ITT we discuss why Luke's Jedi Order is made of fail

Continuing the discussion from here, because we were getting off topic.

Discuss.

 

It's an order of a group of killers who are supposed to value life above all things.

They've become a military group rather than the mediators of peace.

They are taught to trust in their feelings and judgments, yet have a council tell them what is right and wrong.

Luke, the leader of the order, has no problem going off on little adventures with young Jacen, Jaina, Anakin and Ben while there are tons of other young padawans lying around the Jedi Academy. It's even gotten to the point where Luke's made Ben a Jedi Knight despite have very very little actually Jedi education.




That should be enough to start you out.

 

KNIGHTS.

That implies a military role to begin with, not a bunch of isolationist monks who don't worry themselves about the rest of the galaxy.


Not to mention that this Order was born into a period of near-continual galactic warfare; and frankly, given all that it's been through, I'm quite amazed that only one member has actually gone full-blown Sith.

 

How this thread title makes me smile.

 

The Jedi Knights under Luke Skywalker have mostly done a okay job with very little resources and very little public support. They single handedly defeated the Yuuzhan Vong for what more or less amounts to doing so under the entire collaboration of the galaxy. They also massively screwed up Daala's blitzkrieg attempt against the new Republic. Then there were the events of Jedi Knight 3 and Jedi Academy.

They bear responsibility however for:

Desann
Brakiss
Kueller
Jacen Solo
Kyp Durron

 

The Jedi don't have little resources. In Bloodlines the GA public is really ticked off that they have tons of their money in taxes going to the Jedi who seemingly do nothing.

 

I don't think they're made of fail, but the thread title is awesome.

 

I'm not sure fail is the operative word. Flawed, very much so. But there's never been a period in galactic history where any era's Jedi Order has been under similar sorts of stresses as the NJO's near constant experience of warfare and having to lead the effort... and not have people falling to the dark side of the Force left and right.

I'm beginning to think that once the dark side has it's claws in someone their fall is practically assured.

It seems that the most remarkable Jedi come out of the Order during the times when it is under tremendous stress with regards to its role in the universe, and at the same time the most foolish of them arise. Sometimes they are one and the same.

 

The Jedi don't get anything from the Galactic Alliance they wanted.

 

the events of jedi knight 3 and academy were massive victories for the jedi, taking out a plot to create an army of dark jedi and resurrecting marka ragnos, along with killing most of the dark jedi opposing them with little casualties or collateral damage. Besides trying to off the jedi order, i don't think desann has done anything really collateral to the new republic as far as we know.

 

The fact that Desaan hatched as scheme to create an army of artifically Force-sensitive dark Jedi and annihilate the Jedi Order shows that he was a bit more than a cranky lizard..

 

They seriously have to consider whether joining the fight against a race of fanatical dogmatic genocidal maniacal unrepentant *pants* is the right thing to do.

Also, what's up with all the imageboard meme titles on literature lately, eh?

 

I'm going to agree with the Tionne thing as a possible IU explanation. This certainly seems to be a huge flaw of KJA's which I find absolutely baffling -- his Jedi just sit and watch people go dark and do nothing. However, it's not just in the JAT; Luke has also totally dropped the ball in Jedi Outcast, in The New Rebellion, with Kyp's gang in Dark Tide ("Hey, they're talking revenge. Do you think we should do something?" "Nah, they'll be fine. Oh, wait, someone ran off to look up superweapons? They have fallen to the dark side! They have failed me! I must hunt them down and stop them!"), with Alema (explicitly knowing she was going to struggle and putting forth no real effort to prevent it), and with Jacen -- who was doing odd things, whose methods made him nervous, but who he made no real effort to reach out to until he was certain he was already on the dark side.

I don't know if Luke feels it inappropriate for him to step into their personal struggles and pull them out himself -- that it weakens their character, that they have to do it themselves and he can't just do it for them -- but it's not something that seems to be working well and a belief that I'd say is highly mistaken. The odd thing is just how consistent it is across authors.

 

I've been saying this for years, Trip, where you been?

 

Luke went along his own Dark path once as well. Maybe he just doen`t assume its his place to dictate to every other Jedi, instead allowing them to live and learn and eventually be redeemed.

 

And if those same dark Jedi should kill thousands of people before they stumble along into "redemption" who are we to complain? As long as St. Luke doesn't get his hands dirty, I guess it's ok.

 

With a little tweaking, I'm going to pretty much repost what I posted in the other thread:

Until DE, Luke was extremely nervous about training Jedi, even though he did do a little one-on-one with Mara. But at the end of DE, Luke decided that the galaxy needed Jedi to stand against the darkness, and that one Jedi couldn't do it alone. Besides, Yoda had given Luke a mandate: "Pass on what you have learned."

As a new teacher, Luke probably would have been better off training just a couple of Jedi first rather than a dozen. But maybe he thought that since the training is fairly long, teaching one or two at a time would have made the Order grow extremely slowly, especially since they were starting with an Order of exactly ONE. He may also have thought that the Jedi apprentices would help one another learn and could practice together. And perhaps he worried that if there were so few, it was likely that they could be killed in the war and that would be the end of the Academy.

Things would have worked out fine though for that first class of 12 if it hadn't been for Exar Kun's spirit being on Yavin IV. And who would have guessed that it would STILL be there???

I think the out of universe reason why there were quite a few dark Jedi early on is because the authors seem to find it easy to create villains by turning apprentices and Jedi to the dark side. However, I think there are two major reasons in-universe why there were some dark Jedi in the young New Jedi Order. The first is that because there weren't many Force sensitives, Luke took everyone: young, old, even darkish, in the hopes that he could mold them into Lightside Jedi. He couldn't really pick and choose. The Old Order sent those who didn't cut it into the Agri Corps. Luke didn't really have that luxury.

The second reason I think some of the early Jedi fell to the dark side was because the galaxy was almost constantly at war from the very beginning of the existence of the New Jedi Order. The Jedi were needed in the galaxy before they were ready, and Luke didn't get to concentrate enough on Jedi training because he himself was almost constantly needed to serve in one of those many wars. He wasn't able to stay at the Jedi Academy and oversee everything very often. This is even clear in the YJK books, where Luke is always coming and going. However, I do think that Luke is written as a wise teacher when he is able to be there.

Luke didn't have mentor teachers; he didn't have colleagues; he didn't have textbooks or a curriculum to follow on how to train new Jedi when he started the Jedi Academy. It's actually amazing he was able to accomplish what he did given all the circumstances. Luke restored the Order alone and from scratch. I think that's pretty impressive.

 

Say what you will about the fuddie-duddies in the Old Order, but unlike Luke, they didn't seem to treat darkside Jedi with a "Shucks, all is forgiven, why not have a seat on the Jedi Council?" attitude like Luke.

 

1) I bristle every time an LotF Karen Traviss book is used to attack the Jedi in general.

2) This was a result of political tides turning against the Jedi Order; the actual sum of money may not be very big at all. People in real life are notoriously bad about actually understanding relative sums of money being spent by the public purse and how important they are -- see the public outrage over "earmark" spending in the USA that costs the same as four hours of the War in Iraq.

3) Even if the amount of money going to the NJO has become burdensome, this is the situation as it stands in the GA *after* a massive reorganization of government after a massive, globally destructive invasion that was repelled in a bloody war where the Jedi were the demigod-like heroes who almost single-handedly saved everyone. I think it's fair to say that the NJO may be better funded in the LotF era than in the shoestring era of the JAT books.

 

Desann wasn't the mastermind. Admiral Fyyar was. The fact that Desann went dark made him a useful patsy for Fyyar and the Empire Reborn, and meant that the Reborn project probably had far more success than it would've otherwise -- but it's wrong to say that it wouldn't have happened at all had Desann not joined up. The Empire Reborn was a creation of the Imperials, not of Desann or any other fallen NJO Jedi.

 

Note: This thread is not debating whether having a Jedi Order is useful or not, it is a examination on why Luke is a terrible trainer and his individual heroism does not seem to have translated into effective leadership.

 

Is the title supposed to say, "made to fail?" What's the ITT?

And why does Hamil have personal responsibility for mistakes? It's Gannon's fault every, ah, Moblin, misbehaves?

 

I think the problem is face-time with his students. Take Alema. He was never interested in her before SBS and then he decided she would go dark and ignored her emotional needs again until he was proved right. Tahiri, Lowie and Tesar had it right in DN-He wouldn't listen to them, only Jacen, whom he eventually stopped listening to, which I believe is one of the reasons Jacen becomes frustrated with Luke in Betrayal. Luke now only seems to listen to Ben.

But surely everyone should notice with Alema, Tahiri, Jacen ana even Kyp and Jaina to a lesser extent, that Luke decided they had gone bad and did nothing but ask nicely that they stop. Did that work with Vader? No, it didn't.

 

Ignored slut Rar's emotional needs? He's been like a transexual bee queen in the years since, give him a break from your Koon judgement. Why should he look after everyone? That's what class teachers are for.

 

Ex, 'ITT' means 'in this thread'. Trip has been hit with the YJCC bug.

Why is Luke's Jedi Order made of fail?
Because otherwise, there wouldn't be any continuing adventures.