Oh boy! Another chance to reqoute myself!
Tyrphanax said:
However, the one thought that stuck in my head is how the Jedi Council actually seem to encourage students to fall to the dark side... from a certain point of view.
This whole notion of "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it domination your destiny" is a dangerous way to teach things. Even Yoda, who seems like a pretty grounded Jedi says that. Luke's line is appropriate, "You want the impossible." There's absolutely no way the Jedi can expect any human to be able to follow that; everyone has moments of hate, rage, anger, sorrow, and just plain emotion. They can't realistically expect people to not start down the dark path.
So what happens? Padawan Bob has thoughts of anger towards a dueling partner that's bested him and what can he do? He's started down the dark path, hasn't he? How does he feel about it, having heard that emotion is bad his whole life? I imagine with guilt, guilt that he was unable to control his emotions in spite of himself, maybe he thinks he's already most of the way towards being Sith. Can he talk to his master about his feelings and expect guidance? Would he be too afraid to admit his feelings? I'm sure the mark of a true Jedi is to be able to control and stifle these emotions when they feel them coming on, but what if they slip? I'm sure Obi-Wan's initial attack on Maul was fueled by the anger of just having seen his master run through, I'm sure he slipped there. Granted, he calmed down and controlled it later on and won the battle, but what if he had struck Maul down in hate? Would he have been expelled instead of knighted at the end of the movie?
My point is that it seems like the Jedi see things as dangerously black and white. You're either with them or against them (but only the Sith deal in absolutes! =O ). If you slip, it seems like that's it for you. No chance of redemption, no chance of coming back, that's it. You had your chance and you blew it, which is an awful way to run things, there are only so many Force-sensitives in the galaxy, and you're not trying to keep them all? And where do the ones you expel go? I'm guessing they become Sith mostly, considering that the two sides is all they've been taught to see.
This is why I'm not a fan of the Jedi Order, personally. I think they're wildly irresponsible and a threat to the galaxy. By teaching that these natural human responses to situations are wrong and should be ignored and suppressed, all they're doing is setting up for failures. Maybe you have small ones here and there, sure, no biggie, but then you have one like Anakin, who changes the entire galaxy twice. I know they know about the past, instances where Jedi have fallen due to emotions, but that's like banning breathing because one person breathed in poison once and died. Instead, what they should do is teach you to recognize the signs of poison and take steps to prevent or minimize exposure. Emotions are always there, they can't be denied or expunged, but they can be controlled and brought in line. Jolee Bindo had it right.
Tyrphanax said:
The way I see it, is that the Jedi Order believes that, since in the past, emotion has caused good Jedi to go bad, in order to prevent that from happening ever again, they have to dissolve all notions of emotion. "If we force them to think they shouldn't feel, then we can bring an end to evil!" But that's a pretty shoddy repair to a big hole in the dam - eventually, it's just going to make things worse.
And it does. Anakin comes around. He has all of these emotions, all of these feelings; love, anger, lust, pride, fear. And he's raised like a Catholic (to think that these natural things are wrong) and so what does he do? Well, what can he do? The way he feels is wrong, the Jedi don't understand it, they don't think he's able to handle it, they don't guide him like he needs, but Palpatine does, Palpatine helps him, he understands him, he nurtures him and consoles him and doesn't judge him. Anakin can't reconcile his feelings with the guilt placed upon him by the Jedi for being human. He freaks out. He snaps. He loses it and rebels in the most glorious fashion, by utterly destroying the entire Jedi Order from within.
How did that happen? How did Anakin fall so hard? Well, as Luke said, "Your overconfidence is your weakness." And so it was with the Jedi Order. They were so confident that they'd found the master switch to stop Jedi falling to the Dark Side, and evidence proved them correct: Ki-Adi-Mundi says that the Sith have "been extinct" for over a millennium, they hadn't had any major Jedi fall in ages, all seemed well on the surface, but like in Jurassic Park, just because the computer is only set to count 200 animals doesn't mean there aren't more than that. The Dark Side may have had a hand in blinding them to the Sith Lord Palpatine right under their noses, biding his time until it was right to strike, but their overconfidence blinded them just as much, if not more so. So confident were they that they'd found "The Final Solution to the Sith Question" in their teachings and were unassailable in their ivory towers on Coruscant, that they basically ignored all the blatant warning signs that Anakin gave that he was in trouble, that he wasn't feeling right, telling him to trust his training and dismissing his pleas for help, right up until he was leading the 501st into the temple to burn their ivory towers down. What he needed was some real guidance, some real help for mastering his emotions instead of useless platitudes about "letting go of the ones you love", but I don't think the Jedi could handle that, so sure were they that their training was adequate to prevent his fall.
And then they all died.
Personally, I think that, now that we have a complete trilogy, it all falls into place. I agree that the saga is the "Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker", but one of the sidestories is about the failing of the Jedi Order. That, as much a wise, grounded Jedi Master Yoda was, he was wrong the whole time, that the entire Jedi Order was completely wrong from the very beginning. They preached a message of non-emotion that is not only impossible, but came back around to destroy them, and even after all his meditating and time on Dagobah, Obi-Wan and Yoda still clung to this faulty ideal:
- "Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny"
- "If you leave now, help them you could, but you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered"
- "If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil"
- "Patience!"
"And sacrifice Han and Leia?"
"If you honour what they fight for, yes."
- "Bury your feelings deep down"
- "He's more machine now, than man. Twisted and evil."
And the most poignant, I feel, is Vader himself, "Obi-Wan once thought as you do... You don't know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master." He says it almost sadly, as if everyone's given up on him, even he believes there is no redeeming him. Like he doesn't want to be Sith, but that's his only option. And with the old Jedi Order, it would be true, they wouldn't try to redeem him, in fact, they told Luke not to even try several times.
But Luke didn't listen, he tried anyway, he had emotion, he had anger. Luke was fearful and aggressive. He felt compassion and love, he ended his training early and went to save Han and Leia, and instead of suppressing these emotions and ignoring them as he, like Anakin, was told, he used them. He controlled them and mastered them. He didn't strike his father down in anger and bend to Palpatine's will as Anakin had with a similarly-disarmed enemy so many years earlier, he was able to control his anger, he used it to defeat Vader, and then reined it in. He did things his own way, contrary to what Obi-Wan and Yoda told him, he used his love and attachment to his sister to defeat Vader, and it was his compassion for Vader, his father, that allowed Vader to use his own love and attachment to his son to defeat the Emperor; they used their emotions to overcome enemies that were previously untouchable to them, instead of burying them as they were trained and failing against their foe as Anakin was powerless to stop Palpatine when he had him at saberpoint in his office.
Luke did the opposite of what Obi-Wan and Yoda taught him, and it worked.
The death of Yoda, Obi-Wan, Vader, Sidious, and the rise of Luke wasn't just a changing of the guard, the rebuilding and continuation of the Jedi Order as it was, it was the rise of a New Jedi Order, a new order that saw the faults of the old order and attempted to fix them; and they do things very differently, if you haven't read the EU; lots of Jedi getting married and such.
I think the smiles of approval from the Force ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end, and their acceptance of a redeemed Anakin Skywalker wasn't merely just a "Good job, Luke. It's up to you now" moment, but also an admission. Finally they were admitting they messed up, that somewhere along the line they lost their vision, and that their undoing was their own fault, Luke showed them that they were wrong and, much like when Yoda learned mastery of transitioning his consciousness into the living Force from Qui-Gon, the apprentice became the master: "We were wrong. We said emotion was bad, but you've mastered it, controlled it and used it for good. We said that Anakin was irredeemable, but here he stands with us again. We said that it was all black and white, but you've shown us there is grey. You were right. Thank you. We are secure in the knowledge that you will carry on the legacy of the Jedi."