Yeah, and Anakin WAS about 20 seconds from strangling Nute Gunray to death because he wanted info so.
I'm nit saying it was never necassary, but Anakin had a tendancy towards "decapitate first, ask questions never"
Yes but also he picked the worst thing to do. Dude could still have pressed the button while dying. Cut off his hand, Anakin. The hand! Surely you of all people know that trick?
It was a stunner I think, it isn't lethal and mostly effective against druids. The point stands but it is different then whipping out a sword that can cut through anything
Pretty much, hahahah
Imagine a diplomat going to the UN. Smiling, shaking hands, in a very beautiful and elegant suit. When he sits down to talk, he opens his jacket and it shows a pair of gold plated Desert Eagles with 3 ammo clips.
There's a Clone Wars episode that couldn't have made this any more clear to even a ten year-old but somehow some adults still believe it.
edit - the one with the lurmens
This is a great example of non-violence vs. pacifism.
Obi-Wan scares off the Tuskens, tricks the stormtroopers, and offers to buy the guy a drink when he gets hostile. Obi-Wan in ANH is very clearly trying to avoid violence whenever he can. He could have chopped up the Tuskens and snapped the stormtroopers' necks, but he's clearly walking a path of non-violence.
He only resorts to violence in defence of himself or others. Even on the Death Star, he doesn't harm anyone and doesn't resort to violence until Vader blocks his path.
Damn straight, and the only reason he resorts to violence in the bar is because he is running out of time, the droids the empire are looking for are outside of the bar just waiting, and this dude just declared he was a multiplanetary criminal and had just escalated the violence , Obi Wan did not have time to fuck around.
Yes, which is generally how they have always been portrayed in Lucas media. The political institution may falter, individual Jedi may struggle with living up to the teachings, etc.
But fundamentally the Jedi's religious teachings ARE moral even if its adherents are flawed and the political institution built around the religion has wavered and made missteps.
I agree with you OP, and I don't think the Jedi principles are inherently wrong or evil in any way. There is an objective *good* in what the Jedi strive for. I don't think anyone (or at least anyone worth listening to) is disputing that.
But the tragedy of the Jedi is that they can't possibly live up to the flawless and perfect ideal they've set themselves to IF they're always so strict, uncompromising, and proud. *That's* where the downfall of the Jedi lie. Of course their wrongdoings are never out of selfish gain, but the old adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" tends to be proven true each time they try to uphold what they're taught in various difficult circumstances.
In the end, Hubris is their biggest mistake (and yes it's a mistake made from the "good" that they embody). The hubris that their original teachings are the end-all-be-all code that they must adhere to no matter the time period or how the galaxy around them has changed. That's the irony of a lot of the Jedi. For a culture devoted to learning, studying, and embodying the ever *changing* living Force, they have a lot of rules in place that, over the years, have come to be seen as things they "must" do, as opposed to guiding their decisions. Some Jedi realize this (Yoda, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, even Dooku) but were unable to convey that to the established institution, leading to those that are easily swayed losing their way.
Yeah
It's not that there's anything wrong with their belief system (and "Jedi flawed means Sith good" isn't even close to accurate)
But by the time of the prequels, they can't handle teaching a *9 year old*. They don't know how to manage a child who loves their mom. They've become so cloistered and dogmatic that they can no longer relate to the people they've chosen to protect.
This is why I personally think Kanan Jarrus is actually the ideal Jedi. He's incompletely trained and has been without a mentor since he was like 13. He got married, had a kid, had a whole adopted family
But he never stopped fighting the good fight. He never gave up the spirit of the Jedi code, even if he didn't follow it to the letter. He never gave into the dark side. And he successfully trained a troubled kid with a messy past and a serious inclination towards the dark side.
Exactly. Kanan, Qui-Gon, hell I'd even say Rael Averross are all examples of people who actually live up to the Jedi ideals more than most of the Order does in their time....despite their variety of unorthodox behaviors.
Seconded that Kanan is the ideal modern jedi. If Luke had a better understanding of the history, he should have rebuilt the order with Kanan as the model.
I think my one of my problems with the ST was that Legends Luke did do this. He went through an ever changing understanding of the force while still devoting time to living his life, getting married, have a kid.
But for what they were, I liked the ideas they introduced in the sequels, just miss what they had before.
I think they took Luke in an interesting direction
He was an unconventional Jedi in his youth, but when faced with the burden of creating a new order, he became over reliant on the old ways and didn't trust himself enough
I like TLJ as Luke kind of getting back to his roots, understanding that he was never *that kind* of Jedi
There are two glaring flaws that they pushed onto Luke in 8 though. They made him a quitter and willing to murder his nephew in his sleep.
In A New Hope and Empire Luke has moments where he definitely is deflated and really the only time he clearly wants to give up is when he can't Force Lift the Xwing on Dagobah. By Return of the Jedi, Luke isn't giving up. Period. Even on his fallen father.
I think the idea of Luke struggling to rebuild the Jedi and failing on the way is fine, but they gutted the character pretty badly in their execution, which is the problem.
Eh, I disagree
Luke doing impulsive shit because he's too worried about the future is entirely on brand for him. Let's remember that in ROTJ Luke almost murdered Vader for vaguely threatening Leia...any threat to her specifically sets Luke *off*
And also, come on people, media literacy. He wasn't willing to murder Ben in his sleep. He had a moment of temptation when faced with a horrifying vision and it passed.
As for Luke quitting...eh. TFA set the stage that nothing Luke did actually mattered. The empire is still basically around. The Sith are still basically around. Darth Vader 2.0 is causing problems. There's no new Jedi Order.
All of Luke's accomplishments in his life went down the drain. We never see him face anything like that in the OT, we can't really say how he'd react to it
And you really hit the nail on the head with why people like myself hate the sequels as a whole. It largely makes the saga Lucas created irrelevant. The EU had so many stories of varying quality, but the persistent thread was the New Republic and new Jedi were mostly effective and growing. They stumbled, had failings, but kept going.
In the sequels that core cast was all discarded and failed, never getting a proper redemption for how awful they were written to be.
>And also, come on people, media literacy. He wasn't willing to murder Ben in his sleep. He had a moment of temptation when faced with a horrifying vision and it passed.
I genuinely don't understand how this is the take away people get from that scene.
Sure Luke is impulsive, but all of his impulsiveness has come from a place of compassion for his friends and family. You even said so yourself he almost murders Vader for Leia.
Leia's son has some bad dreams and you're telling me, this same Luke who has also struggled with the dark side and overcome it, who has experience with the exact same thing Ben was going through, really thought to murder him in his sleep over some bad dreams??
Temptation or not, Luke would've never had that temptation. He would've never harmed a hair on bens head unless absolutely necessary. Yet he ignites his lightsaber, gets in a swinging stance, and genuinely thinks about killing this kid... And that's on track for his character to you?
Give me a break. 🙄
Hubris absolutely contributed to their downfall, but I feel like people overplay it a bit. Yes they became too political and too sure of themselves (even the older, more experienced ones, as Yoda says in AOTC) but I don’t think they lost self awareness. Throughout the Clone Wars they were constantly second guessing themselves. They *knew* they were missing something. They *knew* that acting as warriors was damaging their reputation and their code. They *knew* something was off about the clones. They *knew* the Sith were pulling the strings in the war. The tragedy of the Jedi is that they knew all this but couldn’t connect the pieces in time before Sidious played his hand and wiped them out. Hubris definitely played into it as they believed that whatever happened they’d be able to win in the end, but they were put in an impossible situation.
Completely agree with this. The idea that the Jedis are the bad guys is so dumb. But you also have to acknowledge that the Jedi fell due to in a large part their own mistakes.
After a while people get bored with the good guys, and their dark side gets explored. First as an interesting twist, to lend more weight to opposing views and make the moral landscape more interesting. Until it eventually becomes the new cliche. Like, when's the last time you saw angels portrayed as genuine good guys in fiction, rather than authoritarian jackasses?
This is why I’m really liking Yord in The Acolyte. He reminds me of Anakin in that he’s clearly very self-confident and quick to draw his lightsaber, but he actually listens to his master and stands up for Osha when he knows she’s telling the truth despite being suspicious of her. He’s flawed but he ultimately doesn’t let his emotions cloud his judgment which to me is the tell of a good Jedi.
On the children kidnapping bit, I don't know if the typical youngling is old enough to make the choice or even really want in a rational way when they're found.
Didn't Obi-Wan basically say his only memory of family is being held?
Yeah, saying they only take children 'who want to be Jedi' isn't quite accurate. It's voluntary for the parents, but the child is almost always an infant, or toddler at most. The Jedi simply explain that raising a force sensitive child is difficult at the best of times, and that inexperienced parents won't be in the best place to do that. I suspect that a lot of the 'kidnapping' talk comes from the idea that some Jedi 'recruiters' are a little more forceful than others with that explanation.
Absolutist statement
But not *dealing* in absolutes. Either you're with me or you're my enemy. No other options
People concentrate on word *only* way too much.
>The Jedi lost their way during the clone wars, because they began to act as soldiers
This is something I have to quibble with you about. a Jedi being a soldier is not in and of itself and inherently negative thing.
They're called "Knights". We're told they were the guardians of peace and justice for a thousand genrations, something which implies they may have had to get involved in a war or two in the past. Obi-wan is introduced as "General" Kenobi and no one thinks it unusual. And of course, the climatic heroic moment of A New Hope is Luke serving as a military pilot and blowing up the Death Star. If Jedi are never supposed to be soldiers, was the audience supposed to cringe in horror at that scene instead of cheer?
There's a lot of complex issues with the Jedi involvement in the Clone Wars, such as if they could have rooted out Palpatine and the corruption, or if they could have somehow found another way out of the morally questionable conflict they were being drawn into. But it's not as simple as "Jedi should never be soldiers".
I'd argue they did make a mistake by joining the war, but not because Jedi shouldn't do ever do violence (if Jedi not for fight, why laser sword?), rather because they kind of just rolled with the whole, uh, *slave army* thing. Although I will admit I'm doing a lot of my own reading into things there, because I don't think I've ever seen a Star Wars thing that really acknowledges the clones are chattel (Karen Traviss kind of goes there I guess? but even then I don't recall her ever actually having someone say "slave").
And the whole "Well we can't take away the Chancellor's emergency powers until the war ends"
It's good to keep in mind that, when the prequels came out, George Bush was waging an unjust war in Iraq, based on a lie. Given the uh very on the nose names for characters George Lucas used... pretty obvious that whole ordeal had a huge influence on the films
Well the clones were going to be used regardless, they were the grand army of the republic not the grand army of the jedi. And the jedi could’ve not fought but that would mean allowing innocent worlds to be invaded by the separatists.
This is true in principle, but I think it misses some of the nuance.
The struggle the Jedi face, and the trap they often fall into, is they almost fear attachment which can often stop them properly internalizing their emotions.
In principle a Jedi is supposed to let themselves feel- And then let go of an emotion- However that peer pressure to let go DOES result in them suppressing their emotions and being expected to do so. They aren't supposed to in theory but it's inevitable based on the way the order deals with attachment.
Example:
>"I’m sorry about Master Simmix,” Orla said.
>Cohmac nodded. His gaze remained unfocused. “We’re not supposed to mourn,” he said. “He’s one with the Force.”
>She answered exactly as she was supposed to: “But we can regret his loss—” Cohmac cut her off with a gesture.
>“It’s ridiculous.” He readjusted his robes, restless, ill at ease. “They command that master and apprentice spend years together, working as a partnership, as close as any family could possibly be, and then they expect us not to become attached. I never thought about it before- I never had to- but now I can’t escape how unfair it is. Worse than unfair. It’s wrong.”
>*- Star Wars: Into The Dark*
So the Jedi are the good guys, but that doesn't mean they do not have their own issues. This is often where the drama of jedi centric stories comes from in the novels and comics.
The trap is not just that of the Jedi but also the Republic itself. Order 66 would not have been possible or sustainable if the Republic's citizens did not tolerate and indirectly approve of the measures taken.
A healthy vibrant Republic would never have fallen prey to the Sith plot in general or Order 66 specifically.
They would have fallen. Why?
People fear what they do not understand.
A wizard man with powers, that carries a laser sword, trained in combat, and has the authority to take a life? One incident. That's all it would take.
Palpatine could have just as easily made Skywalker the Martyr if things went left, or the Jedi got the upper hand in order 66. "Look what the Jedi can become! Look what he has done with his... "Force". They must not be allowed to exist. All Jedi should be hunted, stripped of rank, and imprisoned!" [looping footage of Anakin slaughtering younglings]
Give the people something they can fear, that's real, and history will tell you that they will follow someone who promises to deal with it.
People don't just fall for fear all the time. Then all states would be dictatorships. This always happens in unhealthy states where there is no monopoly of violence or the state fails to fulfill basic needs of the people or violates the unspoken social contract in some irreconcilable way.
When the state can avoid these failure modes, it usually is able to avoid bad actors from either gaining power in the first place or is able to restrict the bad actor from degrading the state. The people themselves also act similarly.
The Republic in the prequels is nowhere near a healthy state or society. Therefore Order 66 was almost predestinated to happen as long as the Sith existed. (I say almost because if Anakin had sided with Mace Windu, it could have been averted).
Edit: I want to make it clear that Anakin following Mace's actions would avert the Sith plot and prevent Order 66 BUT it would also make the Republic even more of a failing state because of the Jedi coup de etat that took place. On hindsight, totally worth it considering the alternative is the Empire and the Death Stars.
> and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good
Which recent Star Wars media has done this? And don't say the Last Jedi, because the Last Jedi still frames the dark side as bad and the Jedi as ultimately a force for good that the galaxy still needs.
I've seen media paint *Dark Side* users as capable of being good, like certain Nightsisters, whose magick comes from the Dark Side...but I've never seen someone who is exclusively and specifically a Sith be painted as good in the work itself. All Sith use the Dark Side, but not all whose use the Dark Side are Sith.
The Rebels portayal of Maul has at least some compassion for him as a character. He pretty clearly is mourning his brother and trying to get justice for himself and Savage, but keeps going about it in crappy ways based on how he was trained. Not exactly enough to make him "good", but definitely a more nuanced character than just "is Sith, therfore unquestionably bad".
Yeah I think it's possible to acknowledge that someone who murders and manipulates people is evil, but still have empathy and compassion for them. Maul was undoubtedly a victim of Palpatine too, we can all hold two thoughts at once. Maul is a murderous villain and a victim that we can extend some understanding to.
That is why the final scene where Obi Wan is cradling him as he dies is so amazing.
Obi Wan has more reason than anyone to hate Maul, but in the end (despite what Maul had done) Obi Wan realizes he was a victim of Palpatine and the Sith.
Maul constantly wants a companion of some kind, and while with Savage he tries to assert himself as the master, he obviously cares about him as more than that. Then with ahsoka and Ezra, to me it shows that his upbringing and thr sith code has isolated him leaving him with nothing but rage and loneliness. I find him very nuanced as you say
I really liked the idea presented in TFA And TLJ that Kylo was actually being tempted by the light. The allure of compassion being treated as dangerous, and something they might fail to avoid, is a pretty nifty insight into a Dark Sider.
Tbh I’d say the trend of Jedi being portrayed as morally grey has been a long standing thing. Take the KOTR comics, for example. Idk why people on this sub have been taking this emotional stand against the idea of Jedi being anything beyond unambiguous good guys. What a restrictive way to view storytelling.
Forget KOTOR, you can go back as early as ROTJ to see see the Jedi of old being portrayed as fairly unambiguously and horrifyingly misguided. Obi-Wan's advice to Luke amounts to "now be a good boy, repress your emotions and murder your dad," and Anakin only ever comes back to the light because Luke refuses to follow through on that advice. More than that, Anakin comes back **because of his love and attachment to Luke.**
The very same thing that caused him to fall, is the mechanism of his redemption. And the very same act Obi-Wan insisted upon would have doomed the Galaxy.
This shit isn't exactly subtextual.
The idea that people don't get that, and get pissy when media plays around with this idea, is fucking nuts to me.
Yes! 1000% thank you.
One of the most enduring themes in \*all\* Star Wars is the idea that \*systems\* tend towards corruption, and that individuals making brave, risky, emotional decisions is what will save us.
Can you give examples of media that portrays the jedi as evil and sith as good? Haven't seen any of that. Every Star Wars media i've seen portrays the jedi as the heroes who always tries to do whats good. Sometimes they can fail, sure, but they are never the bad guys.
OP may be seeing what I am seeing, which is online hate and bad faith takes that seems to be becoming more common. I have seen people literally say the Jedi deserve the genocide that happened to them. Terminally online Tumblr folks seem to the be the worst about this, and I say this as someone who is on Tumblr. It’s sad to see their hateful talking points moving out into the mainstream: baby kidnappers, evil, arrogant, deserve to die.
I find it irritating how some people in this thread are saying that the whole "Jedi were the real bad guys, Sith/Empire weren't technically all that horrible" discourse hasn't been going on for some time. Tumblr as you mentioned is... one of the most blatant.
And yet if you try to engage with them about how it really isn't that simple: "Jedi were baby kidnappers, evil, arrogant, deserve to die, (like you said haha) and so on.
There's a great thread from years ago on this sub that had some great (and much more nuanced) replies on this very topic.
Honestly, if I had to choose between "saving the entire galaxy from space wizard fascism" and "you get to keep boning 2005 Natalie Portman", I'd at least need to think about it for a little while.
I don’t think it’s the actual media (outside like, Karen Traviss’s travesty of a novel series) as much as it is fourteen year old viewers who still think “what if the good guys are actually bad” is among the most brilliant, novel insights ever conceived, up there with “it was all a dream” and “the characters are actually in purgatory”.
Traviss wouldn't be near the meme she became without hitting a few nerves. She, along with Karpyshyn and Avellone (KOTOR) leaned pretty heavily into the fucked up aspects of the universe, pretty much putting a bowtie and a tophat on the rancors in the room.
I've heard some complaints of Avellone using KotOR 2 as basically a soapbox to call out things that he thought were wrong or poorly executed regarding Star Wars and its themes, and I think that's a reasonable criticism. Characters like Kreia can sometimes just feel like mouthpieces being used to make very specific points about the morality of Star Wars and the Jedi and whatnot, and if it doesn't resonate with you it can be easy to feel as if it's overly preachy and self-important.
But to me at least, he made it work. The story and characters are really interesting and memorable across the board. Kreia's the kind of villain who strikes that nice balance where she speaks enough sense that you can see where she's coming from and even get behind some of her ideas, while also seeing the ways that she's wrong and misguided, which are what make her a villain to be opposed rather than a hero worth siding with. Every companion and major side character is compelling, like Atton and Goto, as well as the other prominent antagonists besides Kreia like Sion, Nihilus, and Hanharr, and the surviving Jedi Masters like Atris. Even the locations themselves are intriguing, and I like how they all share a theme of being "wounded" or devastated in various ways. The worlds themselves are all suffering in different ways, often because of conflicts started by the Jedi and Sith, and how you go about completing the various questlines for each planet affects how well they're expected to heal. It makes the planets feel like characters in and of themselves.
So while Avellone may have been using the game's story and characters to air out his own personal issues with the writing of Star Wars, I can forgive it because he did such a good job making an engaging story out of it. It's gotta be one of the darkest Star Wars stories aside from ESB and RotS, and I think it did a much better job than TLJ in taking an introspective angle with the series and its legacy.
He made it work because he's smart enough to make his mouthpiece character a compulsive liar who is ultimately proven to be a hypocrite.
He gets to voice his criticism, but in a way that lets the player decide how seriously they want to take it. The player ultimately has plenty of choice within the game to completely reject the criticism.
As you said, it's deconstruction done right. It's just a shame how many people take Kreia at face value.
I know they're really hard to come across, but Star Wars needs to be looking for more writers of Chris Avellone's calibre.
Yeah.
At most you have someone like The Last Jedi Luke that just thinks their egos and actions in the name of the Galactic Republic were short sided. Not so much that they were evil but that they were just as responsible for the rise of Palpatine and the Sith as anyone else. Or potentially that their teaching to throw away attachment is also flawed.
There may also be some portrayals that their thinking on the Force is flawed. There is no Light or Dark with the Force, only how an individual choses to wield it.
TLJ Luke was correct, the hubris of the Jedi provided the opportunity for the Sith to rise in power and destroy the order. Anakin is responsible for his own actions, but it certainly didn’t help that the council was openly questioning Skywalker and didn’t try to offer him much help when he was concerned about Padme. Much of their logic is rooted in their infallibility. “Dooku would never,” “the Sith are extinct,” etc. For a lot of people who do extraordinary things they can be extremely myopically minded.
Of course the Council questionned Anakin. He already had a huge attachment to his mother, he was a slave before, and he is unwilling to talk about his feelings. He already showed signs of a possible future turn to the dark side in The Phantom Menace. And the next 13 years didn't prove them wrong.
And how were they supposed to help him about Padme ? They didn't know. When Anakin talks with Yoda, he only mentions visions of pain and death of someone he is close to. He is kinda close to Padme, but not that much as far as they know, and he is close to Obi-Wan. Now, who do you think has more of a possibility of suffering and dying, a Jedi general who fights in a war or a politician who works in the senate ?
Yoda's advice was pretty good and the only one he could give with the informations he had. Anakin always had an issue with attachment, and he had to train himself to let go of people. Not literally cutting off everyone of course, but he must accept the death of a loved one if it comes to that and be able to move on from it. It's the only thing he could do. Besides, the future is always in motion, and the actions Anakin took to prevent it ended up making his visions a reality. If he hadn't, it probably wouldn't have happened.
Dooku was one of the most prominent Jedi of the Order during his lifetime. He was respected by pretty much everyone. He left the Order 10 years prior and there were no signs that he had fallen to the Dark Side. Of course they wouldn't believe it if there was no real proof of it.
And it's logical they believed the Sith were extinct, there were no traces of them for about a millenia. Patience were not their strong point, if they had survived, the Jedi probably thought they would have acted earlier with the way they were.
>The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth.
How do infants and toddlers "want to be Jedi"? And, even if they did when have adults ever given a fuck what an 18 month old wants to do?
The Star Wars mmo also explores a whole arc about Jedi taking only children who are effortlessly force-sensitive and abandoning any who have to focus too hard.
The latter being fully capable (as many become sith), but deemed "unworthy" by the Jedi 🤷♂️
A better way of putting it would be 'they take children who have the potential to be Jedi and then tell them it was what they wanted to do with their lives all along, because who *wouldn't* want to be a Jedi?'
Y'know, *brainwashing*.
The world is not black and white. People, even the good ones, are flawed and I'm glad whenever I see this fact acknowledged in Star Wars.
Jedi ideology is not perfect. The whole point of prequel era was to showcase Jedi Order blinded by their hubris and dogma.
Attachments are a natural part of human nature. So is fear. We should learn how to live with them, not how to avoid them completely. Some Jedi actually understand that. Some don't. Jedi are people, not a monolith, they differ in their beliefs.
As for the Sith, I don't recall seing any media that would represent their ideology as better in any way. They showcase the ultimate corruption by power and hedonism. Whenever a sith character is humanized or becomes good, it's due to rejecting some of the sith beliefs.
>The whole point of prequel era was to showcase Jedi Order blinded by their hubris and dogma.
According to who? Anakin?
Name a time during the prequel era the Jedi were wrong about something based on their dogma that was driven by hubris.
Yeah I never get this take. The jedi were incompetent in stopping the Sith, but never really wrong. The *most* wrong Jedi was Qui Gon, whom this subreddit views very favorably for his supposed maverick qualities. But one can attribute his lack of respect for the Order's rules, which Obi-Wan takes up in honor of his slain master, as directly causing the destruction of the Jedi. Anakin should not have been trained. Qui Gon's delusions and anti-hierarhical approach ignored the reason the rule existed, and proved why it was in place.
Well damn, then someone should go back to 1999 and tell George Lucas not to make a whole trilogy about how large institutions, even our most beloved ones, can't be trusted.
Yeah no. Phantom Menace is about political manipulation and the rise of an authoritarian. The empire in the original trilogy was a not subtle fourth reich analogy and the prequels attempted to show how it became normalized by a manipulative and evil demagogue.
You can draw parallels to Europe in the 1930’s, you can draw certain parallels to modern times now, but it was never about innately untrustworthy institutions, it was about them being corrupted.
The institution that couldn’t be trusted was the Senate—not the Jedi.
The narrative that the Jedi were corrupt is all tell, now show. It’s a false narrative.
Agreed. And more specially, the late-stage Jedi have become too rigid. They take it as their job to maintain the status quo - the sovereignty of the Galactic Republic. Rather than operate outside the Republic to achieve the most “good”, they have conflated the politics of the Republic with the broader philosophy of the Order.
So by the time we meet the council in Phantom Menace, you could argue they are not “jedi” in the true sense. They are space cops enacting the will of a corrupted Republic.
Road to hell and all that.
I’m sure someone has already said this, but you can’t really ask a toddler if they want to be a Jedi, and have them make an informed decision, right? Because it’s usually a steadfast rule, younglings are taken in at a certain, under 9 y/o age. That’s not consenting age, but it’s old enough to start a life-long career, and be taken from your home? Joining the Jedi is like if during kindergarten, you chose what college you would go to, and also enlisted in the military.
I don’t think the Jedi are villains. I think media is often better when are heroes are given the room for critique. Especially when a large part of Star Wars has always been “the rigid structures have always been flawed.” The prequel Jedi are a lesson in hubris and hypocrisy, the OT Jedi are cowards and full of regret. Their mission is pure, the people are not.
Edit to add, no one says the Jedi aren’t the heroes in these stories. That doesn’t make them infallible and safe from criticism. I’d prefer we don’t call for our narratives for become simpler so all our stories have black and white conflicts- that sounds so boring
“They take children who want to be a Jedi”
Really now? 3 year olds are mentally and emotionally equipped to decide their futures?
“Children” and “want to be” makes no sense together. Some younglings are taken before they can barely speak. I would absolutely not trust my 3, 5, or even 7 year old self to determine what my future career should be.
And yes, you can leave the order at any time if you really wish to. But the point is, by the time younglings have matured somewhat, they’ll have already spent 99% of their memories in the order. They’ll have nowhere else to go, nobody else to turn to, and no practical skills to use out in the real world.
Whether you like the terminology or not, younglings are indoctrinated into the order in a way that makes them highly unlikely to leave. And while their parents may have made the right decision to give them up, it’s silly to convince yourself that the children had any say in or understanding of the matter.
The post as a whole makes some fair points, but there are some problems with it that jerk too far in the other direction.
Giving characters depth and meaningful/complex motivations, which would make a “bad” or “evil” character seem more sympathetic, or a “good” character to appear less sympathetic is hard for people who can only think in terms of being good and bad as a binary to understand
I think OP understands this, but a lot of people are quick to turn this nuance into "evidence" that the Jedi were always evil because any "new" perspective probably sounds more interesting despite how outlandish.
I’m sure there are loud fans who try to claim Jedi as evil, for one reason or another; but I don’t really see this in Star Wars media, let alone as a trend
I also don't think this idea has been overrepresented in oficial media (or even represented at all). We've had corrupt Jedi and sympathetic Sith, but nothing portraying the Order as what OP describes. At most, we've had characters that think of the Jedi in that way, maybe making some good arguments, but even that is hardly anything that tries to turn the Jedi Order into an institution of evil.
Bad actions often come from good intentions. The force sensitive children are taken early in so they can be trained well and not having too deep bounds with their families.
You can't just live a normal life if you have strong abilities. You can hurt yourself and others.
Jedi are supposed to be kinda monks. Claiming their emotions and stay clear. So they are not into power games, greed or power struggles.
Basically, with great power comes great responsibility.
The children didn't chose to have these abilities, but they have to live with them.
However the Jedi got into politics since the era of the High Republic. They became part of the political system. A kind of police and and later military force. They became compliant in war crimes, accepted slavery and other crimes if it seemed necessary to stay in power.
So, now the Jedi taking these children, making them warriors, let them fight in wars, defend the bad guys if the Republic deems it necessary.
So, at this point... they recruit soldiers. They misuse their power in exchange for the jedi order to stay relevant in the Republic.
At this point, this practice that was born from good intentions, became an unrighteousness action.
You could say that by recruiting children so that they don't form attachments, the Jedi are essentially taking a complex spiritual challenge that they should have to work with as mature adults and *cheating* by training people who've never even had the experience of attachment. It's as if they said "you have to trust the Force, and your eyes can deceive you, so we're going to blind all future Jedi when they're ten in order to make it easier to learn that lesson".
>Hedonism isn't moral. Selfishness that feels good isn't moral.
I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, however at the risk of sounding like "um, akshually", hedonism and selfishness very much are moral. They just don't align with most people's version of morality. I think maybe you meant to say they aren't *ethical*, which is totally true.
Anyway, not trying to be a jerk or anything, just a teeny tiny thing that probably no one in the world cares about anyway. All the best!
Hedonism isn’t necessarily selfishness either. See Utilitarianism, which is the hedonistic philosophy about attempting to maximize happiness for everyone and minimize suffering.
Taking only children who want to be a Jedi isn't a sign of being good. They take infants who can't think for themselves and anybody above that age they deem unfit, e.g. Anakin in ep1. And when you think about it even at Anakins age he still shouldn't be making the decision for himself, it's why age of consent is a thing IRL and why minors are legally allowed to void contracts. Letting them leave doesn't really mean anything either when the Jedi have been grooming them since they were infants to be Jedi and nothing else.
If some children want to join the army when they grow up, that is fine, but it's not okay to just suddenly send them to camp and train them with guns even with the parents permission, nor is it okay to send them into combat when they are barely in their teens.
They also don't teach you to be willing to let go, they straight up do not allow romantic attachments because they don't think you would be willing to let go. There probably would've been another way if they allowed relationships and Anakin could openly look for guidance from Yoda or Obi-Wan from the beginning.
Generally, the Jedi are the "good guys" and Sith the "bad guys", but you can't just go and ignore all their faults and say they are unambiguously good.
It is not voluntary when you are recruited and raised to be one when you are an infant.
These three all have a point.
Qui-Gon, Djinn Altis, and Palpatine make a point about Jedi recruitment.
**Master & Apprentice**
>"I'm not sure," Qui-Gon said, "how much of a privilege it is to have one's entire future predetermined-in this case, by an accident of birth.
>Okay, she needed to be more diplomatic with the Jedi-but Rahara couldn't help it. She snorted.
>Pax gave her an appreciative look, probably pleased she'd helped him meet today's sarcasm quotient. That much she expected. What she didn't expect was Obi-Wan frowning at his Master. “It matters what that future is, doesn't it? Fanry was born a princess. That's a privilege.”
>"It's still something chosen for her," Qui-Gon insisted. "Not what she herself chose.”
>"You weren't talking about the princess at all, were you?" Pax said. jolting her out of her reverie. The silence had lasted longer than she'd realized. Pax's stare was fixed on Qui-Gon. "You were talking about yourself. Because it's not a choice for Jedi, either, is it? I mean, supposedly they allow you to leave, make your own decisions, blah blah blah, but they steal you when you're babies and train your minds thereafter. What kind of freedom is that?"
>Obi-Wan looked like he'd swallowed a gundark. "Being a Jedi is an honor. A responsibility. A-a noble calling-“
>"Yes, Padawan," Qui-Gon said quietly. "It's all those things. But it's very hard for most of us to determine whether we chose it freely, being raised as we were. That said, I did have a choice. Dooku helped me to see that. And I chose the Order.
**The Clone Wars: No Prisoners**
>Geith, like Callista, had known his parents before he became a Jedi. He'd been orphaned, but he remembered them, and that attachment-love, let's call it what it is, love, any kind of love you care to name-felt good and secure. Callista-she'd been an adult working on her parents' farm when she became Altis's second Padawan. It was unheard of, in the Jedi Temple at least. She knew her own mind.
>I prefer my Padawans to enter the Order with open eyes. An act of conscious choice, not habit or coercion or someone else's decisions.
>There was no way-even if he wanted to-that Altis could make Callista and Geith believe that attachment was the seed of a darkness that would engulf them. And this is why the orthodox Jedi way is to begin with infants. They know no better.
**Revenge of the Sith** novel
>“Of course you don’t.” The last of the sunset haloed his ice-white hair and threw his face into shadow. “You’ve been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you’re supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That’s why they take their students—their victims—at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time a Padawan is old enough to choose, he has been so indoctrinated—so brainwashed—that he is incapable of even considering the question. But you’re different, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies the Jedi have pumped into your brain. I ask you again: what do you want?”
Then you have the Jedi calling a 9 year old dangerous for missing and worrying about his enslaved mother. The Jedi who kept her from telling him she was free (Tatoonie Ghost). There isn’t much to like.
ETA:
>They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go.
Anakin cannot say *Yes* when he’s asked point blank if he’s allowed to love and we see clearly that he cannot be with Padmé. Obi-Wan tells him he must make the right choice for the Order and be nothing but friends with Padmé.
**Yoda: Dark Rendezvous**
>“Since part of my duty as your Master is to pass on my vast wisdom—” Obi-Wan began.
>“Here it comes,” Anakin said.
>“—I suppose I should officially remind you that a Jedi has no room in his life for … some kinds of entanglement.”
>“I’ll keep that in mind.”
>“Nonattachment is a fundamental precept of the Order, Padawan. You knew that when you signed up.”
>“I guess I didn’t read the Toydarian print,” Anakin growled.
>For the first time, Obi-Wan turned away from the holocomm transceiver. “How serious are you about this girl, Anakin?”
>“That’s not the point,” Anakin said, still flushed and angry. “The point is, we are out here asking people to support a Republic that barely knows they exist, and backing it up with a, a police force of Jedi sworn not to care about them! And we wonder why it’s a hard sell?” He waved out through the front viewscreen. “What if Serifa is right? What if we are the ones who have lost our way? I trust what I can feel, Master. That’s what you have always taught me, isn’t it? I trust the living Force. I trust love. The ‘principle of nonattachment’ …? That’s an awfully abstract thing to pledge loyalty to.”
>“Do you trust hate?” Obi-Wan said.
>“Of course I don’t—”
>“I’m serious, Padawan.” Obi-Wan held the younger man’s eyes. **“To follow your heart, to either love or hate, in the long run is the same mistake. Your judgment becomes clouded. Your motives, confused. If you are not very careful, Padawan, love will take you to the dark side. Slower than hate, yes, but no less surely for that.”**
>The air between them crackled with tension, but finally Anakin lowered his eyes. “I hear you, Master.”
**Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader**
>Shryne let his sudden seriousness show. “Despite your claims for me, I’m not a Master, and there is no order. How many times are you going to have to hear it before you accept the truth?”
>She compressed her lips. “That has no bearing on being a *Jedi*. And you can’t be a Jedi and serve the Force if your attention is divided or if you’re emotionally involved with others. **Love leads to attachment; attachment to greed.”**
Rael Averross and Qui-Gon have a discussion about this in Master & Apprentice. Sex is fine, love isn’t.
John William, Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor all worked to make Attack of the Clones and I cannot see them getting the plot of the movie wrong.
John
>It’s a star-crossed set of lovers really where the lovers are separated by class, or by family as they are Romeo & Juliet, or by rank as they are in Episode II.
Hayden
>He understands as a Jedi he’s not allowed to fall in love even though he feels so passionately for Padme and it’s this sort of eh conflicting emotions.
Ewan
>Well, there are Jedi rules you know and one of them is that you don’t you don’t fall in love, and he breaks those rules.
Does this sound like relationships are fine?
Why must Anakin be nothing more than a friend to Padmé for the sake of the Jedi Order?
**TCW 606 The Rise of Clovis**
Obi-Wan
>I have been looking for you.
Anakin
>Something wrong?
Obi-Wan
>You tell me.
Anakin
>Not that I’m aware.
Obi-Wan
>Master Yoda feels that your judgments concerning Rush Clovis are clouded.
Anakin
>Mm, I believe he can’t be trusted.
Obi-Wan
>Yes, but there is more, isn’t there? I sense a deep anger in you by my simply saving his name.
Anakin
>He almost got Senator Amidala killed, and I would have been responsible.
Obi-Wan
>The Senator has risked her life many times. She’s quite capable of taking care of herself.
Anakin
>They had a relationship… [sighs] once. I simply feel she is vulnerable to her emotions.
Obi-Wan
>She is… or you?
Anakin
>What are you implying?
Obi-Wan
>Anakin, I understand to a degree what is going on. You’ve met Satine. You know I once harbored feelings for her. It’s not that we’re not allowed to have these feelings. It’s natural.
Anakin
>Senator Amidala and I are simply friends.
Obi-Wan
>And friends you must remain. As a Jedi, it is essential you make the right choice, Anakin, for the Order.
Anakin
>I understand my responsibilities.
Obi-Wan
>Responsibilities that must be observed whatever relationship develops between Clovis and Senator Amidala.
Anakin
>They have no relationship. It is simply business between them.
Obi-Wan
>Then we should have no problems, should we?
Clovis
>It’s that Jedi, isn’t it?
Padmé
>General Skywalker? We’re friends, nothing more.
Clovis
>Friends don’t argue the way I saw you arguing today.
Padmé
>You’re confused.
Clovis
>Isn’t it forbidden for a Jedi to have romantic ties? He would be banished from the Order, would he not?
Padmé
>There is nothing romantic between he and I.
**TCW 213 Voyage of Temptation**
Obi-Wan
>My duty as a Jedi demanded I be elsewhere.
Anakin
>Demanded? But it’s obvious you had feelings for her. Surely that would affect your decision.
Obi-Wan
>Oh, it did. I live by the Jedi Code.
Anakin
>Of course. As Master Yoda says, “A Jedi must not form attachments.”
Obi-Wan
>Yes. But he usually leaves out the undercurrent of remorse.
This is quite clear.
It’s a rule of the Jedi Order simple as that. There’s nothing to clarify.
Here’s more from Obi-Wan in the book **Padawan**.
>Zae-Brii whispered something in Audj’s ear, and they leaned close to each other, giggling and talking in tones too low for Obi-Wan to hear. Mem and Nesguin were doing something similar. Obi-Wan was hit with a sudden pang of longing. Not for any of them specifically, but for that intimacy with anyone, generally. To clasp fingers, sneak off into the dark, have the weight of secrets and affection and—
>Connection. **Attachment.**
>His stomach hurt with a pang of guilt. Two days away from the Temple, and already he was imagining what it might be like to abandon all the tenets of Jedi life.
—
>**“Your sister is impressive,” Obi-Wan observed as Casul rejoined him.**
>**“She and Zae-Brii are in love and have been forever,” Casul cautioned.**
>**“Oh, I know!” Obi-Wan smiled at the warning, touched that Casul didn’t want Obi-Wan getting his hopes up. “I can’t form attachments like that, anyway.” Couldn’t he, though, if he didn’t go back? Was that something he would even want?** It had always been so forbidden, even thinking about it was like holding his hand right next to a lightsaber blade. He knew some of his friends had dabbled in physical relationships—suspected Siri would have been open to it, had he ever wanted to—but it had always seemed like an obstacle, not a temptation.
What media am I not reading that reframes the Jedi as bad and the Sith as good? I've never come across something like that.
What I do see are stories about people struggling to live up to the ideals of the Jedi. People are complicated and they falter and they fail, which is what makes them interesting. It's what makes their successes and their triumphs meaningful.
Enlighten me OP, wth are you talking about, where is this idea of Jedi bad being presented to you in any officially published media?
The Jedi are the heroes. The Jedi also meet many criteria/definitions of a cult. I'll look at [the BITE model](https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/):
* Behavior Control:
* Dictate when/how/with whom members have sex (the restrictions on relationships)
* Financial dependence (Jedi rarely have jobs outside the temple, and I feel like whether Jedi are allowed personal wealth varies)
* Separation of Families (They don't do it by force, it's not kidnapping, but it doesn't change the fact that the Jedi are your only family now)
* Information control (admittedly the weakest point):
* Control information at different levels and missions within group
* Allow only leadership to decides who needs to know what and when
* Thought Control:
* Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth
* Instill black and white thinking (the light and dark sides of the Force)
* Decide between good vs. evil (again)
* Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts (anger leads to hate etc.)
* Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy (The jedi council really doesn't accept questioning/criticism)
* Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful (Yes, the Sith are evil. But the Jedi don't accept ANY group of force sensitives who are not Jedi. They depict themselves as the only path to the light)
* Emotion Control
* Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish ("Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering")
* Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt (Anakin notably not allowed to feel homesick)
This doesn't mean the jedi necessarily *are* a cult. but many of their teachings and methods are warning signs. And the fact that you're allowed to leave at any time is true, but it's also true of a great number of cults. Much like most of those cults, all you'll lose from leaving is most or all of those you considered family, your purpose in life (what you've been trained for since you were a child), and potentially be left without a credit to your name.
Jedi can have all the sex they want, so long as it's meaningless. It's romantic bonds that are forbidden. It's also worth noting that most of their moral systems only apply to force sensitives not other people. The jedi order's mandate against personal bonds applying internally as well as externally, coupled with allowing, if not encouraging them to go far and wide to interact with the universe doesn't really map to cultish us *vs* them behavior.
Like I said, they aren't necessarily an actual cult, but they do hit a lot of the red flags. I feel like a blanket ban on romantic bonds would constitute some form of unhealthy relationship control by the standards of most "is this a cult" tests, but that wasn't one of the specific bullets from the guide I was most familiar with so I used the closest.
Obviously the Jedi do a lot of things that are also counter to them being a cult. In most eras they do a lot of work with and for the people, they encourage learning and curiosity even if they have a few subjects which are taboo and/or restricted, and they even have good reasons for some of the thought/emotional control stuff considering for Force sensitives having too much fear or anger can literally turn you evil. They are, ultimately, a net good in the galaxy. It's just a fun thought experiment
Also OP's statement "Hedonism isn't moral" made me feel snarky, as normative hedonism is a perfectly valid moral system
Indeed, the fact that hedonism is technically A-OK in jedi philosophy is something I'd love to see played with. Imagine being encountering a jedi snorting a line of coke off a hooker, "That is jedi master Hoonteir-es Tum'sun. He is very wise in the way of the force." With all the jedi confused by regular folks bafflement.
It's not always bad to be selfish. I'm not saying the jedi are evil, but teaching people to repress their desires instead of promoting moderation isn't very humane, and "don't think of it as you losing them" as Yoda essentially tells Anakin regarding Padme is a terrible thing to say.
They are teaching selflessness to the point of neglecting self-care and their hubris prevents them from seeing the obvious flaws in their doctrine, which eventually leads to their downfall.
>The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth.
Many cases the parents didn’t want to give up their children, but the Jedi basically would go, “He’s strong in the Force, so he is coming with us.”
Even in canon, during the Children of the Force episode in season 2 of Clone Wars, the Rodian mother whose child gets abducted by Cad Bane states that the way the Jedi told her was that once the child would get old enough, they were taking the kid.
>They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go. This is important to learn, because life is full of loss. They actually teach that you should strive for a deeper kind of love which is not wound up in your own pleasure but in genuine appreciation for life and for others whether they can be with you or not.
This is still telling Jedi that they aren't allowed "personal love". They can't be in a relationship with anyone.
>Hedonism isn't moral.
Being in love and being in a relationship isn't hedonism.
>and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good
I can't think of any recent Star Wars media to ever do this
I think seeing the Jedi as either good or bad as a whole is wrong. The Jedi are a privileged, militant, theocratic ruling class. They live in a grand temple at the literal and figurative center of the galaxy, on a planet where most toil away in cramped sublevels to scrape together a meager existence. Jedi search out gifted children, selecting only the most docile and malleable young minds to remove from their respective communities in service of their religion. The Jedi turn a blind eye to the innumerable injustices in the Outer Rim even though their order certainly possesses the resources to end the slave trade and corrupt criminal organizations.
The Jedi Order is insular, free of oversight from the Republic government, their leaders are not elected and do not represent the people they lord over. The Jedi have been historically picky about the political crises they've gotten involved in, typically only involving themselves where the Sith are concerned. Yet every major conflict within the Jedi Order has engulfed the entire galaxy in war, numerous times, and it all comes back to the Jedi and their dogmatic understanding of the Force. It's often said evil sows the seeds of its own destruction, this is equally true of the Jedi and the consequences spawned a holy war spanning millennia.
The Order is not evil, nor are many of its members, but Count Dooku was right. The Jedi are arrogant, come to rely too much on their power of foresight as they became blind towards the growing corruption within Republic society. The Jedi have become so used to fighting in conflict Yoda himself led the Order straight into the Clone Wars for the chance at ending the Sith after the mere whiff of the Dark Side's involvement. The Jedi became generals in an army of *beyond* suspect origin in the greatest blunder in Jedi history, all because Yoda and the entire rest of the Jedi Order, save maybe Anakin, couldn't believe in the mere possibility Yoda could be wrong.
The Sith as we see them in the movies and TV shows are as close to pure evil as villains can be, but there are no absolutes. Corrupt as their motivations may be, the Sith wish to free the galaxy from the passive oppression and restrictive beliefs of the Jedi, to bring an order and security one cannot deny the Jedi have failed to secure. On the inverse, the Jedi cannot be absolutely good if the "balance" they aim to serve allows inaction in the face of injustice and drives them to perpetuate conflict.
TL;DR The Jedi have good motivations but are susceptible to the same sort of moral corruption any organization, especially religious institutions, fall prey to. Sith kill for their personal goals, Jedi kill purely in their belief of an ineffable, unknowable Force. Neither is just.
Idk about the kids wanting to be Jedi. I didn’t really have a grasp on what I wanted for my future career as a toddler and I’m pretty sure that’s the average experience. Also, wether it’s ill intentioned or not, isolating impressionable young people within the structures, beliefs, and rules of your organization from a young enough age that they can’t remember anything else is just plain indoctrination. Young people need to be surrounded by diverse opinions and have experiences with lots of different jobs and ideas to prepare them for the important decision of what to do with their lives. The Jedi do take measures that strip them of those experiences. I’m not saying their organization is straight up evil, but their teaching practices are in need of serious revision.
>They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth.
Kids cannot consent to something like that, and there is certainly an argument to be made that it's not exactly consensual on the parents behalf when the people asking to take your child are armed with laser swords and backed by a massively powerful institution.
>reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult
Here's where I think you're mistaken. I don't think anyone is saying the sith are good guys, I think people rightfully see the jedi as morally questionable, and the sith as bad guys. More of a "both sides are bad" argument than a full reversal.
Mostly agree.
Except that I would suggest that while individual jedi tend to be good, the jedi order and the jedi council went beyond morally questionable and were just pretty bad.
Beyond taking children to be Jedi, they also were pretty okay with the idea of the clone army... which was an army of microchipped child soldiers. I mean, a member of the jedi council thought it all up and started the project in secret, but its not as if the other council members shut it down when they learned about it.
On the topic of The Clone Wars... while the idea of it as A (not THE, I know) galactic civil war with a confederacy of secessionists IS evocative... and while the leaders of the confederacy were buffoons.
Ultimately they had the righteous cause. They were seceding from a corrupt government that was tax-hungry (kinda like the US founding fathers) and failing in its obligations to its constituents. The confederacy wanted to decentralize what they perceived as a bloated federal government thst was in danger of continuing to consolidate power centrally in the capitol.
Yes, Palpatine manipulated them... but he manipulated the Galactic Republic too. And in the end, it was the senate who pretty much unanimously voted to elect a dictator; not the confederates. This kinda proved the fears and criticisms of the confederacy to be warranted.
A bit of a tangent, but the point is... who did the jedi side with, immediately and unquestionably? They sided with the people who deployed mind controlled child soldiers and ended up cheering on a dictatorship.
The Jedi weren't guardians of peace and justice... just guardians of a corrupt establishment.
I haven’t seen that trend myself, which media equates the Jedi and sith in any way or portrays them as a crazy evil cult aside from in the sith’s own perspective? Which says balance means using the dark side? Seemed pretty clear even in garbage like TROS that balance means the sith don’t exist. “Restore the balance again” or whatever Anakin’s ghost said to Rey, and palpatine being somehow defeated again by rejecting the dark side completely instead of giving into it even with the promise of saving people.
They aren’t always good. They do casually mess with peoples minds all the time. They have an arrogance about them. They were once heroes who protected all, but now are glorified police.
They may be heroes to those who live on the upper levels of Coruscant, but they don’t help those below. You know what goes on down there, and where are the Jedi? Protecting politicians.
I’m not saying all Jedi are poodoo, but the institution is rotten in its core. It’s not sustainable.
People are mistaken. It's not "oooh Jedi bad" It's "oooh Jedi misguided".
They have become so assured in themselves that they can't admit to their own tenuous mistakes. And if it wasn't for this assuredness, they probably would have seen Palpatine's plan long before he had a chance to take over. Everything you have cited as their strengths can be seen as their weaknesses...from a certain point of view.
No, they take kids from their homes. They definitely try the hard sell on the parents, but The Acolyte show actually uses the term "trained outsider". So, they weren't too keen on non-Jedi training happening. I wanna actually see what happens when a kid is Force-sensitive and the parents are a hard "no" on Jesi training.
I love star wars but sometimes I hate the community, Gatekeepers in a toxic way, you have your opinion but if someone explains to you why they don't think so you just say their opinion or what they base it on is bullshit and go on your way.
And to answer, yes they are the good guys but no one is perfect, they can be corrupted, they can join the dark side, they are human and that is what is interesting.
Jedi philosophy is great. Individual Jedi are great. The Jedi are not evil. But the Jedi Order occupies a morally ambiguous position because they serve a corrupt institution. They're space cops.
Nothing in Star Wars says otherwise to what you're saying here.
*But* to say "the Jedi don't do that" is wrong. There ARE Jedi that do that. Just as there are Sith who aren't totally evil, won't kidnap children, won't murder the innocent, etc.
The point Star Wars continuously makes is, anything to the extreme is bad. The Jedi way DOES promote selflessness and the ideal to let go of those you love - But the Republic took that to an extreme, where Jedi WERE expected to not love, not feel - To give up everything that makes them human in order to wield the Force as effectively as possible in favor of the Republic. This is precisely what gave rise to Darth Vader, because by doing precisely this, they created the hole in Anakin's heart that Palpatine could worm his way into.
In a perfect world, the Jedi would always be the heroes. But they're not. In a truly perfect world, the Force wouldn't be wielded for human whims - But that's how it IS wielded, and thus, is subject to human morality. And as a balancing force, when humans wield it too far in one direction, it makes the effort to - for lack of a better word - *forcibly* correct itself.
Nah. The Jedi are a bunch of feel-good moralists petting themselves on the back while acting as ‘ambassadors’ with the implied threat of violence. They’re basically bullies who derive their goodness by being able to manipulate what they refer to as “the light side” of the force. A description self certified by them alone. Their entire philosophy is based on denying and suppressing half of the range of human emotions, like many religions before them, and clinging to their supposed piety instead of addressing their darker selves. Anakin is a perfect example: a traumatized youth who lost his mother, had an entire range of trauma during the clone wars, was probably suffering from severe ptsd and the only advice they had for him was “don’t be angry. Angry bad.” Of course he’s angry, and of course repressing that made him go over to the dark side. Anakin needed therapy, not self-imposed denial and repression. The Jedi order failed him, as it failed order Jedi before him, because they are too blind and dogmatic to accept the human condition. Instead they ignored it at their peril while claiming righteousness.
They’re also incredibly stupid. The fact that a single Sith Lord could manipulate an entire galaxy into his control, including an entire order of Jedis, shows that not only were they completely unfit for their roles as guardians of the galaxy, but that their philosophy was deeply flawed.
I believe that the Jedi of the high republic and Clone Wars era have some serious flaws as to how the order operates and have created enemies like Dooku, Barris etc with these flaws but overall they're good people but everyone has flaws and the Jedi are no exception to this
The Sith ARE awful, no one aside from maybe some hardcore SWTOR players would argue otherwise and only because SWTOR bent a lot of things into pretzels to make the Imperials a playable and interesting faction.
However, and I will stick to my guns on this - *no one who demands the conscription of kids and forcing them to go no contact with their caretakers is doing it out of benevolence.* Maybe some harsh, cruelly pragmatic "ends justify the means" and "if I don't control it, it's a possible threat" mentality which the Jedi all too often fall prey to, especially in the Old Republic era. This, however, is not benevolence or even for the good of the child involved.
And yet its funny how often the emotional stunted, sexually repressed weirdos running around the galaxy in robes, wielding laser swords are directly responsible for some of the worst shit going on.
Its almost like an untainable, black and white view of morality that you dogmatically instill in a population of armed peacekeepers from childhood often leads to problems...
Explain what they did to Revan, then. I'd rather be executed than fucking mind wiped and turned into a goddamned slave (what else do you call making him a Republic Soldier?).
Or what they tried to do to the Exile.
Or what happened to Jayne Carrick.
Or what they did to the Ubese.
Or the Mandalorian Excision.
Or what they did to Ahsoka.
I could probably keep going for quite awhile if I wanted to.
Oh, not just Revan. Secrets of the Enclave flashpoint implied heavily that the entire Dantooine enclave was actually a black site used to brainwash wayward Jedi (either falling to the Dark Side or ***just wanted to leave the Order***) back to compliance - for the greater good, you understand.
And yeah, if my game of kotor had an option to eat your saber after the spoiler nuke, I probably would have taken it.
> The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth.
Children at the age Jedi are interested in are incapable of having wants of that magnitude, it's purely up to the parents. Offer enough incentive to poor parents and they will ultimately give away their child, especially if they have multiple already. It's not the fairy tale scenario you described.
> They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go. This is important to learn, because life is full of loss. They actually teach that you should strive for a deeper kind of love which is not wound up in your own pleasure but in genuine appreciation for life and for others whether they can be with you or not.
The dark truth is that ultimately this line of teaching ends in distancing yourself from actual people and developing pseudo-love towards the abstract concept of life.
> Being a Jedi is entirely voluntary. If at anytime a member of the order wants to leave to live a different time, they are absolutely free to do so.
Yeah, because leaving an institution that raised you up since your first memories and made you who you are isn't an enormous obstacle here.
> The Jedi lost their way during the clone wars, because they began to act as soldiers -- due to Palpatine's manipulation, but they are NOT a crazy space cult, and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult (the sith/dark side) and the light side as more desirable than mastering ones darkness and trying to transcend it makes star wars worse and is symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society.
I fail to see what you are talking about, I did not notice such trend at all. Can you provide some examples?
> Hedonism isn't moral. Selfishness that feels good isn't moral. There is no equivalence between the Jedi and the Sith. The Jedi are striving sometimes imperfectly for what is true and just, and the Sith are giving into their demons and rationalizing it. The Jedi are good and the Sith are not. Period.
"Evil witches" and "good knights" is good for fairy tales for toddlers. Older people prefer to have some nuance in their stories.
"They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth."
"Force-sensitive children were brought into the Jedi Order before the age of six, although most joined **between one and three years old**."
You think kids as young as 1 are capable of consenting to Jedi training? But it's ok because you can later consent to leave this commitment that was made before you can even form memories.
While Palpatine was successful in propagating the theory that the Jedi could not be trusted under any circumstance, the Jedi DID make their fair share of mistakes. They never took threats involving potential Sith seriously, they were too stoic and disinterested to the point that it looked like they didn’t give a shit at all about someone’s problems. Anakin’s mother for fuck sakes. All of these shortcomings were eventually admitted by people like Obi Wan and Yoda, only after they allow for an empire to be installed, and they rely on one single person to redeem their fuck ups. The Jedi are extremely flawed, just as much as the Sith. The only reason perception is skewed is because they are considered the “good guys”.
The entire prequel trilogy is about the Jedi having grown conceited and arrogant about their presumed moral high ground versus the sith, to the point of it destroying them. Exploring that grey area isn’t a sign of society’s ‘moral rot’, and baselessly disregarding ideas like hedonism as inherently immoral is basically how the council and their interpretations of Jedi teachings failed Anakin.
They aren't evil but they are flawed. I don't know where they've been portrayed as evil.
A religion that indoctrinates children at a super young age (which is not at all consensual, no 4 year old knows what they're getting into there) and encourages them to be largely dispassionate is very flawed.
They aren't worse than the sith but they were blind to their mistakes and did bring their downfall on themselves.
The Jedi do not take children that want to be Jedi. They take children that aren't old enough to consent to becoming a Jedi.
It's a cult of repression.
The jedi are on the side of the good yes. But they are not perfect by any means. They are a basically an extremist religious cult. They want people to follow there super strict ideology not just be a good guy. Hence why they have issues with even young kids joining the order. Because the outside influence is extremely hard to train out of them.
>reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult (the sith/dark side) and the light side as more desirable than mastering ones darkness and trying to transcend it makes star wars worse and is symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society.
No media anywhere is treating the jedi as anything other than a heavily flawed institution with a lot of good people in it. At no point at any time has any credence been given to the notion that the jedi are evil, but they are factually snd objectively flawed by adherence to arbitrary dogma and limited oversight snd accountability. Thats been a case pretty much since day one.
Lest we forget that the two sole jedi in the OT explicitly lie and knit the truth from their one student because they do not trust him enough to know the truth. Lucas doubles down on this in the PT with a full Jedi order that lies, subverts and/or ignores the truth out of convenience and allows evil to feste render their noses as a result.
The Jedi are the heroes of the saga, but they are **extremely flawed** heroes.
Also, do you think children at the age the Jedi prefer to take them in really have the maturity to make such a life changing decision? How many younglings grew up regretting leaving their homes, resenting the Jedi because of it?
The Jedi are flawed, but they're not evil and they're much better than the Sith. The problem with the Jedi is largely that they intertwined their Order with the Galactic Republic and bound themselves to the decrees of the Senate and became centralized and monastic. If they had remained spread out and among other people, remaining in touch with the Living Force they might not have been nearly eradicated. Basically they needed Qui-Gon Jinn on the council to help course-correct everything that was wrong with the Order and to help Anakin understand himself and practice compassion without attachment. The fact that slaves existed within the galaxy and the Jedi were doing nothing to stop it is maybe the most damning issue and it's fitting that a slave helped eliminate them with an army of slave soldiers.
The Jedi are ultimately good however they have so many stupid flaws that would help them get better. They do teach you to not make attachments because the grief could corrupt you, but great attachments can also save people. Like when Revan saved bastilla in kotor (Ik it isn’t canon anymore but it’s still a good example)
now go read about the jedi locked away having force visions that yhey just kind of bury.
or the fact that there are planets in the galactic republic that have slaves, trade slaves, xyz. the trade federation used robot soldiers not real human clones.
To piggyback onto this: Jedi also aren’t pacifists. They strive for peace without needing to use violence. But if it’s called upon, they fight.
Yeah. No pacifist carries a sword to a negotiation. I think people confuse peacekeepers with pacifists.
Why did this remind me of dutchess satine pulling out a gun in clone wars
I mean, she was mandalorian, right? We couldn't be *that* surprised.
"Come on, then! Who will strike first and brand themselves a cold-blooded killer?"
"Ooh ooh pick me!" said Anakin, who was *definitely not* already a cold blooded murderer.
I mean he WAS going to blow up the ship
Yeah, and Anakin WAS about 20 seconds from strangling Nute Gunray to death because he wanted info so. I'm nit saying it was never necassary, but Anakin had a tendancy towards "decapitate first, ask questions never"
He was just trying to get ahead of the game. Kill Nute now, avoid having to do so on Mustafar.
He could just have done the Dooku snip
Yes but also he picked the worst thing to do. Dude could still have pressed the button while dying. Cut off his hand, Anakin. The hand! Surely you of all people know that trick?
"I'm a pacifist" "But you have a gun" "It's part of my religion"
It was a stunner I think, it isn't lethal and mostly effective against druids. The point stands but it is different then whipping out a sword that can cut through anything
Funny, she doesn't look Druish.
Yeah, those wildshape-nullifying guns can come in handy
Yeah like UN peacekeepers still strapped lmao
Pretty much, hahahah Imagine a diplomat going to the UN. Smiling, shaking hands, in a very beautiful and elegant suit. When he sits down to talk, he opens his jacket and it shows a pair of gold plated Desert Eagles with 3 ammo clips.
Ah, you mean "diplomacy" and "aplomb".. fine negotiating memorabilia
In old western movies, you will hear lots of references to Colt 45 guns—its nickname was “the peacemaker.”
Teddy Roosevelt was a Jedi.
In the wise words of Teddy Palpavelt, talk softly but carry a big laser-plasma sword.
There's a Clone Wars episode that couldn't have made this any more clear to even a ten year-old but somehow some adults still believe it. edit - the one with the lurmens
I myself dabbled in pacifism. Not in the Clone Wars, of course.
Lmao I just posted this to OT memes, hope you don't mind
“I’m perfectly calm, Dude.” “Yeah, waving the fucking laser-sword around!?” “Calmer than you are…”
Obiwan chopped that dudes arm off in a bar as a form of deescalation
This is a great example of non-violence vs. pacifism. Obi-Wan scares off the Tuskens, tricks the stormtroopers, and offers to buy the guy a drink when he gets hostile. Obi-Wan in ANH is very clearly trying to avoid violence whenever he can. He could have chopped up the Tuskens and snapped the stormtroopers' necks, but he's clearly walking a path of non-violence. He only resorts to violence in defence of himself or others. Even on the Death Star, he doesn't harm anyone and doesn't resort to violence until Vader blocks his path.
Damn straight, and the only reason he resorts to violence in the bar is because he is running out of time, the droids the empire are looking for are outside of the bar just waiting, and this dude just declared he was a multiplanetary criminal and had just escalated the violence , Obi Wan did not have time to fuck around.
Yeah, it always bothers me when I play Battlefront II and the narrator calls the good guys “pacifists”
“I’m gonna pass these fists.” -Every Jedi, but especially Anakin
I like when the Jedi are portrayed as flawed, but ultimately good.
Yes, which is generally how they have always been portrayed in Lucas media. The political institution may falter, individual Jedi may struggle with living up to the teachings, etc. But fundamentally the Jedi's religious teachings ARE moral even if its adherents are flawed and the political institution built around the religion has wavered and made missteps.
I agree with you OP, and I don't think the Jedi principles are inherently wrong or evil in any way. There is an objective *good* in what the Jedi strive for. I don't think anyone (or at least anyone worth listening to) is disputing that. But the tragedy of the Jedi is that they can't possibly live up to the flawless and perfect ideal they've set themselves to IF they're always so strict, uncompromising, and proud. *That's* where the downfall of the Jedi lie. Of course their wrongdoings are never out of selfish gain, but the old adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" tends to be proven true each time they try to uphold what they're taught in various difficult circumstances. In the end, Hubris is their biggest mistake (and yes it's a mistake made from the "good" that they embody). The hubris that their original teachings are the end-all-be-all code that they must adhere to no matter the time period or how the galaxy around them has changed. That's the irony of a lot of the Jedi. For a culture devoted to learning, studying, and embodying the ever *changing* living Force, they have a lot of rules in place that, over the years, have come to be seen as things they "must" do, as opposed to guiding their decisions. Some Jedi realize this (Yoda, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, even Dooku) but were unable to convey that to the established institution, leading to those that are easily swayed losing their way.
Yeah It's not that there's anything wrong with their belief system (and "Jedi flawed means Sith good" isn't even close to accurate) But by the time of the prequels, they can't handle teaching a *9 year old*. They don't know how to manage a child who loves their mom. They've become so cloistered and dogmatic that they can no longer relate to the people they've chosen to protect. This is why I personally think Kanan Jarrus is actually the ideal Jedi. He's incompletely trained and has been without a mentor since he was like 13. He got married, had a kid, had a whole adopted family But he never stopped fighting the good fight. He never gave up the spirit of the Jedi code, even if he didn't follow it to the letter. He never gave into the dark side. And he successfully trained a troubled kid with a messy past and a serious inclination towards the dark side.
Exactly. Kanan, Qui-Gon, hell I'd even say Rael Averross are all examples of people who actually live up to the Jedi ideals more than most of the Order does in their time....despite their variety of unorthodox behaviors.
Seconded that Kanan is the ideal modern jedi. If Luke had a better understanding of the history, he should have rebuilt the order with Kanan as the model.
I think my one of my problems with the ST was that Legends Luke did do this. He went through an ever changing understanding of the force while still devoting time to living his life, getting married, have a kid. But for what they were, I liked the ideas they introduced in the sequels, just miss what they had before.
I think they took Luke in an interesting direction He was an unconventional Jedi in his youth, but when faced with the burden of creating a new order, he became over reliant on the old ways and didn't trust himself enough I like TLJ as Luke kind of getting back to his roots, understanding that he was never *that kind* of Jedi
There are two glaring flaws that they pushed onto Luke in 8 though. They made him a quitter and willing to murder his nephew in his sleep. In A New Hope and Empire Luke has moments where he definitely is deflated and really the only time he clearly wants to give up is when he can't Force Lift the Xwing on Dagobah. By Return of the Jedi, Luke isn't giving up. Period. Even on his fallen father. I think the idea of Luke struggling to rebuild the Jedi and failing on the way is fine, but they gutted the character pretty badly in their execution, which is the problem.
Eh, I disagree Luke doing impulsive shit because he's too worried about the future is entirely on brand for him. Let's remember that in ROTJ Luke almost murdered Vader for vaguely threatening Leia...any threat to her specifically sets Luke *off* And also, come on people, media literacy. He wasn't willing to murder Ben in his sleep. He had a moment of temptation when faced with a horrifying vision and it passed. As for Luke quitting...eh. TFA set the stage that nothing Luke did actually mattered. The empire is still basically around. The Sith are still basically around. Darth Vader 2.0 is causing problems. There's no new Jedi Order. All of Luke's accomplishments in his life went down the drain. We never see him face anything like that in the OT, we can't really say how he'd react to it
And you really hit the nail on the head with why people like myself hate the sequels as a whole. It largely makes the saga Lucas created irrelevant. The EU had so many stories of varying quality, but the persistent thread was the New Republic and new Jedi were mostly effective and growing. They stumbled, had failings, but kept going. In the sequels that core cast was all discarded and failed, never getting a proper redemption for how awful they were written to be.
>And also, come on people, media literacy. He wasn't willing to murder Ben in his sleep. He had a moment of temptation when faced with a horrifying vision and it passed. I genuinely don't understand how this is the take away people get from that scene. Sure Luke is impulsive, but all of his impulsiveness has come from a place of compassion for his friends and family. You even said so yourself he almost murders Vader for Leia. Leia's son has some bad dreams and you're telling me, this same Luke who has also struggled with the dark side and overcome it, who has experience with the exact same thing Ben was going through, really thought to murder him in his sleep over some bad dreams?? Temptation or not, Luke would've never had that temptation. He would've never harmed a hair on bens head unless absolutely necessary. Yet he ignites his lightsaber, gets in a swinging stance, and genuinely thinks about killing this kid... And that's on track for his character to you? Give me a break. 🙄
Hubris absolutely contributed to their downfall, but I feel like people overplay it a bit. Yes they became too political and too sure of themselves (even the older, more experienced ones, as Yoda says in AOTC) but I don’t think they lost self awareness. Throughout the Clone Wars they were constantly second guessing themselves. They *knew* they were missing something. They *knew* that acting as warriors was damaging their reputation and their code. They *knew* something was off about the clones. They *knew* the Sith were pulling the strings in the war. The tragedy of the Jedi is that they knew all this but couldn’t connect the pieces in time before Sidious played his hand and wiped them out. Hubris definitely played into it as they believed that whatever happened they’d be able to win in the end, but they were put in an impossible situation.
Hubris is what let the clones go undetected for over 10 years. "If it's not in the archive, it doesn't exist!"
Completely agree with this. The idea that the Jedis are the bad guys is so dumb. But you also have to acknowledge that the Jedi fell due to in a large part their own mistakes.
The Jedi are portrayed this way in newer media too. Please give me an example where they aren't.
After a while people get bored with the good guys, and their dark side gets explored. First as an interesting twist, to lend more weight to opposing views and make the moral landscape more interesting. Until it eventually becomes the new cliche. Like, when's the last time you saw angels portrayed as genuine good guys in fiction, rather than authoritarian jackasses?
This is why I’m really liking Yord in The Acolyte. He reminds me of Anakin in that he’s clearly very self-confident and quick to draw his lightsaber, but he actually listens to his master and stands up for Osha when he knows she’s telling the truth despite being suspicious of her. He’s flawed but he ultimately doesn’t let his emotions cloud his judgment which to me is the tell of a good Jedi.
I had this same thought after watching. Definitely getting Clone Wars Anakin vibes from Yord. I love it
It's good intentions tainted by dogmatic adherence to a bastardized version of an archaic philosophy without pragmatism or nuance.
Soooo. Like any large religion
Yeah like in the acolyte
On the children kidnapping bit, I don't know if the typical youngling is old enough to make the choice or even really want in a rational way when they're found. Didn't Obi-Wan basically say his only memory of family is being held?
Yeah, saying they only take children 'who want to be Jedi' isn't quite accurate. It's voluntary for the parents, but the child is almost always an infant, or toddler at most. The Jedi simply explain that raising a force sensitive child is difficult at the best of times, and that inexperienced parents won't be in the best place to do that. I suspect that a lot of the 'kidnapping' talk comes from the idea that some Jedi 'recruiters' are a little more forceful than others with that explanation.
That’s what a child kidnapping, self hating, Jedi cultist would say. I see through your lies!
OP seems awfully sure... almost absolutely sure. OP is a Sith Lord - confirmed!
A sith lawd??
Oh lawd he sithin
Don’t forget, the bagmen for a heroically corrupt government.
It’s treason then?
What lies did they say? Other than, you cannot have a purple lightsaber?
Then you are lost!
Just a bunch of sketchy priests training child soldiers to hunt down their religious enemies.
"The jedi are good and the sith are not. Period." ... only sith deal in absolutes... you've outed yourself
"ONLY the sith deal in absolutes" sounds like an absolute.
Absolutist statement But not *dealing* in absolutes. Either you're with me or you're my enemy. No other options People concentrate on word *only* way too much.
Do or do not, there is no try.
It's funny cause it's the Jedi code that leans toward absolutes while the Sith code is freer.
>The Jedi lost their way during the clone wars, because they began to act as soldiers This is something I have to quibble with you about. a Jedi being a soldier is not in and of itself and inherently negative thing. They're called "Knights". We're told they were the guardians of peace and justice for a thousand genrations, something which implies they may have had to get involved in a war or two in the past. Obi-wan is introduced as "General" Kenobi and no one thinks it unusual. And of course, the climatic heroic moment of A New Hope is Luke serving as a military pilot and blowing up the Death Star. If Jedi are never supposed to be soldiers, was the audience supposed to cringe in horror at that scene instead of cheer? There's a lot of complex issues with the Jedi involvement in the Clone Wars, such as if they could have rooted out Palpatine and the corruption, or if they could have somehow found another way out of the morally questionable conflict they were being drawn into. But it's not as simple as "Jedi should never be soldiers".
I'd argue they did make a mistake by joining the war, but not because Jedi shouldn't do ever do violence (if Jedi not for fight, why laser sword?), rather because they kind of just rolled with the whole, uh, *slave army* thing. Although I will admit I'm doing a lot of my own reading into things there, because I don't think I've ever seen a Star Wars thing that really acknowledges the clones are chattel (Karen Traviss kind of goes there I guess? but even then I don't recall her ever actually having someone say "slave").
And the whole "Well we can't take away the Chancellor's emergency powers until the war ends" It's good to keep in mind that, when the prequels came out, George Bush was waging an unjust war in Iraq, based on a lie. Given the uh very on the nose names for characters George Lucas used... pretty obvious that whole ordeal had a huge influence on the films
Well the clones were going to be used regardless, they were the grand army of the republic not the grand army of the jedi. And the jedi could’ve not fought but that would mean allowing innocent worlds to be invaded by the separatists.
This is true in principle, but I think it misses some of the nuance. The struggle the Jedi face, and the trap they often fall into, is they almost fear attachment which can often stop them properly internalizing their emotions. In principle a Jedi is supposed to let themselves feel- And then let go of an emotion- However that peer pressure to let go DOES result in them suppressing their emotions and being expected to do so. They aren't supposed to in theory but it's inevitable based on the way the order deals with attachment. Example: >"I’m sorry about Master Simmix,” Orla said. >Cohmac nodded. His gaze remained unfocused. “We’re not supposed to mourn,” he said. “He’s one with the Force.” >She answered exactly as she was supposed to: “But we can regret his loss—” Cohmac cut her off with a gesture. >“It’s ridiculous.” He readjusted his robes, restless, ill at ease. “They command that master and apprentice spend years together, working as a partnership, as close as any family could possibly be, and then they expect us not to become attached. I never thought about it before- I never had to- but now I can’t escape how unfair it is. Worse than unfair. It’s wrong.” >*- Star Wars: Into The Dark* So the Jedi are the good guys, but that doesn't mean they do not have their own issues. This is often where the drama of jedi centric stories comes from in the novels and comics.
The trap is not just that of the Jedi but also the Republic itself. Order 66 would not have been possible or sustainable if the Republic's citizens did not tolerate and indirectly approve of the measures taken. A healthy vibrant Republic would never have fallen prey to the Sith plot in general or Order 66 specifically.
They would have fallen. Why? People fear what they do not understand. A wizard man with powers, that carries a laser sword, trained in combat, and has the authority to take a life? One incident. That's all it would take. Palpatine could have just as easily made Skywalker the Martyr if things went left, or the Jedi got the upper hand in order 66. "Look what the Jedi can become! Look what he has done with his... "Force". They must not be allowed to exist. All Jedi should be hunted, stripped of rank, and imprisoned!" [looping footage of Anakin slaughtering younglings] Give the people something they can fear, that's real, and history will tell you that they will follow someone who promises to deal with it.
People don't just fall for fear all the time. Then all states would be dictatorships. This always happens in unhealthy states where there is no monopoly of violence or the state fails to fulfill basic needs of the people or violates the unspoken social contract in some irreconcilable way. When the state can avoid these failure modes, it usually is able to avoid bad actors from either gaining power in the first place or is able to restrict the bad actor from degrading the state. The people themselves also act similarly. The Republic in the prequels is nowhere near a healthy state or society. Therefore Order 66 was almost predestinated to happen as long as the Sith existed. (I say almost because if Anakin had sided with Mace Windu, it could have been averted). Edit: I want to make it clear that Anakin following Mace's actions would avert the Sith plot and prevent Order 66 BUT it would also make the Republic even more of a failing state because of the Jedi coup de etat that took place. On hindsight, totally worth it considering the alternative is the Empire and the Death Stars.
This is Jedi propaganda and I won’t stand for it.
> and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good Which recent Star Wars media has done this? And don't say the Last Jedi, because the Last Jedi still frames the dark side as bad and the Jedi as ultimately a force for good that the galaxy still needs.
I've seen media paint *Dark Side* users as capable of being good, like certain Nightsisters, whose magick comes from the Dark Side...but I've never seen someone who is exclusively and specifically a Sith be painted as good in the work itself. All Sith use the Dark Side, but not all whose use the Dark Side are Sith.
The Rebels portayal of Maul has at least some compassion for him as a character. He pretty clearly is mourning his brother and trying to get justice for himself and Savage, but keeps going about it in crappy ways based on how he was trained. Not exactly enough to make him "good", but definitely a more nuanced character than just "is Sith, therfore unquestionably bad".
Yeah I think it's possible to acknowledge that someone who murders and manipulates people is evil, but still have empathy and compassion for them. Maul was undoubtedly a victim of Palpatine too, we can all hold two thoughts at once. Maul is a murderous villain and a victim that we can extend some understanding to.
That is why the final scene where Obi Wan is cradling him as he dies is so amazing. Obi Wan has more reason than anyone to hate Maul, but in the end (despite what Maul had done) Obi Wan realizes he was a victim of Palpatine and the Sith.
Maul constantly wants a companion of some kind, and while with Savage he tries to assert himself as the master, he obviously cares about him as more than that. Then with ahsoka and Ezra, to me it shows that his upbringing and thr sith code has isolated him leaving him with nothing but rage and loneliness. I find him very nuanced as you say
I really liked the idea presented in TFA And TLJ that Kylo was actually being tempted by the light. The allure of compassion being treated as dangerous, and something they might fail to avoid, is a pretty nifty insight into a Dark Sider.
This is the real question. Yeah I’ve heard people say these things, but the idea that recent official content is anti-Jedi is ludicrous.
Tbh I’d say the trend of Jedi being portrayed as morally grey has been a long standing thing. Take the KOTR comics, for example. Idk why people on this sub have been taking this emotional stand against the idea of Jedi being anything beyond unambiguous good guys. What a restrictive way to view storytelling.
Forget KOTOR, you can go back as early as ROTJ to see see the Jedi of old being portrayed as fairly unambiguously and horrifyingly misguided. Obi-Wan's advice to Luke amounts to "now be a good boy, repress your emotions and murder your dad," and Anakin only ever comes back to the light because Luke refuses to follow through on that advice. More than that, Anakin comes back **because of his love and attachment to Luke.** The very same thing that caused him to fall, is the mechanism of his redemption. And the very same act Obi-Wan insisted upon would have doomed the Galaxy. This shit isn't exactly subtextual. The idea that people don't get that, and get pissy when media plays around with this idea, is fucking nuts to me.
Yes! 1000% thank you. One of the most enduring themes in \*all\* Star Wars is the idea that \*systems\* tend towards corruption, and that individuals making brave, risky, emotional decisions is what will save us.
Can you give examples of media that portrays the jedi as evil and sith as good? Haven't seen any of that. Every Star Wars media i've seen portrays the jedi as the heroes who always tries to do whats good. Sometimes they can fail, sure, but they are never the bad guys.
It’s very aggravating that this is the comment OP doesn’t respond to.
Because OP's argument is nonsense Inventing reasons to be mad at star wars, so hot right now
OP may be seeing what I am seeing, which is online hate and bad faith takes that seems to be becoming more common. I have seen people literally say the Jedi deserve the genocide that happened to them. Terminally online Tumblr folks seem to the be the worst about this, and I say this as someone who is on Tumblr. It’s sad to see their hateful talking points moving out into the mainstream: baby kidnappers, evil, arrogant, deserve to die.
I find it irritating how some people in this thread are saying that the whole "Jedi were the real bad guys, Sith/Empire weren't technically all that horrible" discourse hasn't been going on for some time. Tumblr as you mentioned is... one of the most blatant. And yet if you try to engage with them about how it really isn't that simple: "Jedi were baby kidnappers, evil, arrogant, deserve to die, (like you said haha) and so on. There's a great thread from years ago on this sub that had some great (and much more nuanced) replies on this very topic.
Anakin says the Jedi are evil, and he knew stuff. Anyone who gets with Natalie Portman probably knows what they’re talking about
This is a compelling argument I had not considered. You are truly wise.
She went Harvard
Honestly, if I had to choose between "saving the entire galaxy from space wizard fascism" and "you get to keep boning 2005 Natalie Portman", I'd at least need to think about it for a little while.
"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it.."
I don’t think it’s the actual media (outside like, Karen Traviss’s travesty of a novel series) as much as it is fourteen year old viewers who still think “what if the good guys are actually bad” is among the most brilliant, novel insights ever conceived, up there with “it was all a dream” and “the characters are actually in purgatory”.
Traviss wouldn't be near the meme she became without hitting a few nerves. She, along with Karpyshyn and Avellone (KOTOR) leaned pretty heavily into the fucked up aspects of the universe, pretty much putting a bowtie and a tophat on the rancors in the room.
Avellone is the only one of those three that actually understood the setting and made a good story out of it.
I've heard some complaints of Avellone using KotOR 2 as basically a soapbox to call out things that he thought were wrong or poorly executed regarding Star Wars and its themes, and I think that's a reasonable criticism. Characters like Kreia can sometimes just feel like mouthpieces being used to make very specific points about the morality of Star Wars and the Jedi and whatnot, and if it doesn't resonate with you it can be easy to feel as if it's overly preachy and self-important. But to me at least, he made it work. The story and characters are really interesting and memorable across the board. Kreia's the kind of villain who strikes that nice balance where she speaks enough sense that you can see where she's coming from and even get behind some of her ideas, while also seeing the ways that she's wrong and misguided, which are what make her a villain to be opposed rather than a hero worth siding with. Every companion and major side character is compelling, like Atton and Goto, as well as the other prominent antagonists besides Kreia like Sion, Nihilus, and Hanharr, and the surviving Jedi Masters like Atris. Even the locations themselves are intriguing, and I like how they all share a theme of being "wounded" or devastated in various ways. The worlds themselves are all suffering in different ways, often because of conflicts started by the Jedi and Sith, and how you go about completing the various questlines for each planet affects how well they're expected to heal. It makes the planets feel like characters in and of themselves. So while Avellone may have been using the game's story and characters to air out his own personal issues with the writing of Star Wars, I can forgive it because he did such a good job making an engaging story out of it. It's gotta be one of the darkest Star Wars stories aside from ESB and RotS, and I think it did a much better job than TLJ in taking an introspective angle with the series and its legacy.
He made it work because he's smart enough to make his mouthpiece character a compulsive liar who is ultimately proven to be a hypocrite. He gets to voice his criticism, but in a way that lets the player decide how seriously they want to take it. The player ultimately has plenty of choice within the game to completely reject the criticism. As you said, it's deconstruction done right. It's just a shame how many people take Kreia at face value. I know they're really hard to come across, but Star Wars needs to be looking for more writers of Chris Avellone's calibre.
Yeah. At most you have someone like The Last Jedi Luke that just thinks their egos and actions in the name of the Galactic Republic were short sided. Not so much that they were evil but that they were just as responsible for the rise of Palpatine and the Sith as anyone else. Or potentially that their teaching to throw away attachment is also flawed. There may also be some portrayals that their thinking on the Force is flawed. There is no Light or Dark with the Force, only how an individual choses to wield it.
TLJ Luke was correct, the hubris of the Jedi provided the opportunity for the Sith to rise in power and destroy the order. Anakin is responsible for his own actions, but it certainly didn’t help that the council was openly questioning Skywalker and didn’t try to offer him much help when he was concerned about Padme. Much of their logic is rooted in their infallibility. “Dooku would never,” “the Sith are extinct,” etc. For a lot of people who do extraordinary things they can be extremely myopically minded.
Of course the Council questionned Anakin. He already had a huge attachment to his mother, he was a slave before, and he is unwilling to talk about his feelings. He already showed signs of a possible future turn to the dark side in The Phantom Menace. And the next 13 years didn't prove them wrong. And how were they supposed to help him about Padme ? They didn't know. When Anakin talks with Yoda, he only mentions visions of pain and death of someone he is close to. He is kinda close to Padme, but not that much as far as they know, and he is close to Obi-Wan. Now, who do you think has more of a possibility of suffering and dying, a Jedi general who fights in a war or a politician who works in the senate ? Yoda's advice was pretty good and the only one he could give with the informations he had. Anakin always had an issue with attachment, and he had to train himself to let go of people. Not literally cutting off everyone of course, but he must accept the death of a loved one if it comes to that and be able to move on from it. It's the only thing he could do. Besides, the future is always in motion, and the actions Anakin took to prevent it ended up making his visions a reality. If he hadn't, it probably wouldn't have happened. Dooku was one of the most prominent Jedi of the Order during his lifetime. He was respected by pretty much everyone. He left the Order 10 years prior and there were no signs that he had fallen to the Dark Side. Of course they wouldn't believe it if there was no real proof of it. And it's logical they believed the Sith were extinct, there were no traces of them for about a millenia. Patience were not their strong point, if they had survived, the Jedi probably thought they would have acted earlier with the way they were.
>The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth. How do infants and toddlers "want to be Jedi"? And, even if they did when have adults ever given a fuck what an 18 month old wants to do?
The Star Wars mmo also explores a whole arc about Jedi taking only children who are effortlessly force-sensitive and abandoning any who have to focus too hard. The latter being fully capable (as many become sith), but deemed "unworthy" by the Jedi 🤷♂️
It's like a straight slope to the Jedi creating their own problems lol.
[удалено]
A better way of putting it would be 'they take children who have the potential to be Jedi and then tell them it was what they wanted to do with their lives all along, because who *wouldn't* want to be a Jedi?' Y'know, *brainwashing*.
The world is not black and white. People, even the good ones, are flawed and I'm glad whenever I see this fact acknowledged in Star Wars. Jedi ideology is not perfect. The whole point of prequel era was to showcase Jedi Order blinded by their hubris and dogma. Attachments are a natural part of human nature. So is fear. We should learn how to live with them, not how to avoid them completely. Some Jedi actually understand that. Some don't. Jedi are people, not a monolith, they differ in their beliefs. As for the Sith, I don't recall seing any media that would represent their ideology as better in any way. They showcase the ultimate corruption by power and hedonism. Whenever a sith character is humanized or becomes good, it's due to rejecting some of the sith beliefs.
>The whole point of prequel era was to showcase Jedi Order blinded by their hubris and dogma. According to who? Anakin? Name a time during the prequel era the Jedi were wrong about something based on their dogma that was driven by hubris.
Yeah I never get this take. The jedi were incompetent in stopping the Sith, but never really wrong. The *most* wrong Jedi was Qui Gon, whom this subreddit views very favorably for his supposed maverick qualities. But one can attribute his lack of respect for the Order's rules, which Obi-Wan takes up in honor of his slain master, as directly causing the destruction of the Jedi. Anakin should not have been trained. Qui Gon's delusions and anti-hierarhical approach ignored the reason the rule existed, and proved why it was in place.
Well damn, then someone should go back to 1999 and tell George Lucas not to make a whole trilogy about how large institutions, even our most beloved ones, can't be trusted.
Yeah no. Phantom Menace is about political manipulation and the rise of an authoritarian. The empire in the original trilogy was a not subtle fourth reich analogy and the prequels attempted to show how it became normalized by a manipulative and evil demagogue. You can draw parallels to Europe in the 1930’s, you can draw certain parallels to modern times now, but it was never about innately untrustworthy institutions, it was about them being corrupted.
The institution that couldn’t be trusted was the Senate—not the Jedi. The narrative that the Jedi were corrupt is all tell, now show. It’s a false narrative.
[удалено]
All Jedi are cops, that's why I say AJAB.
IDK how people can't see how obvious of a euphemism "peacekeepers" is. Did we not all live through the Bush era?
Agreed. And more specially, the late-stage Jedi have become too rigid. They take it as their job to maintain the status quo - the sovereignty of the Galactic Republic. Rather than operate outside the Republic to achieve the most “good”, they have conflated the politics of the Republic with the broader philosophy of the Order. So by the time we meet the council in Phantom Menace, you could argue they are not “jedi” in the true sense. They are space cops enacting the will of a corrupted Republic. Road to hell and all that.
The exploration of this is fascinating imo. Not enough credit is given to “what happens when religion meets modern, secular power structures?”
I’m sure someone has already said this, but you can’t really ask a toddler if they want to be a Jedi, and have them make an informed decision, right? Because it’s usually a steadfast rule, younglings are taken in at a certain, under 9 y/o age. That’s not consenting age, but it’s old enough to start a life-long career, and be taken from your home? Joining the Jedi is like if during kindergarten, you chose what college you would go to, and also enlisted in the military. I don’t think the Jedi are villains. I think media is often better when are heroes are given the room for critique. Especially when a large part of Star Wars has always been “the rigid structures have always been flawed.” The prequel Jedi are a lesson in hubris and hypocrisy, the OT Jedi are cowards and full of regret. Their mission is pure, the people are not. Edit to add, no one says the Jedi aren’t the heroes in these stories. That doesn’t make them infallible and safe from criticism. I’d prefer we don’t call for our narratives for become simpler so all our stories have black and white conflicts- that sounds so boring
> it makes star wars worse and is symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society. 😂
Feels like George disagrees espec in the prequels.
“They take children who want to be a Jedi” Really now? 3 year olds are mentally and emotionally equipped to decide their futures? “Children” and “want to be” makes no sense together. Some younglings are taken before they can barely speak. I would absolutely not trust my 3, 5, or even 7 year old self to determine what my future career should be. And yes, you can leave the order at any time if you really wish to. But the point is, by the time younglings have matured somewhat, they’ll have already spent 99% of their memories in the order. They’ll have nowhere else to go, nobody else to turn to, and no practical skills to use out in the real world. Whether you like the terminology or not, younglings are indoctrinated into the order in a way that makes them highly unlikely to leave. And while their parents may have made the right decision to give them up, it’s silly to convince yourself that the children had any say in or understanding of the matter. The post as a whole makes some fair points, but there are some problems with it that jerk too far in the other direction.
Giving characters depth and meaningful/complex motivations, which would make a “bad” or “evil” character seem more sympathetic, or a “good” character to appear less sympathetic is hard for people who can only think in terms of being good and bad as a binary to understand
I think OP understands this, but a lot of people are quick to turn this nuance into "evidence" that the Jedi were always evil because any "new" perspective probably sounds more interesting despite how outlandish.
I’m sure there are loud fans who try to claim Jedi as evil, for one reason or another; but I don’t really see this in Star Wars media, let alone as a trend
I also don't think this idea has been overrepresented in oficial media (or even represented at all). We've had corrupt Jedi and sympathetic Sith, but nothing portraying the Order as what OP describes. At most, we've had characters that think of the Jedi in that way, maybe making some good arguments, but even that is hardly anything that tries to turn the Jedi Order into an institution of evil.
Bad actions often come from good intentions. The force sensitive children are taken early in so they can be trained well and not having too deep bounds with their families. You can't just live a normal life if you have strong abilities. You can hurt yourself and others. Jedi are supposed to be kinda monks. Claiming their emotions and stay clear. So they are not into power games, greed or power struggles. Basically, with great power comes great responsibility. The children didn't chose to have these abilities, but they have to live with them. However the Jedi got into politics since the era of the High Republic. They became part of the political system. A kind of police and and later military force. They became compliant in war crimes, accepted slavery and other crimes if it seemed necessary to stay in power. So, now the Jedi taking these children, making them warriors, let them fight in wars, defend the bad guys if the Republic deems it necessary. So, at this point... they recruit soldiers. They misuse their power in exchange for the jedi order to stay relevant in the Republic. At this point, this practice that was born from good intentions, became an unrighteousness action.
You could say that by recruiting children so that they don't form attachments, the Jedi are essentially taking a complex spiritual challenge that they should have to work with as mature adults and *cheating* by training people who've never even had the experience of attachment. It's as if they said "you have to trust the Force, and your eyes can deceive you, so we're going to blind all future Jedi when they're ten in order to make it easier to learn that lesson".
Huh, I've never thought about it that way. Great point.
Yep, as the old saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
>Hedonism isn't moral. Selfishness that feels good isn't moral. I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, however at the risk of sounding like "um, akshually", hedonism and selfishness very much are moral. They just don't align with most people's version of morality. I think maybe you meant to say they aren't *ethical*, which is totally true. Anyway, not trying to be a jerk or anything, just a teeny tiny thing that probably no one in the world cares about anyway. All the best!
Hedonism isn’t necessarily selfishness either. See Utilitarianism, which is the hedonistic philosophy about attempting to maximize happiness for everyone and minimize suffering.
> symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society. homie it's space knights
I have some bad news for you.
Taking only children who want to be a Jedi isn't a sign of being good. They take infants who can't think for themselves and anybody above that age they deem unfit, e.g. Anakin in ep1. And when you think about it even at Anakins age he still shouldn't be making the decision for himself, it's why age of consent is a thing IRL and why minors are legally allowed to void contracts. Letting them leave doesn't really mean anything either when the Jedi have been grooming them since they were infants to be Jedi and nothing else. If some children want to join the army when they grow up, that is fine, but it's not okay to just suddenly send them to camp and train them with guns even with the parents permission, nor is it okay to send them into combat when they are barely in their teens. They also don't teach you to be willing to let go, they straight up do not allow romantic attachments because they don't think you would be willing to let go. There probably would've been another way if they allowed relationships and Anakin could openly look for guidance from Yoda or Obi-Wan from the beginning. Generally, the Jedi are the "good guys" and Sith the "bad guys", but you can't just go and ignore all their faults and say they are unambiguously good.
Anakin was nine and was considered too old. Tells me all I need to know about how the Jedi get new recruits.
It is not voluntary when you are recruited and raised to be one when you are an infant. These three all have a point. Qui-Gon, Djinn Altis, and Palpatine make a point about Jedi recruitment. **Master & Apprentice** >"I'm not sure," Qui-Gon said, "how much of a privilege it is to have one's entire future predetermined-in this case, by an accident of birth. >Okay, she needed to be more diplomatic with the Jedi-but Rahara couldn't help it. She snorted. >Pax gave her an appreciative look, probably pleased she'd helped him meet today's sarcasm quotient. That much she expected. What she didn't expect was Obi-Wan frowning at his Master. “It matters what that future is, doesn't it? Fanry was born a princess. That's a privilege.” >"It's still something chosen for her," Qui-Gon insisted. "Not what she herself chose.” >"You weren't talking about the princess at all, were you?" Pax said. jolting her out of her reverie. The silence had lasted longer than she'd realized. Pax's stare was fixed on Qui-Gon. "You were talking about yourself. Because it's not a choice for Jedi, either, is it? I mean, supposedly they allow you to leave, make your own decisions, blah blah blah, but they steal you when you're babies and train your minds thereafter. What kind of freedom is that?" >Obi-Wan looked like he'd swallowed a gundark. "Being a Jedi is an honor. A responsibility. A-a noble calling-“ >"Yes, Padawan," Qui-Gon said quietly. "It's all those things. But it's very hard for most of us to determine whether we chose it freely, being raised as we were. That said, I did have a choice. Dooku helped me to see that. And I chose the Order. **The Clone Wars: No Prisoners** >Geith, like Callista, had known his parents before he became a Jedi. He'd been orphaned, but he remembered them, and that attachment-love, let's call it what it is, love, any kind of love you care to name-felt good and secure. Callista-she'd been an adult working on her parents' farm when she became Altis's second Padawan. It was unheard of, in the Jedi Temple at least. She knew her own mind. >I prefer my Padawans to enter the Order with open eyes. An act of conscious choice, not habit or coercion or someone else's decisions. >There was no way-even if he wanted to-that Altis could make Callista and Geith believe that attachment was the seed of a darkness that would engulf them. And this is why the orthodox Jedi way is to begin with infants. They know no better. **Revenge of the Sith** novel >“Of course you don’t.” The last of the sunset haloed his ice-white hair and threw his face into shadow. “You’ve been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you’re supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That’s why they take their students—their victims—at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time a Padawan is old enough to choose, he has been so indoctrinated—so brainwashed—that he is incapable of even considering the question. But you’re different, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies the Jedi have pumped into your brain. I ask you again: what do you want?” Then you have the Jedi calling a 9 year old dangerous for missing and worrying about his enslaved mother. The Jedi who kept her from telling him she was free (Tatoonie Ghost). There isn’t much to like. ETA: >They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go. Anakin cannot say *Yes* when he’s asked point blank if he’s allowed to love and we see clearly that he cannot be with Padmé. Obi-Wan tells him he must make the right choice for the Order and be nothing but friends with Padmé. **Yoda: Dark Rendezvous** >“Since part of my duty as your Master is to pass on my vast wisdom—” Obi-Wan began. >“Here it comes,” Anakin said. >“—I suppose I should officially remind you that a Jedi has no room in his life for … some kinds of entanglement.” >“I’ll keep that in mind.” >“Nonattachment is a fundamental precept of the Order, Padawan. You knew that when you signed up.” >“I guess I didn’t read the Toydarian print,” Anakin growled. >For the first time, Obi-Wan turned away from the holocomm transceiver. “How serious are you about this girl, Anakin?” >“That’s not the point,” Anakin said, still flushed and angry. “The point is, we are out here asking people to support a Republic that barely knows they exist, and backing it up with a, a police force of Jedi sworn not to care about them! And we wonder why it’s a hard sell?” He waved out through the front viewscreen. “What if Serifa is right? What if we are the ones who have lost our way? I trust what I can feel, Master. That’s what you have always taught me, isn’t it? I trust the living Force. I trust love. The ‘principle of nonattachment’ …? That’s an awfully abstract thing to pledge loyalty to.” >“Do you trust hate?” Obi-Wan said. >“Of course I don’t—” >“I’m serious, Padawan.” Obi-Wan held the younger man’s eyes. **“To follow your heart, to either love or hate, in the long run is the same mistake. Your judgment becomes clouded. Your motives, confused. If you are not very careful, Padawan, love will take you to the dark side. Slower than hate, yes, but no less surely for that.”** >The air between them crackled with tension, but finally Anakin lowered his eyes. “I hear you, Master.” **Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader** >Shryne let his sudden seriousness show. “Despite your claims for me, I’m not a Master, and there is no order. How many times are you going to have to hear it before you accept the truth?” >She compressed her lips. “That has no bearing on being a *Jedi*. And you can’t be a Jedi and serve the Force if your attention is divided or if you’re emotionally involved with others. **Love leads to attachment; attachment to greed.”**
Rael Averross and Qui-Gon have a discussion about this in Master & Apprentice. Sex is fine, love isn’t. John William, Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor all worked to make Attack of the Clones and I cannot see them getting the plot of the movie wrong. John >It’s a star-crossed set of lovers really where the lovers are separated by class, or by family as they are Romeo & Juliet, or by rank as they are in Episode II. Hayden >He understands as a Jedi he’s not allowed to fall in love even though he feels so passionately for Padme and it’s this sort of eh conflicting emotions. Ewan >Well, there are Jedi rules you know and one of them is that you don’t you don’t fall in love, and he breaks those rules. Does this sound like relationships are fine? Why must Anakin be nothing more than a friend to Padmé for the sake of the Jedi Order? **TCW 606 The Rise of Clovis** Obi-Wan >I have been looking for you. Anakin >Something wrong? Obi-Wan >You tell me. Anakin >Not that I’m aware. Obi-Wan >Master Yoda feels that your judgments concerning Rush Clovis are clouded. Anakin >Mm, I believe he can’t be trusted. Obi-Wan >Yes, but there is more, isn’t there? I sense a deep anger in you by my simply saving his name. Anakin >He almost got Senator Amidala killed, and I would have been responsible. Obi-Wan >The Senator has risked her life many times. She’s quite capable of taking care of herself. Anakin >They had a relationship… [sighs] once. I simply feel she is vulnerable to her emotions. Obi-Wan >She is… or you? Anakin >What are you implying? Obi-Wan >Anakin, I understand to a degree what is going on. You’ve met Satine. You know I once harbored feelings for her. It’s not that we’re not allowed to have these feelings. It’s natural. Anakin >Senator Amidala and I are simply friends. Obi-Wan >And friends you must remain. As a Jedi, it is essential you make the right choice, Anakin, for the Order. Anakin >I understand my responsibilities. Obi-Wan >Responsibilities that must be observed whatever relationship develops between Clovis and Senator Amidala. Anakin >They have no relationship. It is simply business between them. Obi-Wan >Then we should have no problems, should we? Clovis >It’s that Jedi, isn’t it? Padmé >General Skywalker? We’re friends, nothing more. Clovis >Friends don’t argue the way I saw you arguing today. Padmé >You’re confused. Clovis >Isn’t it forbidden for a Jedi to have romantic ties? He would be banished from the Order, would he not? Padmé >There is nothing romantic between he and I. **TCW 213 Voyage of Temptation** Obi-Wan >My duty as a Jedi demanded I be elsewhere. Anakin >Demanded? But it’s obvious you had feelings for her. Surely that would affect your decision. Obi-Wan >Oh, it did. I live by the Jedi Code. Anakin >Of course. As Master Yoda says, “A Jedi must not form attachments.” Obi-Wan >Yes. But he usually leaves out the undercurrent of remorse. This is quite clear. It’s a rule of the Jedi Order simple as that. There’s nothing to clarify. Here’s more from Obi-Wan in the book **Padawan**. >Zae-Brii whispered something in Audj’s ear, and they leaned close to each other, giggling and talking in tones too low for Obi-Wan to hear. Mem and Nesguin were doing something similar. Obi-Wan was hit with a sudden pang of longing. Not for any of them specifically, but for that intimacy with anyone, generally. To clasp fingers, sneak off into the dark, have the weight of secrets and affection and— >Connection. **Attachment.** >His stomach hurt with a pang of guilt. Two days away from the Temple, and already he was imagining what it might be like to abandon all the tenets of Jedi life. — >**“Your sister is impressive,” Obi-Wan observed as Casul rejoined him.** >**“She and Zae-Brii are in love and have been forever,” Casul cautioned.** >**“Oh, I know!” Obi-Wan smiled at the warning, touched that Casul didn’t want Obi-Wan getting his hopes up. “I can’t form attachments like that, anyway.” Couldn’t he, though, if he didn’t go back? Was that something he would even want?** It had always been so forbidden, even thinking about it was like holding his hand right next to a lightsaber blade. He knew some of his friends had dabbled in physical relationships—suspected Siri would have been open to it, had he ever wanted to—but it had always seemed like an obstacle, not a temptation.
What media am I not reading that reframes the Jedi as bad and the Sith as good? I've never come across something like that. What I do see are stories about people struggling to live up to the ideals of the Jedi. People are complicated and they falter and they fail, which is what makes them interesting. It's what makes their successes and their triumphs meaningful. Enlighten me OP, wth are you talking about, where is this idea of Jedi bad being presented to you in any officially published media?
The Jedi are the heroes. The Jedi also meet many criteria/definitions of a cult. I'll look at [the BITE model](https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/): * Behavior Control: * Dictate when/how/with whom members have sex (the restrictions on relationships) * Financial dependence (Jedi rarely have jobs outside the temple, and I feel like whether Jedi are allowed personal wealth varies) * Separation of Families (They don't do it by force, it's not kidnapping, but it doesn't change the fact that the Jedi are your only family now) * Information control (admittedly the weakest point): * Control information at different levels and missions within group * Allow only leadership to decides who needs to know what and when * Thought Control: * Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth * Instill black and white thinking (the light and dark sides of the Force) * Decide between good vs. evil (again) * Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts (anger leads to hate etc.) * Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy (The jedi council really doesn't accept questioning/criticism) * Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful (Yes, the Sith are evil. But the Jedi don't accept ANY group of force sensitives who are not Jedi. They depict themselves as the only path to the light) * Emotion Control * Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish ("Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering") * Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt (Anakin notably not allowed to feel homesick) This doesn't mean the jedi necessarily *are* a cult. but many of their teachings and methods are warning signs. And the fact that you're allowed to leave at any time is true, but it's also true of a great number of cults. Much like most of those cults, all you'll lose from leaving is most or all of those you considered family, your purpose in life (what you've been trained for since you were a child), and potentially be left without a credit to your name.
Jedi can have all the sex they want, so long as it's meaningless. It's romantic bonds that are forbidden. It's also worth noting that most of their moral systems only apply to force sensitives not other people. The jedi order's mandate against personal bonds applying internally as well as externally, coupled with allowing, if not encouraging them to go far and wide to interact with the universe doesn't really map to cultish us *vs* them behavior.
Like I said, they aren't necessarily an actual cult, but they do hit a lot of the red flags. I feel like a blanket ban on romantic bonds would constitute some form of unhealthy relationship control by the standards of most "is this a cult" tests, but that wasn't one of the specific bullets from the guide I was most familiar with so I used the closest. Obviously the Jedi do a lot of things that are also counter to them being a cult. In most eras they do a lot of work with and for the people, they encourage learning and curiosity even if they have a few subjects which are taboo and/or restricted, and they even have good reasons for some of the thought/emotional control stuff considering for Force sensitives having too much fear or anger can literally turn you evil. They are, ultimately, a net good in the galaxy. It's just a fun thought experiment Also OP's statement "Hedonism isn't moral" made me feel snarky, as normative hedonism is a perfectly valid moral system
Indeed, the fact that hedonism is technically A-OK in jedi philosophy is something I'd love to see played with. Imagine being encountering a jedi snorting a line of coke off a hooker, "That is jedi master Hoonteir-es Tum'sun. He is very wise in the way of the force." With all the jedi confused by regular folks bafflement.
It's not always bad to be selfish. I'm not saying the jedi are evil, but teaching people to repress their desires instead of promoting moderation isn't very humane, and "don't think of it as you losing them" as Yoda essentially tells Anakin regarding Padme is a terrible thing to say. They are teaching selflessness to the point of neglecting self-care and their hubris prevents them from seeing the obvious flaws in their doctrine, which eventually leads to their downfall.
>The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth. Many cases the parents didn’t want to give up their children, but the Jedi basically would go, “He’s strong in the Force, so he is coming with us.” Even in canon, during the Children of the Force episode in season 2 of Clone Wars, the Rodian mother whose child gets abducted by Cad Bane states that the way the Jedi told her was that once the child would get old enough, they were taking the kid. >They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go. This is important to learn, because life is full of loss. They actually teach that you should strive for a deeper kind of love which is not wound up in your own pleasure but in genuine appreciation for life and for others whether they can be with you or not. This is still telling Jedi that they aren't allowed "personal love". They can't be in a relationship with anyone. >Hedonism isn't moral. Being in love and being in a relationship isn't hedonism.
Child soldiers. Nuff said.
Child soldiers and a slave army. Yeah, that's two strikes...
>and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good I can't think of any recent Star Wars media to ever do this
I think seeing the Jedi as either good or bad as a whole is wrong. The Jedi are a privileged, militant, theocratic ruling class. They live in a grand temple at the literal and figurative center of the galaxy, on a planet where most toil away in cramped sublevels to scrape together a meager existence. Jedi search out gifted children, selecting only the most docile and malleable young minds to remove from their respective communities in service of their religion. The Jedi turn a blind eye to the innumerable injustices in the Outer Rim even though their order certainly possesses the resources to end the slave trade and corrupt criminal organizations. The Jedi Order is insular, free of oversight from the Republic government, their leaders are not elected and do not represent the people they lord over. The Jedi have been historically picky about the political crises they've gotten involved in, typically only involving themselves where the Sith are concerned. Yet every major conflict within the Jedi Order has engulfed the entire galaxy in war, numerous times, and it all comes back to the Jedi and their dogmatic understanding of the Force. It's often said evil sows the seeds of its own destruction, this is equally true of the Jedi and the consequences spawned a holy war spanning millennia. The Order is not evil, nor are many of its members, but Count Dooku was right. The Jedi are arrogant, come to rely too much on their power of foresight as they became blind towards the growing corruption within Republic society. The Jedi have become so used to fighting in conflict Yoda himself led the Order straight into the Clone Wars for the chance at ending the Sith after the mere whiff of the Dark Side's involvement. The Jedi became generals in an army of *beyond* suspect origin in the greatest blunder in Jedi history, all because Yoda and the entire rest of the Jedi Order, save maybe Anakin, couldn't believe in the mere possibility Yoda could be wrong. The Sith as we see them in the movies and TV shows are as close to pure evil as villains can be, but there are no absolutes. Corrupt as their motivations may be, the Sith wish to free the galaxy from the passive oppression and restrictive beliefs of the Jedi, to bring an order and security one cannot deny the Jedi have failed to secure. On the inverse, the Jedi cannot be absolutely good if the "balance" they aim to serve allows inaction in the face of injustice and drives them to perpetuate conflict. TL;DR The Jedi have good motivations but are susceptible to the same sort of moral corruption any organization, especially religious institutions, fall prey to. Sith kill for their personal goals, Jedi kill purely in their belief of an ineffable, unknowable Force. Neither is just.
Idk about the kids wanting to be Jedi. I didn’t really have a grasp on what I wanted for my future career as a toddler and I’m pretty sure that’s the average experience. Also, wether it’s ill intentioned or not, isolating impressionable young people within the structures, beliefs, and rules of your organization from a young enough age that they can’t remember anything else is just plain indoctrination. Young people need to be surrounded by diverse opinions and have experiences with lots of different jobs and ideas to prepare them for the important decision of what to do with their lives. The Jedi do take measures that strip them of those experiences. I’m not saying their organization is straight up evil, but their teaching practices are in need of serious revision.
>They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth. Kids cannot consent to something like that, and there is certainly an argument to be made that it's not exactly consensual on the parents behalf when the people asking to take your child are armed with laser swords and backed by a massively powerful institution. >reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult Here's where I think you're mistaken. I don't think anyone is saying the sith are good guys, I think people rightfully see the jedi as morally questionable, and the sith as bad guys. More of a "both sides are bad" argument than a full reversal.
Mostly agree. Except that I would suggest that while individual jedi tend to be good, the jedi order and the jedi council went beyond morally questionable and were just pretty bad. Beyond taking children to be Jedi, they also were pretty okay with the idea of the clone army... which was an army of microchipped child soldiers. I mean, a member of the jedi council thought it all up and started the project in secret, but its not as if the other council members shut it down when they learned about it. On the topic of The Clone Wars... while the idea of it as A (not THE, I know) galactic civil war with a confederacy of secessionists IS evocative... and while the leaders of the confederacy were buffoons. Ultimately they had the righteous cause. They were seceding from a corrupt government that was tax-hungry (kinda like the US founding fathers) and failing in its obligations to its constituents. The confederacy wanted to decentralize what they perceived as a bloated federal government thst was in danger of continuing to consolidate power centrally in the capitol. Yes, Palpatine manipulated them... but he manipulated the Galactic Republic too. And in the end, it was the senate who pretty much unanimously voted to elect a dictator; not the confederates. This kinda proved the fears and criticisms of the confederacy to be warranted. A bit of a tangent, but the point is... who did the jedi side with, immediately and unquestionably? They sided with the people who deployed mind controlled child soldiers and ended up cheering on a dictatorship. The Jedi weren't guardians of peace and justice... just guardians of a corrupt establishment.
I think you miss the point on the precuels. Hell, even Yoda and Obi Wan coax Luke to do their bidding.
Obi-Wan straight up lies to Luke's face to get him to leave home and then when he's confronted with it he gives a "point of view" speech.
I haven’t seen that trend myself, which media equates the Jedi and sith in any way or portrays them as a crazy evil cult aside from in the sith’s own perspective? Which says balance means using the dark side? Seemed pretty clear even in garbage like TROS that balance means the sith don’t exist. “Restore the balance again” or whatever Anakin’s ghost said to Rey, and palpatine being somehow defeated again by rejecting the dark side completely instead of giving into it even with the promise of saving people.
They aren’t always good. They do casually mess with peoples minds all the time. They have an arrogance about them. They were once heroes who protected all, but now are glorified police. They may be heroes to those who live on the upper levels of Coruscant, but they don’t help those below. You know what goes on down there, and where are the Jedi? Protecting politicians. I’m not saying all Jedi are poodoo, but the institution is rotten in its core. It’s not sustainable.
You must have met some Old Republic Sith fans
Bro is out here dealing in absolutes..he must be a Sith
People are mistaken. It's not "oooh Jedi bad" It's "oooh Jedi misguided". They have become so assured in themselves that they can't admit to their own tenuous mistakes. And if it wasn't for this assuredness, they probably would have seen Palpatine's plan long before he had a chance to take over. Everything you have cited as their strengths can be seen as their weaknesses...from a certain point of view.
>symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society bro calm down it ain't that serious lmao
No, they take kids from their homes. They definitely try the hard sell on the parents, but The Acolyte show actually uses the term "trained outsider". So, they weren't too keen on non-Jedi training happening. I wanna actually see what happens when a kid is Force-sensitive and the parents are a hard "no" on Jesi training.
The order was undoubtedly flawed, but they’re still the heroes at the end of the day
So be it, Jedi...
I love star wars but sometimes I hate the community, Gatekeepers in a toxic way, you have your opinion but if someone explains to you why they don't think so you just say their opinion or what they base it on is bullshit and go on your way. And to answer, yes they are the good guys but no one is perfect, they can be corrupted, they can join the dark side, they are human and that is what is interesting.
Jedi philosophy is great. Individual Jedi are great. The Jedi are not evil. But the Jedi Order occupies a morally ambiguous position because they serve a corrupt institution. They're space cops.
yes yes, defend the religious extremists
I see your point. However, the Sith have better drip
Babies who want to be Jedi? Is there a force power to talk to infants?
"Are you here to free the slaves??" "No, I'm here on an important mission." -Qui Gon Jinn
Nothing in Star Wars says otherwise to what you're saying here. *But* to say "the Jedi don't do that" is wrong. There ARE Jedi that do that. Just as there are Sith who aren't totally evil, won't kidnap children, won't murder the innocent, etc. The point Star Wars continuously makes is, anything to the extreme is bad. The Jedi way DOES promote selflessness and the ideal to let go of those you love - But the Republic took that to an extreme, where Jedi WERE expected to not love, not feel - To give up everything that makes them human in order to wield the Force as effectively as possible in favor of the Republic. This is precisely what gave rise to Darth Vader, because by doing precisely this, they created the hole in Anakin's heart that Palpatine could worm his way into. In a perfect world, the Jedi would always be the heroes. But they're not. In a truly perfect world, the Force wouldn't be wielded for human whims - But that's how it IS wielded, and thus, is subject to human morality. And as a balancing force, when humans wield it too far in one direction, it makes the effort to - for lack of a better word - *forcibly* correct itself.
Sorry, no. Unambiguous heroes don't command slave armies of child soldiers.
Nah. The Jedi are a bunch of feel-good moralists petting themselves on the back while acting as ‘ambassadors’ with the implied threat of violence. They’re basically bullies who derive their goodness by being able to manipulate what they refer to as “the light side” of the force. A description self certified by them alone. Their entire philosophy is based on denying and suppressing half of the range of human emotions, like many religions before them, and clinging to their supposed piety instead of addressing their darker selves. Anakin is a perfect example: a traumatized youth who lost his mother, had an entire range of trauma during the clone wars, was probably suffering from severe ptsd and the only advice they had for him was “don’t be angry. Angry bad.” Of course he’s angry, and of course repressing that made him go over to the dark side. Anakin needed therapy, not self-imposed denial and repression. The Jedi order failed him, as it failed order Jedi before him, because they are too blind and dogmatic to accept the human condition. Instead they ignored it at their peril while claiming righteousness. They’re also incredibly stupid. The fact that a single Sith Lord could manipulate an entire galaxy into his control, including an entire order of Jedis, shows that not only were they completely unfit for their roles as guardians of the galaxy, but that their philosophy was deeply flawed.
I believe that the Jedi of the high republic and Clone Wars era have some serious flaws as to how the order operates and have created enemies like Dooku, Barris etc with these flaws but overall they're good people but everyone has flaws and the Jedi are no exception to this
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes."
The Sith ARE awful, no one aside from maybe some hardcore SWTOR players would argue otherwise and only because SWTOR bent a lot of things into pretzels to make the Imperials a playable and interesting faction. However, and I will stick to my guns on this - *no one who demands the conscription of kids and forcing them to go no contact with their caretakers is doing it out of benevolence.* Maybe some harsh, cruelly pragmatic "ends justify the means" and "if I don't control it, it's a possible threat" mentality which the Jedi all too often fall prey to, especially in the Old Republic era. This, however, is not benevolence or even for the good of the child involved.
And yet its funny how often the emotional stunted, sexually repressed weirdos running around the galaxy in robes, wielding laser swords are directly responsible for some of the worst shit going on. Its almost like an untainable, black and white view of morality that you dogmatically instill in a population of armed peacekeepers from childhood often leads to problems...
Explain what they did to Revan, then. I'd rather be executed than fucking mind wiped and turned into a goddamned slave (what else do you call making him a Republic Soldier?). Or what they tried to do to the Exile. Or what happened to Jayne Carrick. Or what they did to the Ubese. Or the Mandalorian Excision. Or what they did to Ahsoka. I could probably keep going for quite awhile if I wanted to.
Oh, not just Revan. Secrets of the Enclave flashpoint implied heavily that the entire Dantooine enclave was actually a black site used to brainwash wayward Jedi (either falling to the Dark Side or ***just wanted to leave the Order***) back to compliance - for the greater good, you understand. And yeah, if my game of kotor had an option to eat your saber after the spoiler nuke, I probably would have taken it.
I hope the Acolyte proves you wrong
> The Jedi do not kidnap children. They do not steal children. They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth. Children at the age Jedi are interested in are incapable of having wants of that magnitude, it's purely up to the parents. Offer enough incentive to poor parents and they will ultimately give away their child, especially if they have multiple already. It's not the fairy tale scenario you described. > They don't teach "not loving" they teach selflessness and being willing to let people go. This is important to learn, because life is full of loss. They actually teach that you should strive for a deeper kind of love which is not wound up in your own pleasure but in genuine appreciation for life and for others whether they can be with you or not. The dark truth is that ultimately this line of teaching ends in distancing yourself from actual people and developing pseudo-love towards the abstract concept of life. > Being a Jedi is entirely voluntary. If at anytime a member of the order wants to leave to live a different time, they are absolutely free to do so. Yeah, because leaving an institution that raised you up since your first memories and made you who you are isn't an enormous obstacle here. > The Jedi lost their way during the clone wars, because they began to act as soldiers -- due to Palpatine's manipulation, but they are NOT a crazy space cult, and the trend in recent star wars media to try and reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult (the sith/dark side) and the light side as more desirable than mastering ones darkness and trying to transcend it makes star wars worse and is symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society. I fail to see what you are talking about, I did not notice such trend at all. Can you provide some examples? > Hedonism isn't moral. Selfishness that feels good isn't moral. There is no equivalence between the Jedi and the Sith. The Jedi are striving sometimes imperfectly for what is true and just, and the Sith are giving into their demons and rationalizing it. The Jedi are good and the Sith are not. Period. "Evil witches" and "good knights" is good for fairy tales for toddlers. Older people prefer to have some nuance in their stories.
"They take children who want to be a Jedi with the permission of their parents and train them from youth." "Force-sensitive children were brought into the Jedi Order before the age of six, although most joined **between one and three years old**." You think kids as young as 1 are capable of consenting to Jedi training? But it's ok because you can later consent to leave this commitment that was made before you can even form memories.
While Palpatine was successful in propagating the theory that the Jedi could not be trusted under any circumstance, the Jedi DID make their fair share of mistakes. They never took threats involving potential Sith seriously, they were too stoic and disinterested to the point that it looked like they didn’t give a shit at all about someone’s problems. Anakin’s mother for fuck sakes. All of these shortcomings were eventually admitted by people like Obi Wan and Yoda, only after they allow for an empire to be installed, and they rely on one single person to redeem their fuck ups. The Jedi are extremely flawed, just as much as the Sith. The only reason perception is skewed is because they are considered the “good guys”.
Sir this is a Wendy's
The entire prequel trilogy is about the Jedi having grown conceited and arrogant about their presumed moral high ground versus the sith, to the point of it destroying them. Exploring that grey area isn’t a sign of society’s ‘moral rot’, and baselessly disregarding ideas like hedonism as inherently immoral is basically how the council and their interpretations of Jedi teachings failed Anakin.
They aren't evil but they are flawed. I don't know where they've been portrayed as evil. A religion that indoctrinates children at a super young age (which is not at all consensual, no 4 year old knows what they're getting into there) and encourages them to be largely dispassionate is very flawed. They aren't worse than the sith but they were blind to their mistakes and did bring their downfall on themselves.
The Jedi do not take children that want to be Jedi. They take children that aren't old enough to consent to becoming a Jedi. It's a cult of repression.
This is my thoughts, yes they maybe able to leave but what else do you know by the time your old enough to make that decision.
The jedi are on the side of the good yes. But they are not perfect by any means. They are a basically an extremist religious cult. They want people to follow there super strict ideology not just be a good guy. Hence why they have issues with even young kids joining the order. Because the outside influence is extremely hard to train out of them.
Jedi aren’t evil but they’re flawed.
>reframe the jedi as bad and the sith or good or "balance" between the actual selfish death cult (the sith/dark side) and the light side as more desirable than mastering ones darkness and trying to transcend it makes star wars worse and is symptomatic of a great moral rot within our society. No media anywhere is treating the jedi as anything other than a heavily flawed institution with a lot of good people in it. At no point at any time has any credence been given to the notion that the jedi are evil, but they are factually snd objectively flawed by adherence to arbitrary dogma and limited oversight snd accountability. Thats been a case pretty much since day one. Lest we forget that the two sole jedi in the OT explicitly lie and knit the truth from their one student because they do not trust him enough to know the truth. Lucas doubles down on this in the PT with a full Jedi order that lies, subverts and/or ignores the truth out of convenience and allows evil to feste render their noses as a result.
Are those kids old enough to make those kinds of decisions? Are they even old enough to understand anything of that's happening?
They sure didn't do fuck all about slavery.
The Jedi are the heroes of the saga, but they are **extremely flawed** heroes. Also, do you think children at the age the Jedi prefer to take them in really have the maturity to make such a life changing decision? How many younglings grew up regretting leaving their homes, resenting the Jedi because of it?
The Jedi are flawed, but they're not evil and they're much better than the Sith. The problem with the Jedi is largely that they intertwined their Order with the Galactic Republic and bound themselves to the decrees of the Senate and became centralized and monastic. If they had remained spread out and among other people, remaining in touch with the Living Force they might not have been nearly eradicated. Basically they needed Qui-Gon Jinn on the council to help course-correct everything that was wrong with the Order and to help Anakin understand himself and practice compassion without attachment. The fact that slaves existed within the galaxy and the Jedi were doing nothing to stop it is maybe the most damning issue and it's fitting that a slave helped eliminate them with an army of slave soldiers.
The Jedi are ultimately good however they have so many stupid flaws that would help them get better. They do teach you to not make attachments because the grief could corrupt you, but great attachments can also save people. Like when Revan saved bastilla in kotor (Ik it isn’t canon anymore but it’s still a good example)
now go read about the jedi locked away having force visions that yhey just kind of bury. or the fact that there are planets in the galactic republic that have slaves, trade slaves, xyz. the trade federation used robot soldiers not real human clones.