Star Wars: The entire Jedi Council were traitors.

Cafe Society
1

It was assumed (at least by me) that when Qui-gon Jin told the council he found the person mentioned in the ‘one who would bring balance to the force’ prophecy the Council considered having a new champion for their cause, but were only worried that if it was indeed him he just wasn’t ready.

I now think otherwise.

During the Old Republic the Jedi Order was primarily responsible for bringing order, justice and peace to the galaxy and except for a few independents on the Outer Rim and issues with a rogue Trade Federation in league with a bunch of anthropomorphic cockroaches they were by and large incredibly successful. The Senate brought democracy and enlightened rule to practically the entire universe. To bring balance would be in fact to add disorder, injustice and war. Mace and Yoda surly understood and sympathized with the ebb and flow of nature and to borrow a D&D term would be considered to have a True Neutral alignment. So they allowed this child to grow up, trained him, gave bullshit ‘hard to see the future is’ answers when confronted with the dire warnings of the Republics impending doom and all this with the full knowledge that this kid would contribute to the slaughter and subjugation of most of the universe including the Jedi Order itself.

2

Even though Lucas has said, “no, that’s not what I meant by that”…

At the beginning of The Phantom Menace: 10,000 Jedi, 2 Sith.

By the end of Revenge of the Sith: 2 Jedi, 2 Sith.

I think that brought balance to the Force, all right. :smiley:

3

Don’t think so. Why would they encourage the rise of someone who could destroy them (and did, in Windu’s case)? Remember that they initally forbade the training of Anakin. I’d say they were Lawful Good, but idjits.

4

Because there is no balance if the galaxy is full of good.

May they had initial pangs of guilt in contributing to the downfall of the Republic.

The Jedi in, their wisdom, are the galactic police force which the Republic is cool with because their so often right, but never once in all 6 movies do Jedi cite local legal code or read ‘miranda rights’. And if one Sith can cloud the minds of the entire Jedi Council how come it hasn’t happened before this?

5

The prophecy was about bringing balance to the Force, not balance between good and evil.

6

I am a little slow today. Is there a difference in that distinction, as portrayed in the movies?

7

The Force is a natural phenomena, like a tornado. It is neither good or evil. Good and evil are moral constructs.

8

So what does the prophecy mean when it says he will bring balance to a tornado?

(I cant spell.)

9

Maybe not in the movie, but in my interpretation of it. Lemmee try to 'splain.

The Jedi had misread the prophesy in the same way that you seem to have done - they saw it as balancing the dark and the light sides of the Force. Presumably, they thought that the Sith had become too powerful, that there was too much of the dark side, and that the promised one would help them in their efforts to beat back this darkness.

In my opinion, they were wrong. The Force has no sides, the Force just is. The Jedi fundamentally misunderstood this basic tenet, warping themselves with their perceived “light” side practices as much as they said the Sith were warped by theirs. But in and of itself, the Force is neutral.

As much as the Sith were presumably motivated and twisted by power and greed, the Jedi were motivated and twisted by justice and equality. But justice and equality aren’t present in nature any more than greed and power are - nature just is what it is. It’s the conscious beings that inhabit it that place these values and measures onto it.

Certainly, the nature of these conscious beings probably makes them incapable of themselves being neutral, as the Force is. Because of our thought, our personalities, our upbringing, our culture, we’ll tend down a path that most meshes with our worldview, and will use (or not) the tools available to us to perfect ourselves according to that view.

While the Jedi certainly had reason to distrust and fear the “dark” side and to counsel their acolytes against it, it seems to me that by doing so, they brought about their own downfall. They were so certain that they were in the right and that they would be able to sniff out Sith influence before it came to them. That arrogance itself blinded them. They questioned everything “dark,” but didn’t think to apply that same sort of critical thinking to the “light.” Nor did they ever attempt to study the “dark” from a more neutral perspective of “it’s all just tools.”

If they had been less blind, had been more accepting, had been more critical, they would’ve seen where the inbalances came from and dialed their own hysteria down a couple of notches. Sure, the two Sith were as "evil’ as Yoda was good, but there were just two - there were hundreds of indoctrinated Jedi running about. Perhaps they would’ve been better able to see the darkness growing in their own ranks. But nope, they sat back, confident in their self-assuredness.

This rant brought to you by Snicks, 5, and the letter Z.

10

But order isn’t a moral construct and what the Republic represents above all is order. If there is no Evil in the force Yoda and Mace would sleep well at night while Rome burned, so to speak.

11

The Jedi were simply morons. Perhaps not individually, but in aggregate. The “no-marriage” rule is another clear example.

12

But it does have a light side and a dark side, which seem to map pretty well to our concepts of good and evil. And this isn’t simply a philosophical construct: when Anakin turns to the dark side, it causes immediate physical side-effects (the fried-egg eyes) that were not present when he relied primarily on the light side of the Force.

13

The strict “no marriage, no training beyond such and such age,”, etc were part of their downfall. It was part of the whole, "We’re so strict, we can’t see beyond our own ways, our way is the only way.

Or, as Snickers put it.

(Besides, basically Lucas said, more or less, that Jedi can have friends with benefits. He said they can’t get married, but they don’t have to be celibate, IIRC)

14

No, the Force doesn’t have different sides in and on itself. The Light Side and the Dark Side are simply labels invented to distinguish between different kinds of force use. The Light Side force users treats the Force with respect, whereas the Dark Side people concidersthe Force as nothing but a tool and uses it however they wish, hurting it in the process. “The balance of the Force”, as Lucas explained it later, is when there are no Dark Side users around hurting the Force, not a 1:1 ratio of Light Side and Dark Side users.

15

Feh. What the fuck does George Lucas know about it?

16

It’s forbidding marriage that’s bad. Allowing sex won’t make up for it.

17

It’s all because of ambiguity in the use of the word “balance”.

What Lucas was shooting for, how the Jedi use the term “balance” is kinda like your car alignment being in balance. If it is out of balance, you get worse performance - uneven wear on tires, reduced tire life, and poor handling. Extend the metaphor to The Force, and you get a universe out of balance having more evil, less harmony, more conflict, more tension. Putting the Force in balance would ease the tension, reduce animosity, and lead to a harmonious Golden Age.

Thus, for the Jedi, hunting down and eliminating the Sith was the path to reducing the elements of tension and hate, the Dark side of the Force.

Now the thing is, the way it plays out “balance” could really mean what most viewers take it to mean - balance out the light and dark. See, Lucas is so witty for using the ambiguously worded prophecy ploy.

Except most viewers immediately saw the “bad” interpretation (having seen the original trilogy not withstanding), and it was, in fact, harder to understand the meaning that Yoda (Lucas) intended. So it came across not as a surprise, not as even a clever in-joke, but just stupid Jedi.

18

No kidding. Lucas would make a really awful fan.

19

Then you truly are lost.

20

Right, I with you 110%.

I’m only saying that it seems to be a mistaken notion that Jedi are like priests, in that they can’t have sex. That’s all.

Not allowing marriage (with some exceptions – see Ki Adi Mundi), among other things, is screwed up. Plus, they don’t allow exclusive relationships. It’s more like promiscuity is actually encouraged. Bad idea, especially in a line of work like being a Jedi.