Lit Did Luke's "new canon" Jedi allow healthy attachments, marriage, family, children, etc.?

A lot of people do though (see KOTOR2 where the coding of "jedi as religion" and "force as god" is at it's most). Maybe not electricians. But scientists. If the Force is like gravity, a 'force' of the universe then those who study it would be a small group, somewhat removed from the populace.

 

Once the Jedi started talking about the will of the Force and chosen one prophecies, it was pretty clearly a religion.

And they were wearing religious vestments and spouting Buddhist derived philosophy from the start.

Even if things like midi-chlorians are observable phenomena, and linked to what Jedi say is the Force and their training has proven results. All of that is just correlation. The Force itself is not directly observable except by those who meet the midi-chlorian threshold.

Plenty of mystics would call their methods a science, because they seem to have consistent results over hundreds of years. It doesn't make what their organization and faith is any less a religion.

Frankly, the more religious angle was built in since the novelization of ANH anyway.

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Yeah, they're monks. It doesn't matter that the Force is "real" because that's what every religion thinks about their religion.

 

Yeah, that's Kreia whole point if that she hates the Force for it seems to have a will and thus in her mind supplants Free Will.

Very Paradise Lost angle.

 

But that’s what the entire Galaxy thinks about the Force, pretty much. That it’s real. Jedi and Sith and others can agree or disagree about how to act in the universe or how to interpret it, but it’s science.

Yeah but she was wrong to think it limits free will any more than gravity or electromagnetism do. Do I wish I could levitate and fly around? Yeah. Does gravity stop me from doing that? Yeah. Does this mean gravity supplants free will? No.

But if it’s scientifically proven that it has a will, and that it can allow people to see visions of the future, then those things would just be scientific facts too.

Everybody studies gravity though, if you’ve ever taken a physics class especially. I was saying electrician because only a few are trained to directly use it. But it’s a universal fact.

 

I mean, Lucas pretty much designed the Jedi Order as a perennialst religious order from the start. Just because the majority of people in the galaxy believe in the Force being real doesn't change that.

Entire cultures believe in supernormal powers for monks or mystics and believe in the same God or gods in no small part to shamans, priests or mystics doing miraculous things in the name of, or through the power of, the divine. Both now and in the past. For the majority of human history, in fact. Does that mean the shamans are doing science, or is it religion? Are Sufi mystics or Buddhist monks scientists?

The novelization of ANH straight up has Obi-Wan saying even Jedi scientists were never able to truly define the Force. They there's as much magic as there is science.

One can find scientific correlations and explanations for the effectiveness of meditation or prayer, that doesn't make meditation and prayer any less religious and mystical. Just because there are scientifically observable effects of such practices, doesn't prove the existence of Tao or God/gods in any scientifically rigorous way.

The Jedi are mystics. They have a training regime that is falsifiable in terms of what it results in for them, but if a scientist cannot directly observe the Force itself.... it's still mysticism. And the Jedi comport themselves like a religious order.

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I’m not denying the Jedi act like a religious order. Just saying scientists and the general populace can directly observe the Force, or at least they should be able to. That believing in the Force itself isn’t a religion. But this is now a tangent.

 

How can they directly observe the Force itself though? Sure, they can see the Jedi can do mind tricks or telekinesis or have incredible reflexes, but that's not the same thing as observing the Force itself directly. They just know the Jedi attribute those abilities to the Force.

Much like the Hebrews would have their faith in God bolstered by seeing Moses part the sea, that's not the same as each individual Hebrew directly being spoken to by God or seeing God. The miracles of Prophets have been taken as proofs of God, but it's not quite the same as directly observing or seeing God is it? Miracles, or belief in them, inform people's faith certainly but it's not quite the same thing.

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One reason why I originally fell in love with Star Wars is because it seemed like this was clearly what the movies were saying. That what we in the past would call “magic/supernatural/gods/God” is just a completely-scientific energy field generated by all living things, due to the energy residue of the symbiotic process between midichlorians and individual cells, which also makes life possible too. That mastery of the Force, which in the past would only come about by chance and inspired past religions and past stories of myths/legends, has now been perfected as a scientific discipline for certain people naturally more sensitive to it who have also received training. The EU never fully embraced this, but never completely invalidated it either, it just seemed to shy away from the unpopularity of the midichlorians but this was clearly the intention, I would say even in the OT scripts too, for the Force to clearly be a universally-accepted scientific phenomenon. I wouldn’t doubt that scientists long ago learned how to “see” Jedi using the Force in the some way we can see things invisible to the naked eye due to infrared cameras, and how they these cameras see “bursts” come from increased midichlorian processes in the Force-sensitives’ cells, which allow it to cast a detectable energy imbalance (messing with the electrons or gluons or gravitons or something like that) between the Jedi’s hand and the object they’re pulling to their hand from across the room. It’s always been crystal clear to me that this is how we are supposed to view the Force, since I was 9 years old and saw the original trilogy and the Phantom Menace all together in 1999.

 

But why? There's nothing particularly textual about that. And the Jedi frequently speak of the Force in much the same way people do a deity. Seems Lucas' stated intentions for the Force, while saying it isn't "God" as is usually understood, he's also not saying it is purely scientific. Indeed, much of what the Jedi say about the Force is specifically against that kind of materialist reading.

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I disagree. See above.

 

In the first movie we meet a guy who doesn't believe in the Force and another guy who derides Vader's religion. We don't often hear other people talk about the Force - we hear them talk about Jedi powers, and we hear the Jedi describe things as "Jedi abilities" to non-Jedi. Even in The Force Awakens Han says to Rey and Finn: “Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil, the dark side and the light? Crazy thing is, it’s true. The Force, the Jedi — all of it. It’s all true.” The Rebellion, an organization textually tied very closely to the memory of the Jedi, talk about the Force a great deal.

Think of it like how, within the logic of the film The Prince of Egypt, the Hebrews have a religion and the Egyptians have a religion but the Hebrew one is true and right and the Egyptian one is cheap tricks and superstition.

Or another way to think of it: a scientist could observe that midichlorians exist and take the Jedi's word for it that there's a mystical lifeforce, but the Jedi religion governs how the Jedi interact with the Force, what they believe about its will and how to interpret it, how it shapes their behavior and their ideas and how they use their powers, and what their responsibilities are in the galaxy. We believe what the Jedi believe about the Force because the Jedi are the good guys. Which is what most religion is anyway!

 

This is a really poignant question in the light of (spoiler for books of Boba Fett)

Boba Fett Episode 7. In that episode, it's clear Luke can't Train Grogu because of his attachment and love for The Mandalorian. I'm hoping that stance softens somewhat and Luke maybe finds love of his own.

I'm sure it was the ROTS novelisation that Yoda said the next generation must learn to love and be different...or words to that effect. I loved that explanation (even if it was clearly there to explain people like Mara Jade existing in the future.)

 

If Luke's stance does not soften, I wonder...

Did he make Ben Solo to choose between his attachement to Han and Leia and becoming a Jedi?

We know Leia chose her son over further Jedi training when she was pregnant. But it sounded like her choice, not Luke giving her the choice between both.

Jedi Dogma was to prevent Jedi from making mistakes whereas Yoda and others learned until TLJ, that failures are important and need to be taught as well, hence the Jedi embracing love and attachement and being more flexible. Allowing times off from being a Jedi, allowing to come back, allowing to have children, or to be attached in life yet only when a mission requires it detached in the moment and flow.

In Legends Luke first found lore about the older Jedi pre-PT and styled his order after them instead the PT. In Canon he explicitely copied the PT kinda... him cutting his training in TESB short though prevented him from getting the important "add on" note of Yoda on what not to copy from the PT or how to alter it.

Where Legends had "not much survived the Purge, fill in the blanks yourself" to Luke's Jedi approach, the new/second canon has Luke given access to meeting survivors of the PT early on as well as full Jedi Holocron stashes.


What I am most curious about though is, given Luke urged Ben to be the next Chosen One, grooming him, when and how did Luke learn of the Prophecy and what did he think of it and his family? Legends had him do so via The Jedi Path book later only, canon must have had that happen way earlier with a profound impact on him and Ben.

 

I dont think Yoda was exactly advocating Jedi get married post-ROTS. Love =/= attachment.

And Luke's ultimatum to Grogu was "time moves slower for you, and it's going to take you a long time to do this training.... it may be be a very long time before you see Din again and he will be a lot older." I'm not entirely sold that Luke's telling Grogu he can't have those kinds of connections, but because of the nature of Jedi training and the way in which Grogu's species experiences time, he has to make a choice to spend time with Din or focus on his training.

Even if Grogu's training were analogous to the kind of crash course Luke had... how long is that passage of time going to be in human years? Luke trained exclusively for roughly a month on Dagobah, I believe. Totally removed from everyone and every thing else. What's the equivalent for Grogu? He's basically a toddler at 50 years old.

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That is not what happened and Grogu does not need longer only because he lives longer does not mean he is slower in learning. That's totally not how he works. Luke was trying to convince him to give up attachement as he will see more people age and die in his longer time than any other shortlived species might.

 

The dialog has a pretty hefty implication that Grogu's training will take a significant period of time. Luke knows it didn't take him years and years to train up to the level of Jedi Knight, but he's telling Grogu it will take him years and he may never see Din again because a short time for him is a long time for others.

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Honestly, there might be more than one answer for Luke's order. Like, he could change his mind for some reason or another, so even if he is anti-attachment with Grogu that might not be the case by the time he trains Ben.

In particular, it is mentioned that he went exploring with Lor San Tekka to jedi archeological sites. Maybe he finds out that jedi tried different approaches at different times, and then tries something different based on that information.

 

Given how often the old expanded universe had to twist itself into a pretzel to explain how this or that new thing from the prequels fit into its existing canon, I appreciate it when people like Stover made that kind of effort in new prequel media.

 

Sorry this has probably Been shown already on here.



So I was watching this earlier and I have to say I am surprised that Ahsoka of all people seem to be going along with the age old Jedi play book after everything she’s been through with the order. I’m not surprised by Luke after all he is a product of failed teachings by flawed characters.

 

A good thread

 

Any new thoughts on this topic?

 

No, they didn't. The new canon Jedi that Luke trained are in alignment with George's vision for the Jedi Order, a monastic order that remains celibate.

 

Seems like other potential alternative Orders (Cal and Merrin's one, Ezra's one, Ahsoka and Sabine and Shin's one and etc) can take the lead on more liberal view on attachments.

 

At least that was the case when Luke was training Grogu.

Even so, the second part of my OP here a few years ago still applies:

Question 2: should Luke's "new canon" Jedi have allowed healthy attachments, marriage, family, children, etc.?​