Saga The Foibles and Flaws of the Jedi

Here is a video of philosopher /cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek talking about the tension between the concept of universal love and ordinary everyday love between two persons that might interest people.



(Yes. He has a thick accent and some physical ticks. Get your giggles out of your system and enjoy.)

 

Over and again we see that the Jedi way is the correct one. The failings are not about the Jedi themselves but the failures of those beings on the path. If Anakin would have done as Yoda instructed then he would not have been tempted by Sidious and would not have fallen to the Dark side. It's entirely possible that he would have fulfilled his destiny and destroyed Sidious. Instead he chose to not to fulfill his destiny of destroying the Sith and bringing balance to the Force. In Star Wars many paths of destiny are set out and characters have the ability to chose.

 

I think it's hard to ague the Jedi were in their ideal state in the PT. Their teachings were theoretically correct, however their application was off.

 

Yes but not by very much. It doesn't take that much to get off the path which is the point. Mace was correct in what he did until his decision to kill a "helpless" Sidious. That incorrect decision fueled Anakin's wrong choice that much more.

 

Except there were so many more faults with them during the PT. Getting involved in the war, and being cold and unempathetic to Anakin among them.

 

Related to this topic, I started a new thread in another forum, with a poll:
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...x-future-of-force-using-lightsiders.50048819/

I think/hope my poll options account for all major gripes and wishes people have had for the Jedi over the years.

 

Then it's arguing against the tens of thousands of years of being guardians of the Republic which is not something started then but back to the very same Jedi who are referenced in TLJ itself.

As for being "cold" to Anakin. Hardly. That IS the Jedi way which is about commitment. If Anakin wanted to walk away he could. If Luke hadn't let go of his father then he never could have inspired him to also let go and accept his destiny to defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force.

 

Anakin didn't want empathy from Yoda. He only wanted power over life and death. Even if Yoda was empathetic, he would still turn to the dark side, because Yoda didn't tell him that the Force could stop Padme from dying.

 

Just because they were flawed in the PT doesn't mean they always were.

Luke did that through attachment. If they were more empathetic to Anakin's troubles of being a slave and having abandoned his mother, perhaps his problems with this issue would have been prevented. Yes they technically gave Anakin the right advice but they didn't give much understanding.

 

There's an inherent flaw in a movement that promotes selfless universal love but also believes its destiny is tied to a chosen one.

It is also illuminating that the Jedi doctrine spends a lot of time describing how one goes about breaking the rules of their ostensibly altruistic ideology.

 

Luke saved Anakin not because he was attached to him, but because he let go of his attachment to him.

"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.

And again, it wasn't empathy that Anakin wanted. It was power. He needed to let go of his attachment to the people that he loved and in turn, his attachment to being all powerful.

How is that a flaw? The Chosen One is an individual who will bring balance to the Force, which was what was in the prophecy. That doesn't contradict the idea of selfless love.

Explain that one.

 

I've argued previously that the story can be seen as the downfall of the Jedi because they begin to believe in prophecy, that Qui-Gon is a dangerous character because he forces the issue; using emotional blackmail to force Obi-Wan to train said 'Chosen One' and having his ideas and beliefs pervade the Jedi Order, ultimately to their cost. The Council are initially dismissive of Qui-Gon's demands (and they are demands)

Qui-Gon's religious fanatacism is not in keeping with being in the moment, remaining calm, centred and detached from - ie not acting upon - one's emotions.

Remember Qui-Gon's own words to Obi-Wan after the latter had said that Yoda had told him he should be mindful of the future; "But not at the expense of the present" - and then he goes on to promote what he believes to be the embodiment of a prophecy (the future) without any heed of the present (Anakin's emotional state).

 

Yeah. Qui Gon professes to be aware in the moment, yet is also controlled by a prophecy that has been doctrine for millenia that involves a predestined, christianic redeemer.

 

That quote doesn't say Luke wasn't attached to him. Luke was attached to him. If he wasn't he would have abandoned him far earlier.

 

He needed an understanding and someone willing to help.

Yoda's advice was absolutely terrible and only pushed Anakin away from the jedi. Telling someone to "rejoice" at the idea of their loved ones dying when he himself felt Anakin's pain when he lost his mother (and Yoda definitely didn't "rejoice" when the jedi died during order 66) and not to mourn is dumb because how can he let go if he isn't allowed to mourn?

 

Luke, like the other Jedi, lets go of his attachments. What Luke did have was unconditional love for his father and compassion for him. Those are the reasons why he reached out to him as he did. Lucas defines attachments as loving too much and compassion as unconditional love.

"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.

Yoda and Obi-wan were willing to help him, but unless they were going to teach him how to stop people from dying, he wasn't going to hear it.

That's a total misreading. When Yoda talks about rejoicing, he's talking about the same thing that religious leaders always say during funerals. Be happy that that person is no longer suffering, or in pain and is with God now. Don't dwell on the negative. And when it came to the Younglings, Yoda was sad to see them dead, but he did not become a vengeance machine over it, like Anakin did. He accepted their loss and moved on from it. Anakin didn't want to move on from his loss, because he didn't want to accept that people will die on him. He wanted to fight nature. I've posted this before, but I will post it again.

"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.

Every bad deed was because he couldn't let go of his failure to save Shmi.

 

Funeral? Anakin come to him because he wanted to save life, not to bring someone from the dead. The advice was cold and unhelpful.

And this is the problem. If the jedi bothered to help his mom and if he trusted his dreams, he would have saved his mother.

Yoda is very likely aware of what happened to Shmi which should have been enough reason for him to be more understanding of Anakin's situation and take his dreams seriously instead of acting like the person is already and Anakin should prepare himself for the funeral.

 

That is the main problem. There's no logical progression from feeling guilty due to tardiness in trusting one's instincts and wanting the power to reverse any future failures to act in time. Having the power for intervene when necessary is a logical progression. Even in purely emotional terms. There is nothing that tells Anakin or the audience that responding to his instincts was futile since Shmi would have died no matter how soon he responded to his sensitivity to her danger. He got there too late.

It's not like when Kal El realises that he's not that Super that he can solve all the world's problems all at the same time, and chooses to pervert the course of history in order to mitigate that failure.

There is no logical progression from a person filled with guilt at betraying his instincts and the resultant death of his mother to being prepared to deal with devil in return for the power to reverse all future betrayals of his instincts and late response to his feelings of compassion. It's entirely emotionally illogical and implausible.

 

No, I said that he wanted to stop Padme from dying. Which means using the Force in a way that even Palpatine said was unnatural. Yoda's advice was correct. He needs to let go of his fear of loss by training himself to accept loss.

The Council did not know she was in danger, nor did Anakin. And she was freed which was why she was in danger. Anakin didn't distrust his dreams, he just didn't understand them which again becomes the problem with Padme. Anakin also doesn't come clean with Yoda, which is his fault. Not Yoda's.

Yoda knows that Shmi's dead, but not all what Anakin did. Not until later. And because Anakin withholds vital information from Yoda, he is the one who damns her, not Yoda.

There is a logical progression because Anakin becomes obsessed with becoming all powerful. At the start of the film, Anakin believes that he is more powerful than any other Jedi. A fact that Palpatine fosters throughout the years. When Anakin fails to save Shmi, he gives into the dark side because he's been hurt emotionally. And in the aftermath of his act of revenge, he vows to become more powerful. To become powerful enough to stop people from dying. He's been twisted by Palpatine for years into believing in his power and this goes further, when Anakin decides that he wants even more power and to follow the path of the enemy that he swore to destroy, simply because he's afraid to be alone.

You don't know your Superman history. In "Superman: The Movie", Clark changes the course of human history because he wasn't able to rescue Lois in time and the consequences of that action, leads to the Phantom Zone being destroyed and freeing his father's enemies. And in the comics, "King Of The World" was based on the notion of Dominus supplying Clark with visions of disasters occurring before they happened, while asleep. Clark becomes obsessed with stopping them to the point that he creates dozens of Superman robots to help him protect the world and starts becoming a tyrant.

There is because the films establish his desire to be all powerful, which is born from his mentor telling him he will be the greatest of all and the most powerful. Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

 

I'm talking about Yoda knowing about the dreams which is very likey he did since I'm pretty sure the council would want to know why Anakin went to tatooine.

And Anakin's obsession with saving Padme come from the fact he had visions similar to what happened before with his mother who he could have saved if he acted on his dreams sooner. His fear was understandable and Yoda should have taken his dreams seriously instead of dismissing the person as already dead which what pushed Anakin farther from the jedi.

 

I do believe that the Jedi Order at the time of TPM may have not have been completely right in how they approached the training of Anakin. We of course know of Yoda's initial refusal to train Anakin he had sensed much fear in him. At the time I originally watched TPM, I found that statement peculiar. The Jedi during that time, avoided fear by removing all attachments. Yoda's view at the time was that because of his attachments and fear he was untrainable. By the time of ESB, Yoda recognizes that Luke has a profound attachment to his friends, which ultimately does get him in trouble. He also recognizes that fear will eventually become a realization for him as he tells like that he will be afraid. While it is understandable that in this situation, they're a bit desperate and beggars can't be choosers, I still see this as an somewhat of a change in view in how they approach fear and attachment. With Luke they accepted his attachment and fear and attempted to teach him to control it as opposed to Anakin where they seem to be less adept at teaching to control fear than they were at preventing circumstances where fear would become relevant.

 

I thought it was throwing a French nuclear missile into space, that did that?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SupermanII

Chekhov's Gun:

• The French hydrogen bomb, which Supes hurls into space, accidentally causing it to shatter the Phantom Zone and free the Terrible Trio.

 

Yep.

 

It was intended that the test missile that Superman threw into space near the end of the first movie would accidentally free the villains. Turning back time at the end of two was going to put them back in. They were never released because of Superman changing history.

 

The Council is aware of why and how he went to Tatooine. But the fact is that Anakin keeps everything to himself and does not genuinely ask for their help. Even when Padme suggests doing so, he becomes angry at the idea. And while his fear is understandable, it is not acceptable as a Jedi to act on his fear. That's why Yoda and Obi-wan warned Luke to not go to Bespin, as he was suffering from the same situation. Letting fear control him.

Yoda doesn't exactly accept Luke's fear. He's just telling him that part of his Jedi training is that he will feel fear and he will face his fears. It's no different from when the Jedi were trained from birth. Obi-wan had to deal with his fear for Qui-gon's safety. Ahsoka had to deal with her fear of losing Anakin when he was injured. He had to face his own fears when he saw all of the Jedi dead in the Temple, during his training on the Force fueled planet. Yoda even told Ezra that the Jedi were afraid when they entered the Clone Wars. But as he also told Ezra, it is a life long struggle to avoid letting fear consume you and turning it towards anger and hate. That's why Luke almost killed Ben in his sleep, before deciding against it. He was filled with fear again and had to fight against it. It's also why he told Rey that seeing her power is making him afraid now, when it should have scared him before.

I refer to the Donner Cut where the missile causes the Phantom Zone prism to shatter.