Why did the Old Jedi Order fail?

The key question here being, what could have been done - would have been done in a different order - to prevent Anakin's fall? For me it comes down to the fact the the Jedi Order refused to accept their imperfections and instead stigmatized and swore them off, hoping to keep them out through conditioning(hence baby snatching) and exiling different viewpoints(see: Potentium). Anakin needed a father, or at least a mother, and they gave him a mentor, older brother at best.

 

Anakin's fall was predestined as long as he was unwilling to do anything more than serve his own greed and attachment. Literally, they could have allowed him a public marriage and made him a Jedi Master while rescuing his mother and he STILL would have fallen because Anakin Skywalker was a horrible human being by the time of ROTS.

Anakin had a far better father in Obi Wan Kenobi than most children could ask for who didn't grow up to be psychotic child killers.

 

You realise that Shmi's death is what began Anakin's fall to the darkside, right? I think we all can agree that if Shmi didn't die, than Anakin never would've fell to the darkside. Apart of Anakin did die along with his mother.

Remember, Anakin's attachments were the root of his downfall. His lust for power and greed were only symptoms of his attachments.

He let go of all of that at the end, but it took over 20 years for Anakin to realise the error of his ways. That's what redeemed him at the end.

 

No I don't, in fact I outright refute it. Anakin Skywalker on Naboo was already saying to Padme that they should have a dictatorship in the Republic and receiving private lessons from Emperor Palpatine. He was moody, irritable, wore black, and reckless with a violent streak.

I don't actually even think Shmi's death did much more than highlight Anakin's already innate choice for fascism. I prefer that really. It's nice to realize that he's evil because he BELIEVES in authoritanism and intimidation rather than any personal tragedies.

 

The failure of the old Jedi Order and the fall of Anakin Skywalker are two very different things, but are related. The Jedi were too attached to the Republic, just as Anakin was too attached to Padme.

The old Jedi Order failed because it became too close and entangled with the Old Republic, to the point of being ordered by the Supreme Chancellor to act as Generals in a war they should never have fought in, a war which ended up being a death trap for them all after Order 66.

Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side because never learned the Jedi way of how to properly let go of attachments such as the people he loved, and was secretly married.

 

Hahaha. "Wore black." Funny.

Seriously, technically Anakin Skywalker's first serious brush with the dark side is Rogue Planet when he killed that Blood Carver with the Force in a fit of rage.

Anakin's fall may have been a little longer drawn out had Shmi not died on the Tusken's rack, but his arrogance and hot-headedness and obsession with power would have led to the dark side anyways. It's not so much how his mother died that's crucial to his fall, it's how he dealt with it. It's how he couldn't accept the transience of the world and the people in it that leads him to the dark side.

 

Don't forget he also fell because his idea of paradise was a Stormtrooper's boot on the face of everyone.

 

Just two things:

1) The Jedi never snatched babies.

2) The Potentium was a fundamentally wrong and corruptive philosophy that the Jedi were right to denounce. Their failing was to overlook the fundamental flaws that existed in themselves as well.

 

While Anakin did not fully understand politics, that was not the reason why he fell. The true reason was his inability to let go. That was highlighted in the second and third movies. Again, his lust for power and greed were only symptoms of his attachments. Why do you think we had that scene when Anakin arrogantly said that he would one day have the power to stop people from dying? That scene alone forshadowed the events that were to come in Rots.

Anakin was not always evil. He was not born evil. He was a sweet, innocent kid in TPM who like most kids, had an innocent, naive way of looking at things. At the same time, he had an attachment towards his mother and if he was going to be trained as a Jedi, he had to let that go. While that problem was not a huge one than, it was a concern. Instead of having that problem nipped in the bud, it grew to the point where it was out of control. And we know what happened when it grew out of control in the third movie?

We all have a choice who we are going to become later in life and Anakin had that choice in Rots. Unfortunately for himself and the rest of the galaxy, he made the wrong choice.

Anakin confused compassionate love with posessive love, and that confusion cost him dearly. It took him being stuck in a suit for all those years for him to finally see the error of his ways. Remember, Luke touched that one ounce of good that was left in Anakin, which is what ultimately redeemed him at the end. Unlike his relationship with Padme, Anakin's love for his and Padme's son was pure and innocent, whereas his feelings for Padme was one of selfishness and posessiveness. Possessivenes and selfishness are symptoms of attachment, as is greed.

If Anakin's attachments were not the true reason for his fall to the darkside, than Lucas never would've played it up like he did throughout the PT. Its Lucas' story, not ours, and in his story, Anakin's inability to let go of his attachments were the root behind his fall to the darkside.

 

They fell because they again thought the Sith extinct and did not have enough foresight into the eventuality that they would return...just like every other time the Sith returned from the ashes.

 

I always wonder what would have happened had Obi-wan gone back to Tattooine after TPM to buy Shimi from Watto. I guess the jedi must have a 'we dont deal with slavers' rule. But then again, Shimi was freed and lived a very good life with very good people but none of that mattered to Anikan because she wasn't with him. I wonder if Anikan ever truely understood exactly what the jedi rescued him from when they took him from his mother. Its ironic & tragic that he would go on to endorse slavery all over the galaxy.

 

It was too late by the time of TPM. You'd need serious institutional reform. Personally, I'd trace it back to the Ruusan Reformations - those things killed the Republic and the Jedi Order, or rather, put the two into a slow, lingering death that lasted a thousand years. Ironically, you can make a very serious argument that Lord Kaan was right. It was the horror of the New Sith Wars that convinced both the Republic and the Jedi Order to neuter themselves. Bane and his descendants were merely in a position to take advantage of the seeds Kaan had sown.

To prevent Anakin's fall... frankly, Anakin wasn't the key. He was important, but sooner or later the Republic and the Jedi Order would have collapsed anyway. To prevent it, well, in honesty, I don't think it could have happened without a war.

That's a very good point, actually. Obi Wan got it right in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader -

That's the truth that eluded them. Jedi are not supposed to fight for the Republic. The Republic is a political institution, nothing more, nothing less. The Jedi are supposed to serve the Force above all else. They forgot that, and placed the Republic first. Consider also what Mace Windu had to say about a Jedi's duty -

At some point they managed to identify the Republic as synonymous with 'civilisation', and in doing so fought for it while failing to see that it had grown to lack that bedrock of justice. Mace made that very mistake -

No. The Republic was a civilisation, but after a millennium of decline, it was not worth fighting for. The Jedi failed to look at the Republic critically, and became attached to their vision of it. Compare Knights of the Old Republic II -

(And also what she says when you say we've got to protect the Republic in the conversation on the Ebon Hawk immediately after leaving Peragus, but I don't have that one to hand.)

Interesting, this is the same conclusion Mace Windu reached -

The Republic was only ever incidental. Whether the Republic should be protected or not has to come down to how well the Republic serves its purpose; to create peace and justice. By the time of the Clone Wars, the Republic had manifestly failed in that. As above, I blame the Ruusan Reformations entirely, and their consequences. In part because it defanged the Republic (set

 

They were too attached to the Republic to see what it had become, and as a result were able to be tricked into fighting an unjust war for it.

Anakin's fall is a separate issue from the fall of the Republic and the OJO. Related blindspots, but separable issues.

Fixed.

I don't agree. Anakin was halfway there by the time the opening crawl came up on AOTC.

Yeah, they kinda did.

I think it's more that they expected that if the Sith were to come back, it would be in the same form as before, using the same tactics and such. They couldn't or wouldn't think outside the box, and so they deliberately ignored the evil right under their noses. Sidious was basically able to toss out a big figurehead Sith Lord with his big army trying to conquer the galaxy, and the Jedi took the bait.

* Evil warlord with a conquering army = something we know how to deal with
* The possibility that the Republic could itself be turned to evil = too big and scary to contemplate, hence we'll pretend it's not happening

 

The Old Jedi Order failed because they weren't communicating with the Republic enough they were to independent. The only person they answered to was the Chancellor, ocasionally they would talk to their senator buddies.

If the Jedi had checked their Clone Trooper Instruction Manuels they might have noticed Order 66 and more importantly Order 65, which called for the Clones to treat the Chancellor as a traitor and arrest him. If Mace Windu had taken the time to issue Order 65 the Clones wouldn't listen to anything Palpatine said and Order 66 would never have happend.

I also cry everytime someone suggests that the Jedi should never be generals and should never have fought in the Clone Wars. I ask what the Jedi would do when the trillions of battle droids the Confederacy had decended on the Jedi Temple? If the Jedi didn't fight, Palpatine would have conquered the Republic with the Confederacy then use the droids to hunt down the Jedi. Either way Palpatine would rule the galaxy and exterminate the Jedi.

The Jedi fell because they didn't work with the Repbulic, they did everything on their own and because of that were destroyed.

 

People always bring up Baby Ludi to argue this point, but it's not the same issue. The Jedi do not go around kidnapping Force-strong children; that's the argument, and it's wrong by virtue of the fact that it is untrue.

The Baby Ludi incident, while deplorable, can only be argued as kidnapping retroactively. The baby's parents were missing and presumed dead, so the Jedi did the compassionate thing and adopted her into their own "family"; she was in no way "snatched." You can judge the Jedi however harshly you like for how they behaved once the baby's mother turned out to be not so dead after all, but when they initially found Ludi, they didn't kidnap her; they saved her.

Examples, please?

 

If the Jedi had checked their Clone Trooper Instruction Manuels they might have noticed Order 66 and more importantly Order 65, which called for the Clones to treat the Chancellor as a traitor and arrest him. If Mace Windu had taken the time to issue Order 65 the Clones wouldn't listen to anything Palpatine said and Order 66 would never have happend.


Order 65 was at the leisure of the Senate and Security Council-in other words...it never would've happened.

 

Jax Pavan. Yes, Lorn Pavan was given a "choice," but he was deceived as to the nature of the choice he was making. That's how the Jedi operated with the baby-snatching: take babies willingly whenever you can; cajole, strong-arm, and lie to parents when you can't. That's why Roan Shryne quit the Acquisitions Department in disgust.

And, yes, I agree, they did the only compassionate thing they could with Baby Ludi - at first. But, clearly, any rights the parent might have had went right out the window once they got their claws into the kid, which kind of reveals the real priorities there. It's all very "iron fist in a velvet glove" - make nice if you can, but at the end of the day, make sure you're leaving with the baby.

 

*Fight with Wald*

"It's Obi-Wan's fault! He's holding me back!"

"One day, I'll be the most powerful Jedi ever."

"This is outrageous!"

Yeah, there's plenty there beyond attachment. Give Lucas a little credit when it comes to character creation: there's not much of it, but the Anakin he built was plenty complex.

The Old Jedi Order fell because Palpatine was really good at what he did.

 

The Jedi order fell because of two things: First, they were up against the greatest Sith Lord of all time.

Secondly, they couldn't overcome thier own arrogance. In AoTC, Mace and Yoda have a discussion about how they cannot sense the Force as they once could. They blame this on the Force being out of balance, never once pausing to consider that maybe they are the ones that are "out of balance". What's more likely people, that an omnipresent mystical life-force that's the closest thing the GFFA has to God is somehow losing power, or that it's falible, all too coruptable servents are losing power?

But that's not possible. They're the Jedi, right? That means that by default they're always right, doesn't it? It must be the Force's fault. Right?

Wrong.

Anakin on his own could never have been the threat that he became if the Jedi hadn't made such arrogant choices along the way. For starters, they had the Chosen One on their hands, but refused to train him as anything more then another Jedi. Obi-Wan was an excellent master and did all that he could to train Anakin, but it was only in preparing him to be a Jedi Knight, not the Embodiment of the Force destined to destroy the Sith. They saw from the start that Anakin was afraid. Did they ever try to help him overcome his fears? To deal with them as normal human being?

Take a look at the Jedi code for that answer.

"There is no emotion, there is peace."

Regardless, Anakin cannot be held unaccountable for his own choices, but the order is still partly to blame for his fall. They are also to blame for how much damage his fall did to them. Case in point: The Clone Army. Out of a desire to save the Republic that they had put before the Force, the Jedi decided to take command of an army of genetically-engineered slave soldiers who had appeared as conveniently as baby in a basket with a "please take care of this army" sign attached to it. They never bothered to finish investigating the connection that "a man nammed Tyrannus on one of the moons of Bogden" had to the Clone Army, nor did they ever bother to find out whether or not the Clones might perchance have some orders programmed into them that just might conflict with the Jedi Order's goals.

Nor did they even bother to consider whether or not the Jedi Order should take posession of a KRIFFING SLAVE ARMY!!!!

The Republic was a dying beast. The Seperatist movement was born out of an actual desire of freedom from the corrupt beauracratic mess that the Republic had become. The same corrupt beauracratic mess that the Jedi insisted on protecting because it was what they had done for the last couple of thousand years, and Force-out-of-joint-be-darned, they were going to keep doing it come hell or high water. Or threat of destruction from Sith, for that matter.

So to summarize, the Jedi Order was doomed to fail because: (A) They were no longer listening to the Force, but to the demands of the Republic instead, (B) they participated in a war while taking command of a an army they had no right to command, (C) creating the weapon that killed them by ignoring the troubling problems of their Chosen One, and (D) being a bunch of arrogant pansies.

The Force moves in mysterious ways. Maybe they needed to be cleansed, to make way for an order that would actually follow It's will.

 

Fair point.

QFT.

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Right here, this is the classical tragedy stuff. The Jedi essentially make a deal with the devil here, taking the quicker, easier, more seductive route and thereby ensuring their own destruction. Sidious dangled a very tasty apple in front of them, and they took it with what they thought were the best intentions, and it led to their downfall.

Exactly. This is made very explicit in the ROTS novelization, for those who continued to miss the point after AOTC.

 

Actually, I think the Jedi should have fought in the Confederacy War. Why shouldn't they? It's the defense of the innocent against a hostile and evil government. The Jedi even give their quiet endorsement to Count Dooku to go and carry out his Seperatist movement as they see fit right up until the point that Dooku is revealed to be plotting a massive Blitzkrieg against innocent worlds.

The Jedi fight evil and the CIS is evil.

 

Charles, the Entire Point of the Prequel Trilogy is on the phone. It feels like you two have never really connected.

No, it's the defense of a hostile and evil government the Jedi can't bring themselves to cut their ties with, against another hostile and evil government set up as bait. The innocent are the ordinary citizens of the Confederacy who just want to be free of the tyranny of the Republic, and the clone slaves, and various other people on both sides.

 

You mean Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Padme, Garm Bel Iblis, and the other friends the Jedi have in the senate couldn't pull strings and get the Security Council to issue the order after the Jedi showed them that Palpatine was the reason their citizens were dead. Since we don't know who was on the security council I think it is safe to say that if the Jedi had tried going after Sidious through the Council they would have a better chance then simply treating it as a Jedi only matter. Palpatine played the Jedi as a self-centric organization and they acted exactly as he said they do.

 

The refusal to return her is indicative of the attitude we are condemning, though.

DarthBoba is correct. This is Order 65 -

The Jedi could not issue that order. It would have to come from the Senate or Security Council - neither of which was possible. Palpatine controlled the Senate, and the Senate appointed the Security Council. Order 65 looks very nice on the books, balancing out Order 66, but in practice all the real power is in the Supreme Chancellor's hands.

Remember Revenge of the Sith? Anakin wanted Palpatine to stand trial, but Mace Windu pointed out that the courts are effectively controlled by the Senate, and thus Palpatine. He could not be impeached or anything of that sort. Especially since being a Sith Lord is not illegal (as Palpatine points out in the RotS novel; apparently at some point since the New Sith Wars it was made legal under a freedom of religion clause).

The problem is obvious. Palpatine set up the entire system to support him. By that point, fighting Palpatine would mean fighting the Republic itself. That was the revenge of the Sith. The Republic that the Jedi had always believed was theirs had come to support the Sith.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Palpatine was the right Sith at the right time, but I don't think he was the greatest ever. Not when you've got the likes of Revan, Bane, or Krayt around.

That's quite true. It's the balance between the Unifying and Living Force once again.

Actually, that's one of the most misunderstood precepts of the Jedi Code. This is O

 

I highly doubt that the self interst senate would over look the oppurtunity to play hero and order Palpatine taken down, besides persuading a few senators to issue one order should be no problem for the Jedi High Council. Surely Yoda could persuade people that weak minded.

I'm not saying Palpatine should have stood trial, Mace should have killed him like he said. But should that attempt fail, The Jedi should have had the Security Council rather willingly or unwillingly issue Order 65 before they made their arrest attempt.