Originally posted by: Scruffy
Ask George. He's the one who decided the Jedi were a cultic monastic order whose members took children from their parents[a], trained them to use weapons from a very young age, denied them human relationships with other people[c], ran their organization on the basis of a faulty interpretation of a prophecy[d], sought to spy on and assassinate political leaders without due process[e], denied the sapience of other beings that developed culture and used human language[f], and generally made fools of themselves.
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were trained from very young childhood, and they turned out okay, except for misreading the prophecy and creating Vader. Anakin was trained from childhood, and he ended up slaughtering the Jedi and enabling the murder of billions under the Empire. Luke was trained as an adult, and he managed to convert Darth Vader to the Light Side -- something the remaining Jedi Masters believed could not be done -- and withstood the temptations of Darth Sidious.
I ask you, what moral do you draw from this? The moral I draw from this -- and I give George Lucas all due credit putting something of meaning in the PT that actually makes the OT look better -- the moral I draw is that the Jedi failed because they denied young children the freedom of conscience/thought and militarized them at a young age. Luke flourished as a Jedi because he had developed a solid moral and ethical footing before embarking, of his own free and informed will, on the Jedi path. Although I have not studied Mr. Lucas's politics, I believe he is generally liberal, and the moral I have derived is in accord with liberal principles, as well as certain left-wing beliefs about the roles of military and religion in contemporary American society.
[a] TPM
AOTC
[c] AOTC
[d] PT, passim
[e] ROTS
[f] TPM
Originally posted by: C3PX
I love the faith we have in mankind. And by mankind of course I mean the good guys in a work of science fiction. Must we add a darkside to everything?
I love the faith we have in mankind. And by mankind of course I mean the good guys in a work of science fiction. Must we add a darkside to everything?
Ask George. He's the one who decided the Jedi were a cultic monastic order whose members took children from their parents[a], trained them to use weapons from a very young age, denied them human relationships with other people[c], ran their organization on the basis of a faulty interpretation of a prophecy[d], sought to spy on and assassinate political leaders without due process[e], denied the sapience of other beings that developed culture and used human language[f], and generally made fools of themselves.
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were trained from very young childhood, and they turned out okay, except for misreading the prophecy and creating Vader. Anakin was trained from childhood, and he ended up slaughtering the Jedi and enabling the murder of billions under the Empire. Luke was trained as an adult, and he managed to convert Darth Vader to the Light Side -- something the remaining Jedi Masters believed could not be done -- and withstood the temptations of Darth Sidious.
I ask you, what moral do you draw from this? The moral I draw from this -- and I give George Lucas all due credit putting something of meaning in the PT that actually makes the OT look better -- the moral I draw is that the Jedi failed because they denied young children the freedom of conscience/thought and militarized them at a young age. Luke flourished as a Jedi because he had developed a solid moral and ethical footing before embarking, of his own free and informed will, on the Jedi path. Although I have not studied Mr. Lucas's politics, I believe he is generally liberal, and the moral I have derived is in accord with liberal principles, as well as certain left-wing beliefs about the roles of military and religion in contemporary American society.
[a] TPM
AOTC
[c] AOTC
[d] PT, passim
[e] ROTS
[f] TPM
*clears throat* Dude, WTF? I think you're projecting a little bit here. Let's look at it a little differently. For thousands of years this went on with no trouble. Then, a whiney little brat that couldn't stand authority decided to break the rules because he was the "chosen one" (make no mistake, he was the chosen one, I sure didn't see Luke killing Palpatine).
When did Luke embark on his Jedi training with an informed will. "Darth Vader killed your father, now we need to train you in the ways of the Jedi so you can bring him to justice." Two movies later "Oh, well, I meant that your father became Darth Vader, not that he really killed him". That doesn't really sound informed to me. Sure, he went about it of his own free will, but only because he had nothing else keeping him where he was, what with Beru and Owen being dead.
Qui-Gon didn't misread the prophecy. The prophecy was plain and simple "One will be born of the Force that will bring balance to the Force" What it doesn't say is how that individual will bring about the balance. If anything, in his rush to assume he'd found the one (he had) he didn't think to ask that question. Sure enough, Anakin brought balance, but he did a lot of bad stuff in between.
Spying on and assassinating government officials without due process? Did we watch the same movie? Helloooooo! The Emperor was evil dark side incarnate. He deserved to die without "due process". Mace said it perfectly "He owns the courts". To bad the spoiled brat wouldn't listen.
How does any of this jive with far left tendencies? Isn't the left all about reducing the military and keeping religion out of everything except churches, mosques, etc?
Seriously, from the comics we know that they go to families, talk to them, and convince them that their child would be better off raised as a Jedi. They don't use force and they don't use mind tricks. There's no guess work here.
The main reason Luke allows those types of things to go on has less to do with Anakin and much more to do with Kyp Durron. You see, the PT didn't exist when those books were written and most of the records were destroyed during the Jedi purge. So Luke went with what he knew. When Kyp went all dark side, Luke decided that isolation was probably not a bad thing. In fact, since he himself got through his training with emotional attachments, he thought it would be a good thing. So you see, that really had nothing to do with what happened in the PT and a whole lot to do with what happened in the OT.
To answer the question at the beginning of the post, I don't draw any morals from the PT because they're crap and have such a huge mishmash of ideas that it's impossible to draw anything from them.
And FYI, the ability to speak does not in fact make one intelligent
