PT Yoda: "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." (PLEASE SEE WARNING ON PAGE 14)

He may have been blunt about it, but it's the truth. Padmé IS going to die. It might not be tomorrow, next year, or the next twenty years. She is mortal, though, so it means she will die at some point. And this isn't nine-year-old Anakin Yoda's saying this too. This is a twenty-two year old man who should know better by now.

It wouldn't have mattered if Anakin's visions were of himself dying of some alien disease in a medical facility with Obi-Wan, Padmé, and the infants Luke and Leia by his side, with Obi-Wan swearing he'd look after Padmé and the infants for him. Death is a part of life. Could Yoda have phrased it so it wouldn't be interpreted as "Please dance on Padmé's coffin and be happy she's a carcass"? Absolutely. However, his message is still true. Death is a natural part of life.

Anakin wanted to hear, "Yes, the ability to cheat death, we know how to. Show you, I will, young Skywalker."

 

Her appearance in the premonition shows her dying soon and in great pain.... Being forearmed with this knowledge, it's not unnatural to feel you can and or should take measures to prevent Padme from experiencing that pain. Unnatural death is not a natural part of "life". What if Anakin had a premonition about the Jedi all being shot in the back at the same time? Let it go? Or tell Yoda, "But it's a natural part of life, right?".

 

It's the person or thing that a Jedi becomes attached to and what transpires as a result of that attachment. Merely having people in their lives isn't a problem. We see this with Dex and Obi-wan. They're good friends who have been as such for many years. But Obi-wan is not attached to him. He is happy to see him, hugs Dex, has a cup of Jawa Juice and exchanges pleasantries before getting to business. But he isn't attached to him.

That is how Anakin and Yoda both interpreted the vision. Anakin didn't see her being attacked and dying as a result. He says quite plainly that she dies in childbirth. He does not tell Yoda that this death is anything other than natural and Yoda tells him to train himself to let go of his fears.

Anakin had already made a choice three years ago to do whatever it took to stop someone that he cared for from dying, even going so far as to say that he will become the most powerful Jedi and use the Force to stop them from dying. He's already demonstrated that he is willing to do the impossible. Anakin has already concluded that medical science isn't enough and he went to Yoda expecting him to tell him that the Force can stop people from dying and that he will teach him how.

"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.

"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.

But we know that it is his attachment that doomed her from the start. He sees her dying because he has already decided that he will do whatever it takes to prevent her from dying. He's seeing the end result of his choices. If he had let go of his fears, he would have been able to save by simply not doing anything.

Uh, how is dying in childbirth unnatural? Women given birth all the time, but from time to time, women wind up dying in childbirth. That even doctors cannot stop it from happening. So what makes this unnatural? If he wanted to stop it, he needed to go to doctors and not want to defy nature by trying to use the Force to stop her from dying. He should also accept that he may fail. That the doctors may fail. That she may wind up dying. How you fight is more important.

As to Order 66, that is something that can be prevented without using the dark side. Without violating the laws of nature. That is an action caused by factors that are clearly known and as such, stopping it ahead of time is natural and correct. Fighting mother nature when it says that your time is up and nothing can be done to stop it, totally wrong.

 

These trilogies seem to have been made by two very different people. The OT and the PT are like Siamese twins, attached at the hip, but with completely different personalities. In many ways there are two Star Wars sagas, one with an alternate backstory to the OT, and another with an alternate set of sequels to the PT.

 

Even if the PT never existed, I still think it makes sense for George to say the dark side is stronger the way he did in that quote, and for him to also say it's not stronger through Yoda. The dark side is stronger, yet it's not. It gives you power, but it's also self-defeating. It's stronger, but also weaker. Therefore, it's not actually stronger. It depends on your pov. Of course Yoda would say that it isn't, because he gets the whole picture. So does George. George doesn't actually think the dark side is stronger, he's talking about Anakin wanting the power to enforce his will on reality, to cheat death. That's the dark side's particular strength.

I don't think there's an inconsistency there. I think it's in the OT, too. We see that the dark side gives Luke the power to run over Vader, but it's the good side that saves them both in the end.

 

I disagree. Lucas clearly states the pathway to greater power is the dark side, except it comes at a hefty price. However, in the OT the dark side isn't more powerful, but it is easy and seductive, like alcohol and drugs. It's an easy pathway to great power, but ultimately that same power or more can be achieved through knowledge, discipline, and control. This is why only a fully trained Jedi with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor.

 

If he told Yoda that, the advice would be the same. Yes, it'd be most unnatural indeed but his philosophy would be to rejoice that the Jedi are no longer in pain, that they're now one with the Force and honor their memories by, y'know, not ruining his own life by obsessing over it and letting anger cloud his mind.

 

The Jedi are in pain?

 

And Yoda doesn't inquire further? How does Yoda know what Anakin saw? How does he know what he saw is accurate? Yoda doesn't even try; he just accepts Ani's worst case interpretation and says, "She's already gone; forget her and move on." Funny that he trusts Anakin here, but doesn't trust him elsewhere.

So, Yoda goes directly to, "She's dead, and there's nothing you can do about it." And there was absolutely no chance that Anakin might change his mind? It seems that Yoda has basically given up on Anakin even before he's done anything. Is the Jedi philosophy, "Do nothing. It's already done. You're already doomed."?

So, which is it? Either she was doomed from the beginning, or Ani could've saved her. Either Ani had no choice, or he did have one. And, by that reckoning, the Jedi were always going to be massacred, the Empire was always going to rise, and Anakin was always going to give up on the Dark Side and return to good. So, the Jedi shouldn't have worried; it's all set in stone and que sera sera. (Good heavens, Doris Day was a Jedi!)

Ani had a choice, and he could've acted to save her. He could've prepared for the worst, but taken reasonable action, just like people do everyday when a loved one is facing death or serious illness. Instead, those he trusted most were giving him the wrong advice. Yoda told him not to mourn or miss her, and not to do anything at all, good or bad. Palpatine conned him with, "You can save her, but it's illegal, which means it'll work. Oh, and you've got to do something for me first. And you've got to decide NOW, or you'll never have this chance again."
It seems the Jedi aren't teaching "let go of what you fear to lose". Yoda's teaching, "It's already lost. Act as though it was never there. Don't lift a finger to help. Do nothing."

 

About this natural vs unnatural.

Let's apply that to our world.
Many diseases are caused by naturally occurring germs and viruses.
So they are "natural", should doctors not treat them?

If a person is attacked by an animal, gets hit by a rock slide, is hurt by an earthquake.
All those are "natural" so doctors should not treat that either?

Going by this logic, anything except injuries caused by direct human action are "natural" but does that mean that doctors should therefore not treat them?

Going a bit further, I've seen people argue "Nature wants this" as if nature is somehow sentient and has a will.
To me that is only a small step away from "God".
Or that nature is always right and has a plan that we mere mortals don't know and thus we should not interfere.

In the first Jurassic Park, Dr Malcolm argues that nature selected the dinosaurs for extinction and thus it is wrong to bring them back.
But take AIDS/HIV, one of the first groups that were hit by it were homosexual men. Suppose a scientist did find a cure but withheld it because he felt that nature had selected the homosexuals for extinction. Would we accept that argument?

Or again, diseases. If you are ill from a naturally occurring disease, would it be ok for the doctor to say "Nature wants you to die, so I should not interfere."

Or take Evolution and survival of the fittest, that is a natural process. But is it moral?
Not really. Survival of the fittest is about those that are most adapted for a particular environment are the ones that survive, the rest die.

But if we apply this to humans then that would mean that couples that have a child born with a serious disability should let that child die. I think many would have a problem with this.
In fact, in movies, the people that make arguments of this sort are often the bad guys.
"Get rid of the weak and only the strong should live."

In closing, debating what we should and should not do, that requires thinking and looking at all the facts that you have and considering all the options and consequences.
Falling back on dogma is not a good way.
And that is why I have also mentioned Star Trek's prime directive. The intent is good and it should make people think before acting.
But when it instead becomes inflexible dogma and extermination of whole races is better than interfering, then I think something has gone wrong.

DrDre

I agree, in the OT the Dark Side is a quick way to get power. It is a bit like drugs or steroids.
You gain muscle mass quickly and with less effort but at a price.

A jedi in training can be tempted to use it in order to grow more powerful in a short time.
But they don't get more powerful than one that goes the long way and does not take any such shortcuts.
In the short term yes but long term, no.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Yes, tell someone that it's okay to use the dark side and create yet another Sith. That's a surefire plan that won't backfire.

Yoda doesn't know because Anakin chooses to withhold information from Yoda. If Anakin really wanted to be open and forthright, he should have confessed everything. The only thing that Yoda can do is tell him what he already knows, which is to let go of his fears. He doesn't say to forget her and move on. He's telling him to prepare for the worst if it does come. And he doesn't trust him later on, because he acts out of turn in the Council chambers. He shows a burst of anger at being denied the rank of Master. A selfish reaction which is unbecoming of a Jedi.

Again, Yoda doesn't know because Anakin chooses to continue to lie about his situation to Yoda. What Anakin did was the equivalent of "A friend of a friend, when it is really himself" cliche.

Her death is the result of his choosing to become all powerful and prevent her from dying. He's already made the choice three years ago, when he buried his mother and pronounced his intentions. She dies because of him. She would have never died if he never made that promise and committed himself to it. If he had never given in to the dark side. Anakin acted out of fear. Fear of loss is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Yoda didn't do anything wrong here. Anakin did. He made the choice to be selfish and greedy.

Let me put it succinctly, if medical doctors choose to make deals with the Devil to save lies, that's wrong. Anakin did that very thing with Palpatine because he wanted to use the Force in an unnatural manner. Yoda told us that everyone and everything dies.

LUKE: "Master Yoda, you can't die."

YODA: "Strong am I with the Force... but not that strong! Twilight is upon me and soon night must fall. That is the way of things... the way of the Force."

Did the doctor discover the cure through hard work and determination, or did he cut a deal with Satan to obtain the cure? That's what Anakin did in the latter case.

 

Yup, and we're all supposed to be happy with the fact, that Lucas turned another important Jedi teaching in the OT into a big fat lie. At least we know that Jedi aren't attached to the truth.

 

He didn't turn it into a lie. Lucas stated that what Anakin wanted was ultimate power, the power over life and death. A Jedi does not crave power. A Jedi seeks knowledge with the Force, which they view as a power greater than all.

YODA: ". . . to become one with the Force, and influence still have . . . A power greater than all, it is."

A Sith seeks power for the sake of power.

PALPATINE: "Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the dark side of the Force, Anakin, and you will be able to save your wife from certain death."

 

Yep. In terms of raw power, Sith are stronger. But that's a short term, selfish thing. Ultimately, you lose yourself to the dark side and corrupt your soul. You die and stay dead. Jedi become one with the Force, which as Yoda says, is a greater power than all. It's an eternal benefit, not a short term one.

 

Pretty sure getting shot at hundreds and hundreds of times by your own Clone troopers/seeing a former Jedi you once called a brother cutting down your fellow Jedi brothers and sisters tend to be painful.

Death is a natural part of life. If you can avoid it somehow, good...but do so in a way that'll actually HELP the person. Anakin wasn't helping Padmé. That was literally shown to us. He was too focused on obtaining the power to save her from a vague image of her death that he didn't see what he was really doing until it was too late.

In other words, if someone were mauled by a wolf, treat that person. Don't then try to pass legislations calling for the total eradication of the wolf population and disguise it as "I'm just trying to help this person."

If Anakin really wanted to help Padmé:
- Have her schedule an appointment with medical droids who would then examine her for any possible life-threatening complications.

- Take the Jedi's words to heart and encourage Padmé to seek shelter if necessary. "Go to Tatooine" could be their keyword if things got so bad.

- Oh, I don't know... ACTUALLY LISTEN TO HIS OWN WIFE WHEN SHE SAYS SHE WON'T DIE IN CHILDBIRTH!? This isn't like Tatooine. It's bloody Coruscant! Yes, he had visions of his mother and it came to fruition, but here's the thing... context wise? One was on Tatooine and ambushed by Tuskens. The other is sitting comfortably in her high-rise apartment on Coruscant. A planet where even those living in the slums don't die of childbirth.

There are literally hundreds of different ways he could've helped her than basically selling his soul to the Sith and destroying the Republic.

But hey, that's just me though. I tend to not let my emotions dictate my actions. The movies were pretty clear on what happens when you do.

 

I think you misunderstand. I'm obviously not talking about the pain of being murdered. Allowing a murder that you've been prewarned of to happen because the victim will no longer experience the pain of being murdered like that, once they are dead is clearly not what I'm talking about.

Padme ultimately did die in childbirth. Shmi actually did die horribly, and Anakin only showed up in time to witness her dying moments, with Padme's encouragement. It's a bit all over the place to condemn Anakin for being off the thread with his premonitions and desire to prevent the pain he sees in them.

 

So, Yoda is either being willfully blind, or he's so naive he trusts that Ani is telling him the whole truth. Basically, Yoda doesn't ask what anyone else would've asked: "Who are we talking about? What did you see, really?" And Yoda tells Ani to prepare for the worst, and that's it. That's a like a doctor saying, "You may have an illness. It may be terminal. Well, that's it. Nice knowing you. Pay on your way out." Yoda doesn't even hint at Ani trying some reasonable method to save her, or give any support to such an idea. He just closes the matter. And I seriously doubt the Council's mistrust of Ani came along instantly upon his outburst. Otherwise, why deny him the title at all, if he's trustworthy to hold it?

No, he didn't make the choice for Padme years ago. He made the choice at the moment he was confronted by, in his mind, two possible courses: Jedi who would let Padme die and would deny him the chance to help her or even mourn her, and a charlatan to was at least offering a chance to save her and more help besides. Basically, if Ani had spoken to someone who at least offered a third option (prepare for the worst, but take reasonable action to help her), he might've made a better choice. In any case, Ani's later repentance shows that he was not, by any means, hopelessly lost. He just had to meet someone who was willing to offer that third, more hopeful option, namely Luke. Who also sought a third option, took it, and won.

If we learn anything from the Saga (at least, episodes 1-6), it's that redemption is possible, that attachments can be a good thing, and that sometimes very powerful people can be just plain wrong.

 

Padme died because he choked her, triggering the chain reaction leading to her death. Anakin basically saw the end result of trying to save her. With his mother, the point was that he failed and he reacted poorly in failing. Part of being a Jedi is to process your grief properly and to think, not react emotionally, to situations like Padme and Shmi's deaths.

The door works both ways. Anakin had to come clean and tell him everything, but he doesn't. Yoda can only deal with what he knows and if he senses that they boy won't tell him more, then he can only do what he did do.

Because Palpatine wanted him to be on the Council, which went against the Code and how the Council conducted internal affairs such as promotion of its members. For many years, the Chancellor has never sought to exert influence on the Council. Palpatine just had the Senate grant him additional political powers which included deciding who could be on the Council and he want Anakin to be on the Council and the only way to be on the Council is to be a Master. Anakin was not ready to be on the Council and it is the Council's place to decide who sits and who doesn't. So they only opted to let him sit, but not promote him. Anakin took umbrage to that and did so out of pride and jealousy, which are things that are unbecoming of a Jedi. To have an emotional outburst, three years after becoming a Knight, was unsettling and concerning.

Yes, he did make that choice three years ago.

PADME: "You're not all powerful, Ani."

ANAKIN: "Well, I should be! Someday I will be. I will be the most powerful Jedi ever! I promise you. I will even learn to stop people from dying."


ANAKIN: "I wasn't strong enough to save you, Mom. I wasn't strong enough. But I promise I won't fail again. I miss you... so much."


The Council didn't deny him an opportunity to help her. Yoda didn't deny him anything. There was nothing to teach him and he never asked them if there was. He made emotional decisions and they were all poor ones and as a result, he caused the very thing to happen that he feared would happen.

"You almost come a second too late. You're rushing over to make sure that nothing happens-but your anticipation is that they're going to hurt each other. When the lightning starts things are going from bad to worse from your point of view. And when Mace is going to kill him, you have to act.

Try and increase how uncomfortable you feel as the shot goes on. Try to think back on the Darth Plagueis story-run that through your head. Take it one step further: you realize that by telling the Jedi about Palpatine being a Sith that Padme is going to die. Basically, you just killed her."

--George Lucas To Hayden Christensen, The Making Of ROTS.

That is how Anakin saw things. Not because of what the Jedi did or didn't do, but because his thinking was emotion based.

Well, attachments aren't a good thing. Letting go of them can be. Anakin saves Luke because he lets go of his attachment to him and to his own selfish desires, just as Luke lets go of his father and his sister and saved him.

 

This. I wish people would stop saying "well Vader sacrificed himself for Luke so attachment is actually good." This is just not what attachment means, or has ever meant, in the only definition that is relevant to conversations about Star Wars.

Attachment is Anakin saying "if you're not with me as part of my dream future where I get everything I want, you're against me!!" and choking the crap out of his wife because he isn't getting the version of reality he was clinging to - she isn't reacting the way he'd decided she would - and must destructively lash out as a result, perversely destroying the very person he claimed to love rather than let go of his attachments and let her leave in peace if she can't bear what he's become.

Attachment is Vader telling Luke "join me and rule the galaxy with an iron fist with me or I'll kill you." Which is, again, he has something he wants - his own dreams, his own wishes for how Luke will live and who Luke will be - and if he doesn't get it he will lash out and suffer/cause suffering because he can't accept that that's just not how it's gonna be. He is attached to these wants and ideas, meaning he cannot let it go. This is why attachment is the cause of suffering. He MUST have this person in his life, they MUST be what he wants them to be, he MUST get the version of reality HE wants or he'll scream and throw things and hurt himself and others yet again.

What attachment is not: Vader letting go of his obsessive desire to rule the galaxy with an iron fist and have ultimate power over his reality, or Vader letting go of his desire to keep Luke with him as his obedient Sith ally and loyal heir to the dark throne. Vader lets his dreams for himself and the galaxy go, and he lets Luke go free even though that's not what he'd wanted in his grasping heart, and through letting go of his own selfish desires for people and things, the need to control things and to have things, he finally achieves peace and enlightenment.

If he had had true unattached, unconditional love for Padme, he would have let her go - if not before he ruined everything, then at least on Mustafar. Not "if you're not with me like you HAVE to be you're against me and must be punished" but "I want what is best for you, not myself, even if that means you won't be with me and I have to let go of what I hoped for." Because Padme would 1000% have chosen to just die in childbirth rather than have Anakin do everything he did "for her" (setting aside that she will only die in childbirth because of Anakin's attachments in the first place). Anakin knew what she would have wanted, but he never accepted it or really cared. Nothing he did was for the sake of Padme, but for the sake of his own desires surrounding Padme and his desperate need for power to resist things changing that he doesn't want to change. And so he destroyed her and himself.

He lets go of his own dreams, and his own wishes and desires surrounding who Luke is and who Luke will be, and so he saves Luke and himself.

This is not "attachment can be good!!" This is "in letting go of attachments we bring an end to suffering and find peace."

 

Indeed.

Please, listen to Yoda, he knows what's best for you. ...At least on this point.

Yet though Yoda grasps the notion of attachment and its dangers he fails utterly to offer an alternative beyond Jedi stoicism - "Rejoice for the ones around you who transform into the Force. Morn them do not. Miss them do not."
Awful advice to give Anakin at the time, and it gave him the conviction to reject the Jedi ideals. And it sums up the weakness of the Jedi, too - that they could not bring themselves to love, so they brought themselves to passivity. They weren't servants to the Force, they were slaves to their own ignorance and fear.

 

Actually, beyond the PT, if attachments are bad and must be avoided, the story would've ended with ANH. Han had developed an attachment to Luke and Leia; they were his friends. So, instead of going away with his money, he followed that attachment back to Yavin and helped save the day. If Han had followed the concept of no attachments (and I don't recall anyone writing that such a thing only goes for the Jedi), both Luke and Leia would've ended up as, to borrow a line from the ANH novelization, "particles of frozen meat floating around Yavin".

I keep running into this whenever I post on this subject, but I think I'm going to have to agree to differ and yield the floor. I've gone over this many times and I think I'm very close to the "beating a dead horse" stage. There's a reason this cuts close to me. I've had more than one time in my life where I've lost someone. Though I believe they are in Heaven, they aren't here, so I mourn for them and miss them. I go on with my life, because I have to and getting lost in sorrow doesn't help anyone or anything, but I maintain that attachment. It's important to me. And if, by some stunning twist of fate, Yoda appeared to me spouting, "Mourn them not, miss them not" and preaching against any attachment, I'd give him an angry rant so profane it'd shock Martin Scorsese. And I shudder to think how my Mom would deal with Yoda.

Okay, I've said my peace. Your turn...

 

This is still not the definition of attachment used by Lucas or in Star Wars. I don't have it in me to write another long post about this but it seriously isn't.

I realize by now that that's not what a lot of folks want to hear, but I maintain that it's backwards to try to talk about what the Jedi believe while using your own definitions for words instead of what Lucas wrote about their definitions of words, thereby completely altering the meaning and then criticizing the Jedi for this altered set of beliefs that they don't actually hold.

 

Yes, but the proper definition of attachment, does not necessarily imply causing suffering in others. Attachment is a root cause of suffering to one self. When Anakin went to Yoda, he was suffering, because he was attached to Padme. What did Yoda do to help Anakin relieve that suffering? Answer: he did nothing. He basically told Anakin to train himself to stop suffering, or risk becoming an evil monster. This is like telling a depressed person, to train themselves to let go of their negative thoughts, or they might end up hurting themselves. That's horrible advice, and poor counceling. Yoda should have tried to find the root cause of Anakin's fears and suffering, and to look for ways to alleviate that suffering. He should have treated Anakin's condition, rather than telling him the condition he has, is bad, and will also turn Anakin bad, if he doesn't change.

We have a saying in Dutch: "Soft healers make stinking wounds". Yoda was a soft healer.

 

What do you mean "the definition of attachment used by Lucas or in Star Wars"?

That suggests that there are different definitions of attachment, and that if he chose, Lucas could have used an alternate definition to tell a story where people who perceive attachment to be the root of evil find themselves incapable of relating to any other people's problems and vice versa.

The problem with Lucas electing to base Vader's problems on attachment is that Anakin's problems are inherent in him as a person. i.e. it's impossible for him to have a relationship because it will turn to jealous fear hatred and anger then murder, unlike the vast majority of people who can cope with attachments that represent the most important thing in their life without becoming a sociopath.

Most people with that impression generously don't believe that Lucas wanted to present an heroic/tragic figure considered worth redeeming in later episodes with an in built personality disorder which makes them no good at attachments.

So we wonder what it could be that would make Anakin that way rather than it just being in him. The only external factor is his career and the people he hangs about with. Palpatine says and does nowt about attachments, so it's only the Jedi left.

But time and again, the Jedi perspective and definitions of attachment and their inevitable ends is held up as the objective truth and therefore unimpeachable as a factor in Anakin's dysfunction. That's not very enlightening about anything. It just seems only to serve the fact, which we already knew, that Anakin would become Darth Vader. Problem is, the OT was never conceived to convey that process in reverse. i.e. Vader letting go of his attachments. By which I mean the attachment to people close to him (at the expense of others). He redeems himself by saving Luke from the Emperor. I suppose he symbolically lets go of the ideology he became attached to in the past twenty years. But that wasn't a natural desire or attachment. It was a lie he told himself to avoid having to examine the choices he made prior to adopting it.

You would have thought that Vader would have continued having vivid premonitions of suffering for the things he was attached to during the OT era. Since his obsession would surely be worse once he'd fully turned to the darkside than it had been when he was just a young Jedi with anxieties.

 

I agree completely. It's so baffling to me, that the same Lucas who created the Jedi order also created the character of Luke, who while training to be a Jedi, was a very human hero with flaws, showing pain, fear, anger, impatience. Yet, he overcame these flaws, by doing the right thing when it really mattered. Yet, in the PT it is actually argued, that the human experience is inherently dangerous to a Jedi. In fact it's so dangerous, that children have to be taken at a very young age, and essentially shielded from a normal human life. I know some here will argue, that Lucas meant to show this system was flawed, but I would disagree. According to canon this system functioned successfully for a 1,000 generations, until the Jedi deviated from their dogma, by allowing Anakin to be trained, and an external force broke it down. However, to me the Jedi way as presented in the PT is so orthogonal to Luke's journey in the OT, that it hurts my brain thinking about it, and it pains me to read posts where the IMO warped morality of the Jedi is projected on the very human story of Luke and his father in the OT. "Vader and Luke let go of their attachments"... screw that, I saw a father who couldn't bear the thought of his son dying in agony, murdered by a monster, after his much wiser son refused to follow in his father's footsteps.