PT {+The Misconception Of The JEDI ORDER+}

Then Yoda and Ben had not the compassion necessary to turn Vader back and destroy the Sith. Since Yoda sent Ben to kill Vader. and Ben later told Luke that the Sith had won because he refused to kill him and would rather be compassionate. Their attachment enabled Luke to have compassion for Vader where others couldn't.

And was it compassion that led to Vader wanting Luke to turn to the darkside like him?

The jedi forbade attachment because they fear that those attachments can be exploited and threatened so that compassion to their attachments is diverted from others that need it also. Those are their conditions. it is their doctrine. The problem with doctrines is that they have a purpose, to prevent something, but the outcome aint always necessarily so . Particularly if is out in the open instead of driven underground due to prohibition.

Simply having that doctrine, with seemingly no recourse to pragmatism, compelled Anakin to begin more to trust his own feelings (including those for Padme and his late mother). Feelings which were already being manipulated without inordinate focus on his attachment to begin with.

His whole introduction to the Jedi order was defined by his special, significant status. And yet he received mixed messages from the council. He was relied on during the clone wars as a extremely powerful Jedi but was treated as less than significant by some, unless it was to scold him for his perceived unJedi-ness. Even before he became attached to Padme. The failure of the Jedi to mitigate the risk for such a powerful and troubled Jedi is conspicuous, after a former devotee with seemingly no attachment defining his fall, Count Dooku, was belatedly discovered to have become a Sith lord.

 

Vader knew he no longer had the power to overthrow Palpatine alone especially after his defeat on Mustafar because he's weaker in the suit than when he didn't have it and he lost most of his potential there. Luke is an opportunity for him to kill the emperor and take his place because that is the way of the Sith and the rule of 2, the apprentice aims to replace the master so it has nothing to do with compassion he wanted Luke to join him for power, it's basically the same offer he did to Padme in RotS where he wanted her to join him in ruling the galaxy together not for her. It's selfishness against selflessness, the Sith cling to life because they know there's only oblivion to them after death while Jedi accept death as a part of life.

 

But Vader's attachment to Luke did fuel his desire for him to join his father in darkness. He had no use for compassion until after he (and the Emperor) failed to turn Luke and he was about to be destroyed. It was attachment and not compassion that prevented Vader from destroying Luke on Bespin.

 

@Alexrd

The Jedi order as a whole is not a single figure, whose actions, attitude and thoughts are there to see.
I have to judge the Jedi order based on the actions, attitude and thoughts of the actual members that I see onscreen.

And I saw several examples of Jedi that had a kneejerk reaction to reject something that didn't fit their worldview.
Jedi that overestimated their own abilities or underestimated the abilities of their opponents.

In all, I saw enough examples of arrogant behavior in one form or another that lead me to think that the Jedi order as a whole has a problem with arrogance among it's members.
Not all of them and not all the time but enough to be noticeable.
This arrogance might be because the climate of the Order as it has been in recent times is fertile ground for arrogance.
Or the Order has gotten less good in suppressing it.

Either way, to me, the Order has a problem.
And I think Lucas did intend to show that the Order did have flaws.
Not to the point that they were evil or needed to be wiped out. But that they had lost their way to some extent.

To give an example of the attitude of reject things that don't fit, let me give an example of the opposite.
Qui-Gon is attacked by Maul, flees and at first he doesn't know who or what that was.
But he thinks it over and despite knowing, like the other Jedi, that the sith are supposed to be all dead, he concludes that his attacked was indeed a sith. So he weighs all the facts and does not reject any possibility out of dogma or because the common held idea that it is impossible. This shows a contrast to other Jedi and we are told that Qui-Gon is an outsider, a bit of a rebel and has often been at odds with the council.
He isn't perfect by any means but he has more of an open mind. At least to me.

Some comments;

They need to protect Amidala, from a HUGE droid army. Plus a big blockade of deadly warships.
Two Jedi can do all that can they?
And the warrior that they are there to find is working with the TF, the Jedi know this.
The same TF have the already mentioned BIG ARMY and thus this warrior can pull on that if he feels like it.
Again, they are outnumbered by quite a lot.

And what did they learn?
That Maul was a Sith?
Well Qui-Gon knew that already.
So they traded one dead Jedi Master for the knowledge that Qui-Gon had already given them.
Also, that they would not be able to get more out of him.
Even the Jedi would realize that an alive Maul holds much more potential as a source of information that a dead one.
So killing Maul lost them quite a bit.
They know he was a Sith but not who he is working with, how the sith have remained hidden for all this time or what their plan was. They don't even learn his name.

Again no, because if you are outnumbered then it is not smart to spread out and make your attack weak.
Instead it tends to be better to focus your forces in a few areas. In this case Dooku, he was the target and the key to win. So Mace should not have have gone alone to deal with him, he should have had backup.
But instead Mace went alone. Not smart or arrogant, or both.

And if Mace knew that the clone army is less than 30 minutes behind him, then wait, make a better plan and don't waste the lives of his fellow Jedi.

Nope, some 200 hundred Jedi went to Geonosis and how many were left alive? Less than 30 it seemed to me.
So the Jedi suffered huge losses. And they failed to capture Dooku or stop the war.

Again, the goal was to stop Dooku from escaping, so he failed at both.

They didn't call for reinforcements or to tell Yoda where Dooku was and allow for any help to get there or for any ship to maybe stop Dooku from leaving the planet. Because Obi-Wan thought he and Anakin could handle this.
As for Yoda, he was at the forward command post and could command all the clones on Geonosis.
He must have used a ship to get to Dooku so why not bring some troops? 20-30 clones would be tiny compared to the overall battle but enough to make a difference with Dooku.
But again he assumed that he could take Dooku by himself, he failed.

Obi-Wan was told the location of Kamino and he trusts Dex and yet when confronted with the absence of Kamino in the records there are only two options, either Dex is wrong or their records are. Since he has rejected the first option, the second is all that is left. But that this means that someone deleted the file is so alien to him that he can't imagine it.
That he knows how the order works is the problem, he is convinced that certain things can't happen and thus he rejects any possibility that they could. This shows some arrogant thinking, or close minded.
Hence why it took a child to show him the obvious.
A child whose mind was more open and not yet filled with what is and is not possible.

It is by far the simplest and the most natural.

Wrong for several reasons, that no one went there is because Jango for some reason gave up trying to kill Padme despite him being ordered to do that. Which is something the Jedi could not possibly have know beforehand.
Second, when the cops or the FBI place someone in protective custody they tend to NOT place them in their parents house or their uncle's cabin.
That is because if an assassin is looking for them, said assassin is likely to look into the family or close friends and look for places that they might have gone to.

Padme's home is Naboo and if the house belongs to her family, which the film implies, then if an assassin finds out Padme is NOT on Coruscant, then he or she would look into places that Padme might have gone to hide.
Her home or houses that belong to her family would be obvious places for such an assassin to look.
About the only reason that makes a little sense is that the Jedi figure that the assassin would not assume that Padme is so stupid as to go to her home and thus would overlook it.

Also, the Jedi at first think that disgruntled miners from Naboo are behind these attacks. So going home means getting close to the people that want her dead.
And Padme meets with the queen in the palace, and thus loads of people would have seen her.
This increases the risk of a leak considerably.

So instead of having Anakin sit there feeling useless, tell him to contact Yoda and the other masters and inform them of the situation and the danger.
As for time, there was still daylight when Mace left and it was dark when he got to Palpatine.
So some time seemed to have passed.
And not acting hastily and rashly would be a better plan than running off half-cocked.

To sum up and this have gotten too long, to me the PT showed the Jedi having flaws and problems and I think that Yoda did realize that their old methods had not worked as well as they hoped. And I think he and Obi-Wan did change their approach when it came to Luke.
Again I don't think Lucas intended to show that the Jedi were evil or had to die.
But that there was room for improvement.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

The Jedi lost the battle, but they didn't really fail since they won the war.

That doesn't make them compromised. That makes them arrogant in their beliefs regarding the Sith, since they've had a tendency to follow the same strategy over and over again until Darth Bane came along. It just means that they were short-sighted.

Their strategy wasn't the problem. It was fighting in a war that was the problem. When Jedi engage in war, the temptation of the dark side grows because emotions are heightened and that includes the ones that lead to the dark side.

Yoda blames himself for not being able to defeat Sidious. But that failure is not really his, it is Anakin's since he is the one who can defeat Palpatine. Obi-wan believes that he failed Anakin, because he didn't teach him to think. But it was not his failure that Anakin chose to do what he did. It was Anakin's choices. Luke doesn't denounce the Jedi way by sparing his father, since that's what Jedi are supposed to do for someone who is helpless. Nor does showing compassion for him against the Jedi way. The only thing Luke does differently is that he chooses to spare his father, rather than walk away. But the thing is that his father has to die. The Sith have to die. Kylo Ren has to die. Same with Snoke. How they are killed is what matters.

The Jedi never tell Luke to kill Vader. He infers it. In the end, Luke reaches his father and he gets him to kill Palpatine and then he dies in the process. So the Jedi still get what they want, the Sith are destroyed.

The Sith have to die in order for the Force to be back in balance. Obi-wan did try to reach Anakin and almost got killed for it. He realizes that Anakin is a lost cause which is why he cuts him up and leaves him behind. Anakin saves Luke because of compassion, not attachment. Luke shows his father unconditional love and a willingness to spare a helpless opponent. It isn't attachment that drives Luke and it is not attachment that drives Anakin. It is compassion. Unconditional love. Thinking of others over yourself.

No, that was greed. He was attached to the dark side. To the notion of power. He was thinking of himself and not Luke. To him, Luke was nothing more than a tool. A means to an end. The minute Luke rejects the dark side, Vader begins to question everything. And he sees that Luke would die rather than kill him. Vader knows that he deserves to die for what he's done, but Luke chooses to love him instead of hate him. And he cannot let that die.

Jedi don't deny compassion. They deny fear, anger and hate. Anakin wants to save Padme for his own selfish reasons, not because it is the right thing to do. He's thinking of himself and not her. He damns the galaxy because he thinks of himself.

He was treated as any other Jedi was. Palpatine is the one who encourages the notion that he's special and greater than the other Jedi. Who treated Anakin as less than significant? Obi-wan scolded him for acting emotionally and not logically. For letting his personal feelings jeopardize things. Like his wanting to go back for Padme when she fell out of the gunship. He was willing to ignore his duty for personal gain. That's why Jedi forbade attachments. The very things that turn him evil are the things that were forbidden.

 

The Jedi are incidental to the attachment between Luke and Vader thar helped the latter destroy the Sith.

 

There is no attachment. There is only unconditional love and compassion. Luke and Anakin do what they do because of their Jedi training which teaches compassion and unconditional love.

No, it doesn't. Arrogance is born from confidence in one's abilities. Not because they cannot cope.

Actually, the Jedi did perceive what the plot was; to eliminate the Jedi and take over the Republic. What didn't occur to them was how they would go about doing it. The war was a distraction because the Jedi were focused on preventing the fall of the Republic from an external threat and not an internal one.

You miss it. Luke thinks that in confronting Vader, he'll have to kill him. Ergo, if he doesn't confront him then he won't kill him. Even if it means he'll never be a Jedi. Because Luke refuses to confront Vader, then Palpatine will have won because with Yoda dead and Kanan and Ezra out of the picture, the Jedi will be no more. Thus he will have won. Luke makes the assumption that the only way the confrontation will end is in a fight. Luke doesn't think about it logically, he's thinking emotionally. His emotional response is, "I have to kill him, but I don't want to". On Endor, he thinks about it logically and comes to a different conclusion which is, "I don't have to kill him, I have to save him." Obi-wan wants Luke to figure this out on his own and that is why he never says kill Vader. Ever.

Or, you know, it's both. As I said, how they die is more important than just straight up killing them in battle. Yoda and Obi-wan tried that and failed. So did Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka and they failed. Luke succeeds because he doesn't choose to fight to win, he chooses to fight for his father's soul. He shows his father compassion by not killing him. His father sees that his son loves him unconditionally and chooses to betray Palpatine, by grabbing him and throwing him to his death. In the process, he is gravely wounded and dies as a good man. The Jedi get what they want (dead Sith Lords) and Luke gets what he wants (saving his father's soul).

Right. He stops thinking of himself and thinks about his son. He decides that he has to kill Palpatine in order to save Luke. He does it knowing that he will not live. He does it knowing that he is giving up his own selfish desires, his own attachments. In doing so, he has achieved the same state of mind that allows one to become a ghost. No thought of self. No sense of self. Total compassion and unconditional love. Thus as he dies, he is saved and transformed by his former Master into a ghost, allowing him to retain his identity and see Luke again.

That is the story. Anakin chooses to betray everyone by stopping Mace from killing Palpatine and then serving him. He makes a Faustian pact with the devil.

"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.

Yoda objects to Anakin being trained, yes. This assumes that Anakin knows this. He knows that he is believed to be the Chosen One and he disbelieves it.

ANAKIN: "The Chosen One is a myth."

The Council is not certain that he is the Chosen One and discussions about it are held privately between Obi-wan and members of the Council. Anakin is not fussed about the whole notion that he is someone that he doesn't think that he is. He just knows and cares about helping others. The only person who blows smoke up his ass is Palpatine.

PALPATINE: "I have said it many times: You are the most gifted Jedi I have ever met."

Trying to save Padme isn't evil, but the problem is that he is willing to do so at the expense of everyone else. He will let the war happen beyond Geonosis, because he chooses to be selfish. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

In your firefighter analogy, the correct one would be a single fireman endangering someone else's life, just to stay and try and reach his fellow firefighter. He would have to leave him behind, in order to save the person who could be saved.

Stopping the Sith is not the job of the Jedi. It is only the Chosen One's duty to do so.

The Jedi were ready for the challenge regardless of being behind the eight ball. The only one who wasn't ready for the challenge was the one who had the means of ending it and he failed his challenge. Obi-wan gave him everything that he needed to do this and Anakin was the one who blew it.

 

I'm going to take an (I hope) middle of the line position on this. On the one hand, I don't think there was anything wrong with the Jedi dogma per se, and I do think that many individuals in the Jedi Order were quite close to the Jedi ideal. On the other hand, I think that parts of Jedi philosophy, like non-attachment and service to the Republic, whilst good in themselves, were being taken too far and taken out of context, by the Jedi as a whole and not just by Anakin. For example, Yoda tells Anakin 'mourn them do not, miss them do not' when Anakin asks him for advice on losing a loved one. Now, it's good to realize that some things come to an end and that you have to move on, but I think you have to miss what's gone first. It's just what happens. I actually think it's partly the process of grieving that helps people to really come to terms with their loss. I don't do the EU or jossed deleted scenes, but I found an older draft for AOTC (very close to the final draft, btw), where Anakin tells Padme that the Senate forbid the Jedi from investigating the MegaCorps like the Trade Federation, on the grounds that the economy might be too compromised. The script strongly implies that the Jedi can't do much, if anything, without the Senate's stamp of approval. Now, serving the Republic is good and all, even needed, but I think it's generally agreed that it got taken too far. It also meant that the Jedi couldn't reach all the living beings outside the Republic, or in the CIS. On top of that, there's the infamous 'If it's not in our records, it doesn't exist' line, which shows an increasing blindness in the Jedi.

That said, I do think that there has been a recent trend of demonizing the Jedi in meta and fanfic, instead of portrayals of the Jedi simply as people with flaws. And I don't fully agree with the demonisation. Guess who demonizes the Jedi most in-universe? Darth Sidious and Vaderkin.

 

What Yoda is referring to is the reaction people tend to have when there is news that someone you care for has an aliment of some sort. Something like cancer. The immediate reaction is fear of loss for the person who is in your life. Having lived through it three times, with two of those people dying, I can attest to how immediate that reaction is. In general, there isn't anything wrong with that. But for a Jedi, it is worse because for one such as Anakin, that fear of loss can be turned against them. That it can drive them to do the things that would go against who they are normally. In Anakin's case, he lets the fear of loss become an obsession for him. He's already got Padme six feet under and that's not a healthy attitude to take in this situation. You have to learn to gain control of your fears and not be dominated by them. You have to be able to resume your life while this tragedy is going on around you. You cannot spend each day fearing the worst, or else you drive yourself into a frenzy. That is what Anakin was doing. That is why Yoda says that he must train himself to let go.

Yoda also speaks of the other part of loss that exists, such as regret. The looking back and thinking you should have done something different. Anakin keeps looking back to his greatest failure which was not saving Shmi in time. In looking back upon it and vowing to never let it happen again, he is cementing his desire to do whatever it takes to prevent such a thing from happening again. This feeds into his obsession, his greed and his darker emotions. He dwells on the negative and that is not healthy.

In the case of the Droid Army, it was a manipulation on the part of Palpatine to prevent the Jedi from discovering the Droid Army still existed and thus was going to be used against the Republic. Whether or not the Senate would actually allow such an investigation, Palpatine has to create a sense of bureaucracy to keep the Jedi at bay. It also follows that the Jedi have to limit themselves because of the actions of the Sith. To keep them from just doing what they want.

 

Forbidding marriage probably indirectly, in the case where Jedi don't comply with the policy, encourages secrecy which isn't good for emotional balance or mutual trust. The policy could work if it's OK to leave the Jedi Order, which from the films isn't clear, but that could still lead to the Jedi thinking they're better than others.

Not freeing Shmi and being reluctant to free slaves outside of the Republic in general does make the group seem overly constrained by missions and legal priorities rather than focusing on helping those who need it most.

Child recruitment and training seems questionably compatible with justice and at least a high price to pay.

The Clone Army felt a lot more of the cause than Anakin's attack on the temple and taking on a (secretly-created) Clone Army like a clear big risk.
The Senate/Republic government and Jedi both seemed to fail pretty badly in response to the Separatist movement, presumably they were both better at diplomacy in the past but that had at least eroded if not always been lacking.

 

Of course the reason why Luke ultimately showed Anakin the way back was because of his being able to detach himself from his quest to save his father. Vader and the Emperor were using his wanting to save his father the way Sidious was able to use Anakin wanting to save Padme. In the end Anakin failed and fell to the Dark Side because he couldn't let go. He wanted control of events for his own selfish needs.

Luke was trying to save his father not for wholly unselfish reasons but the main thing was to save his father even if it cost him his life whereas Anakin would do anything to save Padme for his own greed. Ultimately Luke did let go of his father and had compassion for Vader, the person who his father had become. Luke was able to let go in a way that the Jedi couldn't let go of the Republic.

So detachment with compassion for selfless reasons is a very hard state to get to. It's difficult enough for one person but an entire order?

That's how great the Sith trap was. The Jedi have to defend the Republic and the symbiosis it represents to the galaxy instead of letting it all break down but they can't help but contribute to that breakdown. If they don't fight and leave then they are "destroyed" anyway and are outlaws.

You can leave whenever you want as with Dooku. Anakin could leave the Jedi Order and marry Padme no problem. The point is that he doesn't want to.

They are keepers of the peace not soldiers. There are only a few thousands in total. They can't go around invading planets and freeing slaves or "correcting" things they don't like. It's a vast galaxy with tens of thousands of systems all with laws of their own nevermind what is done across the Republic.

Keeping the peace is a massive undertaking in itself within the Republic without looking outside of it for something that they really can't do anything significant through physical intervention.

A constant underlying theme seems to be that some people think that the Jedi are stupid because like themselves they should be watching the movie! Like somehow the Jedi should send hundreds or thousands of Jedi to Naboo to battle the droid army. This is clearly not how things work when you have a dispute that is within the Republic itself. This applied later when it's Separatists who want to pull the Republic apart.

Over and again in TPM we see the structured world of the Republic with it's rules and laws and forms. This formality informs the entire way the galaxy works at this point. The Jedi are not a rogue organization that does as it pleases. If they did that then their overall effectiveness would not be nearly as significant.

Luke says "I can't kill my own father." and Obi-Wan says "Then the Emperor has already won. You were are only hope" So the idea that Obi-Wan doesn't think that Vader needs to be killed doesn't work. Killing Vader and the Emperor after is what Obi-Wan thinks Luke can do because he is the Chosen One who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. Obi-Wan knows of Leia but believes Luke to be the only hope.

Killing Vader in itself is not a problem if it's done with the right Jedi intent.

 

I never said that Obi-wan thinks that Vader doesn't need to be kill. He's preparing Luke to understand what the light and the dark side are about when it comes to confronting the Sith and in themselves. Luke needs to figure out if he has to kill Vader or not, on his own. He has to be willing to let go of his father if he has to kill him. He has to do this by confronting him. But he never tells Luke what to do when he gets there.

Not to mention that Lucas also said that he's waiting for Luke to redeem his father.

 

There's plenty of middle ground between on the one hand invading and forcibly reforming planets and, on the other, being reluctant to free slaves through money, since it's not part of the mission, even if they go to significant lengths to help you.

 

The Jedi Council is right in wanting Anakin to learn to let go, but perhaps wrong in how they go about teaching him. I mean, since Anakin had already formed an attachment to Shmi that he was very much aware of, it might have been wise to free her and give the boy some piece of mind before asking him to move on.

On the other hand, Shmi was safe with Watto. She was content ("My place is here. My future is here.") and he treated her well. If she'd been in trouble, Anakin would've sensed it (as we see in AOTC). It wasn't until she'd already been free for years that Anakin started dreaming and worrying about her.

 

In no way I think the Jedi are evil, the Sith problem plot we're controlling all sides to create the evil Empire. However I am not blind in seeing the Jedi Council making many mistakes contributing to the events

 

I see it as how a religion can lose its way. The Jedi Order wasn't evil, but it's devotion was clearly no longer with the Force. The Jedi served the Republic, and when the republic became compromised, so did the Jedi Order.

The lesson there is that they should follow the living force, as Qui-gon did. The Jedi Council was too caught up in the politics of everything.

That's my take. Pretty simple for me.

 

What is with the "no romantic relationships" rule?

 

Jedi aren't celibate. They can have intercourse with others, but they cannot become attached to that person. That means that they cannot get married and have children. If a Jedi becomes attached, when a threat to that attachment comes, they will be faced with the temptation of the dark side. See Anakin Skywalker and Padme Naberrie Amidala.

 

There is also the chance of nepotism and/or them being political compromised among other stuff.

 

In other words, they are encouraged to be unemotionally promiscuous in response to their urges.

 

If the Jedi aren't supposed to be married and have children then there should have been no special treatment given to Ki Adi Mundi. I recently stumbled across his individual story and it's disturbing how he was treated completely different than the way they handled Anakin. Hypocritical even.

 

EU right?

 

If that is EU then so is the concept that Jedi can have relations as long as they don't become attached.

The movies give no indication of this. So we naturally assume that Jedi are solitary and celibate so that they don't form attachments.

 

For one thing, that wasn't in the films, or any to shows, and hasn't been mentioned in the new canon, as far as I'm aware.

Additionally, wasn't the reason (or at least retroactive explanation) that his species was endangered, and by reproducing he was helping to save his race? That seems like it wouldn't apply to Anakin even if it was canon.

 

So the Jedi Code was broken instead of Ki-Adi letting go.

Unless it's being unnecessarily endangered by another species, there's nothing inherently wrong with a species being endangered. That's life.

darth-sinister

I fixed that for you. I am pretty sure that there are many ways in which a Jedi could be tempted by the dark side on a daily basis which have nothing to do with what's prohibited by the Jedi code.

Being faced with temptation is not the problem. Giving in to temptation is the problem.