General Star Wars Animated Series

I don't understand what you're getting at.

I think what they're getting at is that Motive Decay and having dark Jedi just go power hungry is really annoying and stupid.

Again, that's why I liked the idea of Barriss being told, essentially, that the Jedi attempted a coup for power and are causing disruptions in the galaxy while the Empire is trying to bring peace and order after the war, and having her believe it.

I'm pretty sure the "Mara Jade 2.0" rumor @Shadao linked was proven to be fake a long time ago, though I'd have to go back and look to be sure.

As for Barriss becoming an Imperial: we've already seen that Palpatine is using his supposed status as the man who ended the Clone Wars and brought peace back to the galaxy as a justification for his rule. And we know what Barriss thought of the Clone Wars and what it made the Jedi into. So I can easily believe that she'd have come around - maybe with a little brainwashing thrown in - to being one of the people who supports the Empire because it "keeps the peace", and who feels that the Jedi were at best beyond saving.

I'm particularly interested in this idea because we've seen concept art of the female Inquisitor speaking with Ezra; it'd be interesting to have someone try and take a more "idealistic" approach to converting him than the original Inquisitor's more standard Power of the Dark Side rhetoric. And it would be particularly interesting given that Kanan's teaching so far has been fairly lacking in the more flawed aspects of the Old Jedi Order's doctrine - it'd be neat to have Ezra articulate that some in a rebuttal.

Until proven otherwise I'm thinking it's Bariss and not just because the Inquisitor is a green skinned female alien. In season 1 it was established that Luminara Unduli escaped the Order 66 massacre but was later captured. Now, why would she be captured instead of killed immediately? Bariss was her Padawan. Maybe she pulled some strings to try and save her life.

I thought the implication was that she wasn't killed right away specifically so the footage of her being carted around could be used as bait for other Jedi.

I always though of the Dark side as addictive. At a certain point users need to get their fix, and they don't care how they do it.

Yeah, that's my interpretation of the Dark Side too: one part moral corruption, one part drug high. So you're both more liable to do evil things, and then become addicted to doing them.

The Dark Side always seemed like part drug metaphor, part evil metaphor. Although I've always disliked people saying that balance requires the Dark Side.

edited 25th May '15 7:09:43 PM by Windona

Because the representatives of the light side are a monastic order discouraging emotional attachment. Not the worst thing in the world, but it probably doesn't mesh with the average viewer's experience of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

And that's part of the argument for the Jedi unbalancing the Force as well, and why the Force needed the chosen one to bring the Jedi Order to a healthier state. Heck, look at how Luke brought balance to the Force- by not turning to the Dark Side, but also by ignoring Obi-Wan's advice of burying his feelings down deep and using his compassion to get Anakin to let go of his anger and hatred. As I've once heard before: Sith were cancer, Jedi auto immune disease.

The running thing is that modern day society looks down on monastic orders and asceticism to a remarkable degree, so the Jedi will always suffer from Ron the Death Eater. It's a fact of life. It's part of why people think balance requires the Jedi to be wiped out too.

Not wiped out, but changed. They should not have been bound hand and foot to the Republic in the first place. The should have been in the outer rim trying to liberate places like Tanotoie.

edited 26th May '15 7:02:05 AM by JackOLantern1337

Arguably, what Luke felt when he looked at Vader was empathy, not necessarily compassion. Neither of which are emotions nor attachments anyway, uncontrolled or otherwise - Jedi were always encouraged to feel compassion towards others.

edited 26th May '15 1:33:57 PM by KnownUnknown

And yet the Jedi told Luke to commit patricide, and Obi-Wan literally said to bury his compassion down deep and to kill Vader to defeat the Empire. The point being that the Jedi Order did have severe flaws that they needed to fix.

With the Jedi Order, the line between Ron the Death Eater and Fridge Horror being applied is pretty murky, since the Jedi canonically had 14 year old Commanders without batting an eye and took in kids before they had memories of their birth family and forbade them from seeing their family specifically so the kids would be solely loyal to the Order. The Order circa the Clone Wars had serious flaws they never addressed, and that led to them being destroyed by Palpatine.

(Again, that's the purpose of the autoimmune analogy- it's a system that's supposed to be there and works and taking out the baddies, but it's also hurting the person as well. Cancer is something normal being warped and then just aggressively stealing the resources and starving the rest of the body in the quest to grow)

The Jedi didn't. A Jedi did, after spending two decades in hell and having been betrayed after trying to reach out to the same person, thus believing that redemption was impossible and that killing him was the only way to stop it. It's unlikely that Obi-Wan circa Clone Wars would've made the same call, because he didn't until Anakin convinced him that there was no saving him on Mustafar.

That's also incidental to the larger point - a single instance of being told to do a morally questionable act is nowhere near a sign that the Jedi as a whole condemn compassion. Nor even that Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't understand what Luke was going was going through (it doesn't even mean they emphasize forgoing compassion in the general sense themselves) - but in their point of view, this had to happen and Luke was only one who could do it.

It's the situation creating a nasty situation, not the Jedi having a nasty outlook. Context is important. As is the way the actions are put upon the characters - Obi-Wan and Yoda's "jaded and tired of the world" characterizations, as well as Luke's "idealistic young youth" character type.

edited 26th May '15 5:51:31 PM by KnownUnknown

The Jedi code kind of encourages inhibiting emotions, though, which sets up the kind of situations Windona takes issue with. "There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no death; there is the Force."

Yeah, but as noted compassion and empathy are not among the things the Jedi discourage - much to the opposite.

As for the emotion issue as a whole, I find that easier to understand because the prequel Jedi Order follows textbook - if extremely exaggerated - Stoicism. Feelings as a whole are not discouraged, feelings that control oneself are discouraged. Jedi are encouraged to care about people (especially in the Master-Padawan relationship), are encouraged to feel for people in need and aid them based on that feeling, but not to become attached to others' presence such that their loss could dominate their mind (as what happened with Anakin). Basically to feel, but not to need the feeling. Etc. But there is a level of devotion implicit in everything the Jedi do that shouldn't be overlooked.

The idea that Jedi are not allowed to feel any emotions or care about other people in any way, and especially the common accusation of outright sociopathy, are heavy exaggerations of what we actually see and outright contradict it at times.

Another moment that gets exaggerated a lot is Yoda's advice to Anakin when Anakin "tells him" (read: gives him barely any information) about his vision, largely when people take what Yoda's words at absolute face value without really caring about what he's actually saying.

It's worth noting, however, that the Stoicism angle was introduced in the prequels and is absent from the character writing of the Original Trilogy (which makes sense, given that Obi Wan and Yoda are now cut off from actual Order and only have the Force left) - where the Jedi were based off of different philosophies. Mostly Eastern religions and such.

edited 26th May '15 6:09:40 PM by KnownUnknown

The Jedi Council still discussed taking over the Senate for a while in what is essentially a military coup. Yes, Palpatine was a Sith Lord- but the fact still stands that the Jedi implied that they would take charge for a while, instead of asking for an interim government to take control while things are sorted out. The Jedi also are plenty hypocritical in that they praise democracy while having a Council that selects its own members.

Do I think the Jedi are evil? No. Do I think they were in decline, and the Clone Wars enhanced their flaws and made them start to fall apart? Yes. The whole point of the prequels is to show how a Republic and a powerful Jedi Order could be taken to task and lead to the state of the galaxy in the OT.

Luke using compassion to overcome the Dark Side at the end of Rot J marks, in my opinion, a revival and renewal of Jedi philosophy where compassion before fighting is a method shown. (Again, Yoda said that once you go dark, you are gone forever- implying that the Jedi thought going to the dark side was irreversible). It will be interesting to see the Jedi as they stand in the movie coming out in December, and how they compare to the prequel Jedi, but honestly part of what makes the Prequel Order so interesting is the myriad of flaws they have.

Still, that amount of emotional repression can lead to issues. For instance, most people take Anakin's fall to the dark side as proof that Jedi cannot have attachments,especially romantic ones. I take it as proof that preventing Jedi from having attachments doesn't work. For one thing they have them anyway. For another, thanks to the amount of repression they experience, those relationships are abnormal and extremely unhealthy.

edited 26th May '15 7:02:01 PM by JackOLantern1337

I would argue that "compassion and empathy" are pretty strongly informed by emotion. Discouraging the latter wouldn't do any favors for the former.

edited 26th May '15 11:27:41 PM by illegalcheese

Rogue One writer is writing an episode of Rebels. Gary Whitta is writing an episode, presumably for season 3, which in turn makes it even more likely that there will be some connection between the show and the film.

And again, making a tough decision in a bad situation is not the same thing as their order not supporting prioritizing making compassionate decisions as a whole. Striving for good doesn't mean never making bad decisions, and attempting to claim to discount the latter by cherry picking examples of the former doesn't prove much. Likewise, in general making a decision to do one thing in no way means one supports that thing in general, or even lives their life in such a way where they would normally make such a decision.

The issue is you're applying the worst they've done, the worst they've thought about under duress, and their jaded decisions, as if it were the reality of their entire existence, as apposed to paying attention to the context of the actual events you're bringing up.

Or in short, going "they thought about overthrowing the senate to stop something evil / thought they had no choice but to kill their comrade turned evil / etc, so clearly they couldn't truly have cared about compassion" is a huge logical leap given the circumstances. One of many issues that have to be dealt with in accusations of hypocrisy is context.

edited 27th May '15 2:49:39 PM by KnownUnknown

The Jedi were pretty clear in their own minds that resorting to overthrowing Palpatine and forcing a reelection/reorganisation of the Senate was A Very Bad Thing. It just wasn't AS bad as letting him continue on as Chancellor... in which assessment they were totally correct, but had left it far too late to make any difference.

I admittedly haven't watched Revenge of the Sith, but why did they have to get rid of the Senate,besides it being a corrupt incompetent cesspool. Although the Clone's brain chips do offer some explanation as the why the Jedi felt they had to act immediately,they must have connected the dots about their true purpose when they found out that Palps was a Sith. Also explains why their were no Clones present at the attempted arrest of the Chancoler, even though their presence would lend credence to the Jedi's story.

They didn't want to get rid of the Senate per see, but they are realizing Palpatine is of course a machiavellian mastermind who's been democratically ellected and controlling the Senate for a decade. The Jedi (correctly) assumed the Senate is entirely under his influence (either by psychological manipulation or genuine bribery) and thus the Jedi would need to null the Senate for sometime until they sort things out (otherwise the Senate would just stop Palpatine's fall).

Basically assuming Windu succeeded, he'd have killed Palpatine and either him or Yoda would become a "Temporary Chancellor" and conduct a full investigation of Palps's doings, root out his cohorts and stop any other Sith plots there might be. Once the dust settled, they'd step down and call for another election.