I talked about this in another thread so I’m gonna dump it here.
George Lucas inserted his own values and philosophy into the Jedi. He agrees with the Jedi all the time. Read any one of his quotes and he frames the Jedi as the ones in the right. Especially Yoda.
Here’s the deal about Jedi philosophy: attachment in Star Wars does not mean the dictionary definition of attachment. It’s the Buddhist definition: the inability to let go of things. Lucas has said the Jedi are allowed to feel emotions. They’re allowed to feel love. They’re allowed to care about other people and have emotional bonds. This is shown. Yoda admits he’s afraid for Anakin’s training (proving that Anakin being afraid wasn’t the problem, it’s that he wouldn’t admit it and repressing it that was the problem; hence, “Be mindful of your feelings.”). Yoda tells Padme he has warm feelings in his heart after she survives the assassination attempt. Obi-Wan is friends with Dexter Jester. Mace Windu vouches for both Dooku and Anakin in AOTC (Mace and Yoda cut Anakin more slack then Obi-Wan, in AOTC). Yoda cries when he feels Anakin’s in pain. The bond between a Jedi master and padawan is strong. Obi-Wan loves both Qui-Gon and Anakin. In The Clone Wars series, the Jedi council cares about Yoda when they think something’s wrong with him when he claims to hear Qui-Gon’s voice. Yoda calls Anakin his friend. Yoda, Plo-Koon, and Mace Windu are shown to be caring towards the clones. Tiplee openly shows sadness at Tiplar’s death. She loved her like a sister. The Jedi is supposed to be like one big family.
Should these things have been better clarified and emphasized in the scripts, and the Jedi made to seem more kind and empathetic? Absolutely. You shouldn’t have to read Lucas quotes (or watch a 7 season TV show) to understand the movies. But George Lucas being a bad writer doesn’t change the fact that the Jedi aren’t intended to be emotionless assholes.
The “no attachments” doctrine is about not letting your feelings interfere with a mission and being willing to let things go when need be. There’s a difference between selflessly loving someone and being in a possessive, toxic relationship. Obi-Wan loves Satine, in The Clone Wars, he even says, “It’s not that we’re not allowed to have these feelings, it’s natural”, but he doesn’t let it interfere with a mission like Anakin does. And when Satine dies, Obi-Wan lets her go. He doesn’t succumb to the dark side. He doesn’t close out his emotions. He feels his emotions but then moves on. When Bo-Katan tries to emotionally blackmail him, he doesn’t fall for it, because he can’t let his emotions cloud his judgement. The same thing happens after Qui-Gon’s death. He openly cries, but then moves on and honors his memory by training Anakin.
He doesn’t enter a relationship with Satine because he has a commitment to the Jedi Order. If a Jedi wants to be in a relationship, they need to leave. “A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.” And there’s no shame in leaving the Order. Dooku left and the Jedi still spoke fondly of him, let him keep his lightsaber (Dooku: Jedi Lost novel), and even built him a statue (in a deleted scene). It’s not a cult. Anakin should’ve either left the Jedi Order after AOTC or waited to marry Padme after the clone war.
The reason a Jedi can’t be in a committed romantic relationship is because they, on a daily basis, go on diplomatic missions in which billions of lives hang in the balance. The slightest imbalance in a Jedi knight caused by relationship problems could be a disaster. This is what the last act of AOTC is meant to show: because Anakin rushed in to fight Dooku because he’s angry about the dead Jedi and Padme, he ruined him and Obi-Wan’s chances at beating Dooku. Imagine if Obi-Wan and Anakin managed to keep Dooku at a standstill by working together, and then Yoda showed up. Dooku has no chance. The war is over. Literally in the scene on Dagobah in the original trilogy, Yoda is lecturing Luke on how the Jedi path is not just something you just do when you feel like it. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not like working at Subway, you literally dedicate your life to it.
Anakin knows the difference between attachment and love. As he says in AOTC and an episode in The Clone Wars when he lectures Ahsoka on the importance of letting go of attachments (in the Geonosis zombie worms episode). It’s not that he doesn’t understand the teachings or objects to them, it’s that he doesn’t have the emotional strength to apply them to himself.
The problem is that Anakin was willing to do anything to keep Padme from dying. He literally kills kids. He becomes possessive of Padme. He thinks of her as an object. He’s not turning to the dark side to save her, he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to live without her. He doesn’t want to feel the pain of losing her. He doesn’t care that he’s destroying everything she fought and cared about her whole life (he was betraying her too by joining Palpatine). He was shown that Padme could die (“Always in motion is the future”) and that there’s nothing he could do about it (for the sake of the plot we’re gonna assume there’s no such things as C-sections in Star Wars; which I mean, this is coming from the same guy who said “There is no underwear in space”, so it really ain’t all that hard to believe), but he refused to accept it. According to George Lucas, Plagueis could not actually cheat death. That was a lie. There was nothing Anakin could do except trust in Padme’s strength to make it through childbirth. If he had listened to Yoda and accepted that, then things would’ve been alright. It’s possible she would’ve survived, and if not, Anakin would’ve needed rejoice for the good memories he shared, honor her memory, and let go. That’s what the Jedi way is about. It’s really just about living a healthy life. It’s about not craving control over things you have no control over. Because that’s how you get greedy.
George Lucas obviously doesn’t think you should repress your emotions, never be emotionally attached to anybody or never get married. He’s a very emotionally open guy, he’s been married twice and has kids. He just used a different meaning of the word attachment, and people were (rightfully) confused.
A quote from George Lucas:
“A Jedi is never lonely. They live on compassion. They live on helping people, and people love them. They can love people back. But when that person dies, they let go. Those that cannot let go become miserable. That’s the lonely place.”
The fact is, and the entire crux of this whole thing is, George Lucas is not a great writer. He didn’t do a good job conveying that the Jedi can love people and the difference between attachment and love. Because he’s an excellent visual artist, but not a good writer. His specialty is experimental avant-garde cinema, which is why there’s so much visual storytelling in the original 6. But his dialogue is flat and utilitarian. Which is why the Jedi appear flat and utilitarian. Lucas doesn’t really care about nitty gritty continuity or writing great dialogue. He literally calls lightsabers “laser swords” half the time. The reason? Because he’s not really about all that, he really just cares about the themes, the mythological motifs, the story he’s trying to tell. The story he’s trying to tell is, “The dangers of not being willing to let things go.” (the other is democracies and dictatorships, but that’s irrelevant). It’s not about the Jedi. So he sticks to that bottom line. The Jedi are just the good guys. He expects you to take that for granted. Yoda is literally a vessel Lucas uses to convey his own philosophy. The whole, “Why didn’t the Jedi go back to Tatooine and free Shimi?” is just a plot hole, not a way to point out the flaws of the Jedi. He does make sure to have Qui-Gon try to free Shmi to show that he’s selfless and caring, but once she’s out of the story it doesn’t really matter. Because Lucas doesn’t really dwell on that stuff. He’s more focused on the overall themes. Shmi has to die for Anakin’s story arc. She leaves the story when she needs to and comes back when she needs to. It’s why he forgets that Leia should know her birth mother. Because to him, the visual parallels between Vader’s birth and the death of his wife/birth of his children was more important. He cares more about sticking to themes then continuity or the plot. Now, you really shouldn’t have to sacrifice one for the other, but again, Lucas is a visual, experimental filmmaker. He isn’t into all that. He cares more about mythological themes and concepts then plot holes or great dialogue writing.