PT Are the Jedi supposed to be completely emotionless?

Obviously, Obi Wan wasn't, when Qui Gon was killed, but was his reaction the rule or the exception? Are Jedi supposed to not care about anyone? It doesn't seem like most of them do. Just like the Sith, or at least Palpatine.

 

Jedi are supposed to not act on emotion and be reckless. They are supposed to be in control, calm and at peace. When Obi-Wan gave into his anger after Qui-Gon was impaled, he wasn't being a Jedi or following the Jedi way. He was using the dark side. Only when he was holding for dear life for a while was he able to follow the Jedi way and be calm and at peace. That's what made him able to turn the table and defeat Maul.

Jedi are supposed to be compassionate and collected. Just because they are dispassionate doesn't mean they are void of feelings or emotions nor does it mean they don't know them and what they can do to someone.

 

I'm not the biggest fan of the way Jedi handle things, but I don't think they're meant to be completely emotionless. Rather they generally handle their emotions internally, reflecting on & working through them, so that they don't overwhelm them & cloud their reasoning, judgment & actions.

A lot of it has to do w/each individual Jedi's personality too, in terms of the way in which they show emotions, how outwardly the express them. Same w/people IRL, pretty much; some people are more expressive w/their emotions, be it positive ones or negative ones, while others are more subdued, collected, subtle in the way they express them & in their reactions to what's happening around them. Putting aside Anakin due to the whole dark side thing, look at Jedi like Kit Fisto, Qui-Gon, even Luke, & yes Obi-Wan to a certain extent, & how they're more open w/displaying their emotions than some of the more stoic Jedi, such as Jocasta Nu, Yoda, & Mace Windu.

Master Jedi Depa Billaba explains it better than I can, and in a nutshell.

 

Indeed. There's a difference between feeling emotion and acting/reacting emotionally. Everyone does the former, but the Jedi don't do the latter.

 

"Only the efficient ones."

Spoiler

 

Are they supposed to be? Ideally yes. But the jedi are living beings that come from social creatures. Just think, if they were there would be absolutely no emotion when they talk. Obi-Wan would be your quintessential jedi, but even he showed sadness and frustration when he was fighting Anakin. You could hear it in how he talked.

 

They're supposed to govern their emotions, not be governed by it.

It's like this... Obi-Wan can experience the same human emotions as anyone else. If he saw Anakin getting hurt/killed, he'd be furious. If he learned that Dex was getting married, he'd be proud. If he learned that a close friend of his died, he'd be upset. He's not a robot.

Being in control of your emotions doesn't mean you don't feel them. The Jedi aren't sociopathic, they just merely know that while it's OK to feel the emotions, it's not OK to let your emotions take control of you.

 

No.

Compassion, or unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life.

 

I think it's a little complicated.

Like, originally, it was basically like what modern-day firefighters and police officers describe - a detachment in the sense that, if you lose a friend or loved one during battle or in a stressful situation, you'll be able to continue until the job is done. You can't grieve in the moment, but you're free to grieve later.

But this isn't what the prequel-era Jedi embody at all. For example, in TCW, Anakin and Luminara Unduli are on Geonosis, and their respective padawans (Ahsoka and Barriss) are trapped in a cave in. Luminara's first response is immediately, "Lol, they're dead, let's leave." That's not an exaggeration - she spends the entire episode trying to convince Anakin to leave them there, because obviously they're dead. There's no pressing need to leave early, even. Luminara just doesn't care at all.

Anakin argues to stay, and attempt a rescue - of course, Barriss and Ahsoka are alive, and they live. But only because Anakin fought to stay.

I think, by the time of the prequels, the Jedi had started advocating a stance of no emotion. That had become the norm. They're not meant to be emotionless, but they started trying to force themselves to be, especially in light of the war - that's why we see so many people leaving the Jedi in the prequels. Their development had stagnated entirely, and they were no longer the force for good they used to be; the Order parallels the Senate. They're both bloated and corrupt by the time of the prequels, which is why it was so easy for Palpatine to wipe the Jedi out of the galaxy on the turn of a dime - no one saw them as heroes anymore.

 

Because being a Jedi is not just a job, but a way of life. The Jedi in the prequels don't advocate lack of feelings. To be stoic and not act emotionally doesn't make them emotionless.

?!

Source? They didn't fell because "no one saw them as heroes". They fell because a Sith Lord used the dark side to blind them and executed a 1000 years old plan against them. They were trapped with virtually no way out.

 

Luminara: It's not that I gave up, Skywalker—but unlike you, when the time comes, I am prepared to let my student go. Can you say the same?

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, it was a direct reference to ROTS.

Anakin is worried that Padme will die, and it is his own actions that cause her death. If he had simply done nothing and waited, she probably would have lived.

Ahsoka sorta rescues herself by rigging a communicator. Yes, Anakin and Luminara have to pull them out of the rubble, but it's not like Anakin's angst is what saved them.

The need to be calm, instead of anxious, is just flat out said.

Luminara: Be at ease, Skywalker.
Skywalker: At ease? We need to act now.

That last line sounds a lot like ROTS, doesn't it? Well, he didn't need to act then, and he didn't need to act in Weapons Factory.

Other things Luminara says:

"You misjudge me. I too care for my apprentice, but if their time has come..."

"If my Padawan has perished, I will mourn her, but I will celebrate her as well through her memory."

Barriss: What happens to us now doesn't matter. By destroying this factory, we've saved countless lives elsewhere."

^^^There's the part about detached duty. To her, Jedi lives don't really matter, no, not in the face of countless lives elsewhere. Others come first, before Jedi. But she still cares about her apprentice.

 

Well, the way I see it, that scene in TPM where the council members are testing Anakin comes off as contradicting this. They're all gathered around a nine-year-old and telling him that, "fear will lead you to the Dark Side." They're saying this to a kid, who's literally just been ripped up from everything he knows, who also happens to be a former slave; of course he's scared. The Jedi do nothing to allay that fear, or validate these emotions at all. That's not an indicator that the Jedi deal with things in a way that is at all healthy. There's also the fact that they're pumping out disillusioned Jedi who are turning to extremes; Barriss, for one, Dooku, for another. Especially if you read some of the EU material, it becomes clear that there's a reoccurring problem with the way the Jedi are conducting themselves. Not to mention, the Code was actually changed from, "Emotion, yet peace," to, "There is no emotion, there is peace."

All of that indicates, to me, that the Jedi changed for the worse, especially after they changed their Code. I mean, it's literally right there, plainly stated. (I believe this is something that happened for fear of becoming Sith, of course, which makes it doubly ironic.)

And, that point's my fault (the next two, actually) I didn't really explain my opinion very well. The point in the prequels - again, this is just my opinion - is that a lot of the Big Institutions are failing. The Jedi are sending fourteen-year-olds like Ahsoka to fight in wars and striking deals with Hutts, they're sentencing teenage girls to death on very little evidence (again, Ahsoka, poor girl), Jedi are losing sight of what matters (Pong Krell is an excellent example of a falling Jedi) and they're not answering to the Senate, even though they're acting as generals and commanders. (For example, there's a scene in TCW where, just after a mission, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan, and Anakin are standing together. Neither Obi-Wan or Mace want to tell Palpatine of their mission, although the military should be accountable to the Senate by law. Anakin, of course, is the only one who advocates answering to Palpatine.) They're even functioning on an army of - well, slaves. The clones were bought and paid for, and a few Jedi even treat them as no better than walking canon fodder. They have all the trademarks of a traditionally corrupt system, beating in tune with the Senate.

Also, I didn't explain that one either, I'm sorry! It's how Palpatine changed public opinion of the Jedi so easily. Like, I don't know about you, but the Jedi went from being the Republic's heroes to dead in zero seconds flat - and public opinion isn't so easily swayed by, "Oh, they attempted to kill me! The horror!" There had to be existing distaste for the Jedi among the public that Palpatine fed on. (And created, most likely.) Again, that's sort of me connecting the dots and trying to build something out of the prequels.

But, hey! That's just how I see it and why I see it that way. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

 

Again, I believe this statement is supposed to be Luminara excusing herself. Because there's absolutely no reason for Luminara to be pressing to leave so hard. She can dress it up all she likes, but the point remains clear; she nearly left her padawan to die, and for no real reason other than, "I am prepared to let my student go." That's detachment on an unhealthy and unprecedented level. It nearly killed two people. I think it's also worth noting that while Luminara is too detached, Anakin is too attached, and both have disastrous effects. (Anakin's decidedly more so, of course. Poor younglings.)

But, again, interpret it how you will! That's sort of the beauty of the prequels, you can interpret the saga in so many different ways.

 

Yoda said that fear is the path to the dark side. Which is true. And he said that as a response when Anakin questioned the relevancy of his fear. There's no contradiction.

No. He's not scared for any of those reasons. He's afraid to lose his mother. That's his fear. And none of that is going to change by becoming a Jedi.

Says who? They don't do that in that scene, but that's not the point of the scene nor what they are there for. They are testing Anakin, who was trying to hide his fear of loss and who questioned its relevancy. That's all.

That's your baseless assumption.

Only 20 Jedi (including Dooku) ever left the Order in thousands of years. That fact directly contradicts the statement you just made.

I don't read fan fiction. Licensed or not.

It's not an excuse, it's the very point of the episode. We may argue about its execution, but that would be a different discussion.

 

Well, I really don't know what to tell you, because it's clear we're not going to agree with each other, so I say we just take our personal interpretations and agree that people can interpret things differently.

 

This is contradictory. If she just doesn't care, as you said, then there's no need to excuse herself, because she did nothing wrong. Why does she need to excuse herself for something she is completely detached from?

I just watched it. This doesn't even happen. She doesn't try to leave at all. She doesn't even suggest leaving.

She says that there's not enough time, she says she senses them drifting away. That's not saying to leave, that's saying that it may be too late.

 

The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth," he continues, "They're not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 213.

"It's about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that's why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine Interview; June 2005.


"It really has to do with learning," Lucas says, "Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused. He doesn't right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love- primarily the Emperor- and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die. Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the one ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

"This is obviously a very pivotal scene for Anakin because this is reuniting with his mother and his youth and at the same time dealing with his inability to let go of his emotions and allow himself to accept the inevitable. The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can't hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn't willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he'd have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn't have this particular connection as strong as it is and he'd have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them. But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he's been prepping for this, but that's the one where he's sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

"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.


"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.


"The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion—of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides—the good force and the bad force. They're the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction."

--George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 1999.

"If good and evil are mixed things become blurred - there is nothing between good and evil, everything is gray. In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything. It is dangerous to lose this."

--George Lucas, Cut Magazine Interview, 1999.

 

Thanks, I was about to re-watch the episode too to clear any doubt. It's been years since I've watched it, but I wasn't recalling anything as described by jerseydevious regarding Luminara's behaviour (and rightfully so, it seems).

 

Oh right. Otherwise they wouldn't be helping so many people.

 

I do have issues with just how strict they get about it all, but never got the impression they're supposed to be emotionless. As many have already said, they're simply supposed to be in control of their emotions, and honestly, while being in control of one's emotions can be difficult, it is sometimes necessary. It's a good idea in theory, though in execution, it's not perfect. I do feel there is more the Jedi could have done to help prevent Anakin's fall--they made an exception to their rules by having a padawan so old, so they should have also made exceptions in the way he was trained. Since he did already have attachments he'd formed, they should have taught him how draw strength from them and how to keep his emotions under control, instead of being as discouraging as they were. But I suppose that's more a discussion for another time.

Point is, no, they're not supposed to be emotionless, even if they can appear emotionless at times. They just want to keep a level head and look at things as objectively as possible.

 

The thing is, though, that the Jedi (and, more or less, Buddhist) definition of attachment is "unable/unwilling to make peace with the fact that you are not in control, and that eventually the things you love will pass out of your life, one way or another." There is no way to "draw strength" from having attachments (unless you change the definition to "caring about anything at all," which is not the intended definition) and still be a Light Side character. The only LS choice is to make peace with it and let go.

Like the Lucas quote in an earlier post said, it's the difference between possessive love and compassionate love; only the latter has any place in a Jedi's life, but Anakin never got it (not until way too many years later, anyway). And the Jedi certainly did try to teach him the difference all those years, that would have been a primary element of his education/training in the Order. Anakin's just got a stubborn habit of disregarding anything that doesn't lead to what he, personally, wants.

Kinda like how he disregarded absolutely everything Padme valued and cared about and did a bunch of horrible stuff she'd probably rather have died than have happen, all so he wouldn't have to feel sad or feel like he didn't have absolute control of things, or not have his happiness dispenser in his life. That's attachment, and it's bad.

 

Oddly enough, after reading this thread I stumbled upon a video about this very thread question. Going in, from the title alone, I was already predisposed against it. The kid's weird voice didn't make it any easier... but then, he got to the meat of it, and it was about precisely this topic. Jedi, emotions, the role they and the code play, and while the video doesn't come out and say it, it reminded me that someone pointed out Star Wars was a very *American* myth due in large part because what it all boils down to (and the video touches on), is that individuals and their own points of view are a good and a strength, and conformity leads to downfall. Just look at the Rebels vs the Empire posters Rogue One just put out! The troopers all have a sameness to them due to their uniform armor, and the Rebels are all Interesting Individuals (TM).

Anyway, check this video out. I thought it was well worth the time spent even when I had every reason to think it was going to stink.

 

Fair enough. Yeah, when they go to extremes like that they're definitely bad. I just generally see having attachments as things that can give purpose and make one better able to deal with things that are difficult, which is what I meant by drawing strength from them. If you define it like that, though, then yeah, that's not possible, and yeah, Anakin did gaffe it pretty badly anyway.

 

With the frequency of lost limbs one gets dealing with lightsabers all the time, you'd think "attachments" would be accepted in their philosophy!