent young Skywalker, would surely have met with disaster in his confrontation with Vader and Palpatine aboard the second Death Star. Palpatine's superiority over Luke is readily apparent; the young Jedi has no defense against the Sith Lord's dark lightning.
Killing Vader outright or disdaining him as beyond redemption would have done no good; then Luke would have died or been suborned to the will of the Emperor in Vader's place. Struggling against Palpatine would have been to no avail, with Luke so overmatched. Only Luke's feelings for his father - his decision to spend what might be his last few breaths pleading for Vader's aid - succeed in turning Vader against the Emperor. The Sith Lord dies by his apprentice's hand, but it is Luke's love and loyalty that put that hand in motion.

At the end of the cinematic Star Wars saga, Luke Skywalker inherits the mantle and powers of the Jedi without the hang-ups that brought the Order down at its nadir - the pompous senses of entitlement, superiority and emotional detachment that his mentors failed to kindle in him. Luke faces his destiny as the first of a new breed of Jedi - compassionate and sociable, a more faithful friend and a more honorable foe than the Knights of old. The practical moral qualities he articulates by example are immediately applicable in the real world, and worth aspiring to.
With great power must come a certain amount of healthy self-doubt, and a certain amount of trust in the people closest to you. In embracing this, Luke's personal triumph becomes the Saga's ethical vindication.


However - just because that essayist thinks Lucas was trying to convey the above message, doesn't mean they're right.

 

There's certainly a recent narrative that wants me believe the Jedi philosophy is bad or wrong and somehow twist the movie to make it seem like it was completely their faults Anakin fell to the darkside because they forbid attachments. Meanwhile, I always believed the Jedi taught their students to control their emotions which is not the same as repressing them and not let them take over their duty, which is basically what happened with Anakin. Last time I checked, they also showed emotions throughout all 3 movies, but they also showed they are flawed but to say their extinction was the will of the Force? Nah.

 

Depa Billaba's phrasing in the Kanan comic: was, in general, better about this than what the PT showed us:

​

"You must not grow too attached, too fond, too in love with life as it is now. Those emotions are valuable and should not be suppressed...but you must learn to rule them, Padawan, lest they rule you." ​

 

The Jedi code forbade teaching the ways of the force to a person after a certain age, in Anakin's case they bent the rules, but his downfall sort of proves that the Jedi Code was right all along in not training an unstable, chaotic being how to be a powerful space wizard if they're too late in their emotional upbringing. Once again the flaw is not in the Jedi teaching and code but those who made an exception for Anakin.

 

I'm sorry, but I think that essayist is completely wrong on a few important points.

Yes, the OT was a more personal, uplifting tale of friendship and love than the PT, but that has little bearing on the morality of the Jedi Code (you can't compare Han and Lando's actions to that of the Jedi). The PT was a bit darker and more complex, the Jedi were caught in a moral quandary and, in my opinion, had taken the Code too far, gotten too detached, to the point they couldn't recognize what Anakin was going through. But I don't think Lucas was trying to portray the Jedi Code as being completely flawed to the point of swinging to the opposite, more attachment, more emotion, is the solution. Personally, I think the Jedi had gotten to be too "by the numbers", in that they adhered to the Code so rigidly that they could not empathize with Anakin, while Qui-Gon was the foil to this, arguing for a looser interpretation of the Code, to be more fluid and organic as the Living Force is.

The whole point of the final act in ESB was that Luke was young and impatient, and Vader read him like a book and trapped him. Luke suffered for that, and, in the end, didn't even contribute to rescuing his friends. Luke's entire role in that movie was to show the consequences of impatience and attachment, not as a display of the power of friendship as that essayist will have you believe. If anything that movie served to solidify the need to embrace the Jedi Code and control your emotions and attachments.

And then in RoTJ, we see a more reserved Luke, much more in the vein of the old Jedi, despite what the essayist believes. And in my opinion, it's Luke's decision to let go of his attachments, to follow Yoda's and Obi-Wan's teachings, that carries the day. He lets go of his fear of death by submitting to Vader in order to prevent himself from endangering his mission. Then, he gives in to his emotions and attacks the Emperor and Vader after the Emperor gives Luke a way to save his friends and the Alliance, but then quickly regains his composure and lets go of his attachments. Then, he gets tested again when Vader threatens his sister, but, again, he sticks to the Jedi Code and lets go of his attachments. And that was what saved the day, not his attachment to his dad. Luke's strength in not giving in to hate and fear of losing his friends and family inspired Vader as he sees his son becoming the man he should have been, as he says, "I'll never turn to the dark side. I am a Jedi, like my father before me", not "I can't kill him, he's my dad."

As for Obi-Wan and Yoda urging Luke to kill Vader, after what he did to the Order, can you blame them? He was irredeemable in their view, Luke's ability to sense the good in his father and bring it out of him was proof that Luke had surpassed his teachers. In that moment, he mastered the code, not spurned it.

Lastly, how can you call Obi-Wan and Yoda pompous, entitled, and narcissistic? They made mistakes, but they are just human[alien] after all.

Edit: Just want to clarify I'm not trying to attack you for posting that quote, thanks for putting it in the thread, I think its great to see the arguments they made. I just wanted to comment on it.

 

Like many religious orders, such as the Vatican, the Jedi were simple misguided and badly interpreted religious doctrine to their own means. Many of them, Mace Windu and Yoda, assumed they really knew what the Force wanted and behaved.

Qui-Gon and Sifo-Dyas were considered outsiders or too extreme for their ideas, but were proven right in the end - the Force was changing and trying to warn them.

The Jedi Council refused to listen.

In the end, the Council was hearing their own voices and claiming it was the Will of the Force. It never was.

 

I can agree with you in part here.
To me the order seemed a little too focused on rules and order and too little focused on people.
In essence, they bowed to the letter of the Code but had forgotten the heart of the Code.
They came across as a bit rigid and inflexible.
The sith adapted and changed, the Jedi seemed unwilling or unable to change.
Yoda and Obi-Wan did change their approach a lot when it came to Luke and Leia but by them the whole order had been almost destroyed.

I don't think this made them evil or anything but in need of change and some fresh ideas and different perspective.

[/QUOTE]

Here is where I disagree a bit.
I think the reason why Luke was able to sense what Yoda, Obi-Wan and Palpatine could not, that there was still good in Vader, was his attachment to his father.
And his feelings and insight overall.

As Obi-Wan said, they did him credit but he should be careful as the emperor could make use of them.

I also think that if Luke had given up his attachment to his father and embraced the old Jedi way, he would not have tried to redeem him.
Instead he would have seen him as nothing more than an evil Sith that has to die.

Luke isn't afraid to die yes and he would choose death over becoming a servant to evil.
But ESB showed him making that choice.
Luke seeks out Vader because staying endangers the mission and he can't really leave.
But like he said with Obi-Wan, he feels there is still good in Vader and he will not give up trying to save his father.

@Rickleo123

I disagree, Anakin in TPM was a very well adjusted, normal and happy go lucky kid, esp considering his circumstances. He was kind, caring and liked to help strangers.
He missed and worried about his mother yes but I would view it as more worrying if a nine year kid DIDN'T miss their mother given the situation Anakin was in.

Also, Luke was even older than Anakin and he passed his test of the dark side and was able to redeem his father. Something that Yoda, Obi-Wan and Palpatine didn't seem to think possible.

And what would have happened if the council forbade the training of Anakin?
Either Obi-Wan would defy them and leave the order and train Anakin anyway.
So you will have a trained Anakin that also resents the Jedi quite a bit.
Palpatine could use that.
Or Obi-Wan complies with the council and Anakin is rejected totally.
Again you would make his very resentful towards the Jedi and Palpatine could easily pick him up and turn that to his advantage.

I think that the thing that the council did wrong with Anakin is that they didn't consider his different background and that he already had a strong attachment to his mother. And thus they didn't alter his training and expected he would behave no different to any other padawan that had no memories of their parents.
What they should have done is assign some help to Obi-Wan. He had just become a knight, had never trained anyone and here he was set to train the most important Jedi alive and one that had a lot of extra baggage.
I also think that the Jedi should have realized that leaving Shmi in slavery would cause worry and fear in Anakin. So if they freed her and help her go elsewhere if that what was she wanted.
Then they could tell Anakin that his mother is freed and lives a good life on say Naboo.
I think that would have done a lot to put young Anakin's mind at ease and he wouldn't have spent ten years worrying about her.

@Alexrd

I think there are several instances in the PT where the Jedi let their arrogance affect their actions or their judgement.
In TPM, when told about Maul, some Jedi refuse to admit the possibility that he could be a sith.
To them, they would sense that the sith were back, they do not sense it, ergo they can't be back.
Even when they decide to investigate, they send only one master and one padawan to deal with this plus the whole TF army and protecting Padme.
It didn't seem that anything prevented them from sending more people but they didn't because they probably thought that two jedi could handle this.

In AotC, the Jedi "tactics" on Geonosis also smacks of arrogance. Mace goes alone to confront Dooku and the other Jedi seemed to think that just showing up and igniting their lightsabers would win the day. They were very wrong!
Yoda does not bring any help when he goes to Dooku. Again he probably thought he could handle it.
Obi-Wan and Anakin does not call for help when chasing Dooku.

Also in AotC, the librarian says that if something is not in their systems, it does not exist. Very arrogant.

The Jedi send Padme back to Naboo, to live in a house her family owns.
Did they not think that this would be an obvious place for an assassin to look?

When Dooku tells Obi-Wan of a Sith Lord in the senate, he rejects it, saying that the Jedi would be aware of it.

In RotS, Mace goes with three other to confront Palpatine. He doesn't warn the other Jedi, talk with Yoda to make some kind of plan. And he clearly thought that he and his three buddies would be able to handle Palpatine. Again he was wrong.

In all, the Jedi certainly came across as arrogant at time and it did impact their judgement and actions.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

I think @Alexrd meant, that arrogance is not part of the Jedi philosophy. They are not taught to be arrogant. The fault is with the individual, but not the believe system. On the other hand, if many Jedi show arrogance, it might be a little to convenient to just blame the individuals, and not the philosophy, which apparently doesn't have a good answer for this problem.[/quote]