Was Obi Wan a bad mentor/teacher?

[Prax]

Luke was a young adult when he started learning. He was raised to be responsible. A good kid...like Opie. He then sort of idolized Obi-Wan, Jedi lore, and his real Father. He doesn't want to let them down.

In the Novelization of RotJ, Luke is really tempted to join Palpatine, but I still don't get that impression watching the movie.

Anakin going with Qui-Gonn, I don't see as unethical. Shmi asks Qui-Gonn if he can give Anakin a better life than slavery.

Anakin is just the wrong age to begin training. He's already had years of doing things his own way. His parents are Shmi and Watto. Shmi doesn't have a lot of authority over him as she is also a slave with him, and Watto circumvents her parental rules anyway.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Qui-Gon taking Anakin from Tatooine to begin with seems ethically questionable-he did tell Anakin "It's a hard life" (in response to Anakin's "I get to go with you on your starship!?!?") but that still feels like too much of an understatement, not really explaining how demanding and exacting the Jedi life was.

Time was not on Qui-Gon's side; he didn't know yet about Darth Maul closing in, but his priority was to get the Queen to Coruscant ASAP. He needed a yes-or-no answer NOW. He couldn't afford to take an hour to sit the kid down and warn him what a Jedi's life entailed, at least not until they were in space. By this point he'd already convinced himself that taking Anakin with him was the will of the Force; "There is too much happening here for it to be anything else," as he later put it in a deleted line from the first Council scene. As it turned out, Anakin was coming with him no matter what - Shmi wouldn't have it any other way, as she all-but-pushed the kid out the door.

 

[Prax]

So Shmi, Watto, and Qui-Gonn were all in agreement.

Watto: Lost a bet
Qui-Gonn: Wanted a Chosen One
Shmi: Wanted her son to be a free man and have opportunities.

...Only Anakin & Obi-Wan had reservations about the whole thing, but they came around!

 

[LJones41]

Anakin is just the wrong age to begin training. He's already had years of doing things his own way.

Why do people blindly accept this? Why does being hammered into the ways of the Force by the Jedi since birth or since being a toddler automatically makes one a perfect Force user? Or someone who will never give in to evil? As I had earlier pointed out, Count Dooku had the traditional Jedi training, yet he became a Sith lord.

Isn't it possible that Anakin starting his training at the age of nine had nothing to do with him becoming evil? He was not the only one who developed attachments. So did the Jedi. Their attachment to the Order led them to make mistakes that led to their downfall.

In the Novelization of RotJ, Luke is really tempted to join Palpatine, but I still don't get that impression watching the movie.

The image I got was that Luke was seconds away of giving in to evil and killing his father in a state of rage. Only Palpatine's arrogance and big mouth prevented Luke from stepping into the abyss.

You know...I'm looking at this thread and I see you knocking down a lot of other people's views, but I don't really see you proposing anything in their place.

I have been proposing other views. More than once.

Anyone is capable of evil or giving in to evil. All it takes is the right emotional button to be pushed or the right circumstances and that individual will give embrace evil. An individual does not require a certain upbringing or a certain personality trait to become evil. Nor do I believe that only certain types of people are capable of evil. Anyone is capable of it. That person just needs the right circumstances to do it.

 

[Prax]

Why do people blindly accept this? Why does being hammered into the ways of the Force by the Jedi since birth or since being a toddler automatically makes one a perfect Force user? Or someone who will never give in to evil? As I had earlier pointed out, Count Dooku had the traditional Jedi training, yet he became a Sith lord.

Isn't it possible that Anakin starting his training at the age of nine had nothing to do with him becoming evil? He was not the only one who developed attachments. So did the Jedi. Their attachment to the Order led them to make mistakes that led to their downfall.




The image I got was that Luke was seconds away of giving in to evil and killing his father in a state of rage. Only Palpatine's arrogance and big mouth prevented Luke from stepping into the abyss.




I have been proposing other views. More than once.

Anyone is capable of evil or giving in to evil. All it takes is the right emotional button to be pushed or the right circumstances and that individual will give embrace evil. An individual does not require a certain upbringing or a certain personality trait to become evil. Nor do I believe that only certain types of people are capable of evil. Anyone is capable of it. That person just needs the right circumstances to do it.

In the books, Anakin was already doing "naughty" things from a young age, like sneaking out of the Jedi Temple at night to go slumming. He's very independent, a bit of a problem child.

As I said earlier, he was destined to take the path he did. If there was no Palpatine, no war, no crisis, he would have mellowed out, and not fallen to the Dark Side.

But if there was no Palpatine, there would have been no Anakin. He was born for this purpose.

Yes, Luke flies into a rage at the end, but I never get the impression watching the film that Luke is being seduced BY Palpatine, having visions of grandeur, of ruling the empire, the way it's painted in the Novelization.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Jones, this is about bliss.

They say love, but I think bliss is a more appropriate denominator if you want to compare, your mothers love, your spouses sexual reverberations, and how elatable (not a word, don't worry, but we are talking about children) you can get, using the dark side of the force.

Aversion therapy.

Probably using a stern electric buzzer (permanently attached to something particularly sensitive) every time the youngling smiles or gets a boner.

3 year olds are easier to program with the application of less pain.

9 year old Anikan was hitting on a 15 year old in Phantom.

Huge balls.

Huuuuge.

Little Vader would need to go through two 12 volt car-batteries a week for a year to catch up with the rest of his class, in theory, if he had caught up, because he didn't, and we saw the genocidal consequences.

 

[LJones41]

But if there was no Palpatine, there would have been no Anakin. He was born for this purpose.

He was "born" for this purpose? He was "born"? This is one argument I do not buy. Forget Palpatine. For me, the only way Anakin was "born to become evil" was because the OT was made before the PT. That's it . . . at least as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, Luke flies into a rage at the end, but I never get the impression watching the film that Luke is being seduced BY Palpatine, having visions of grandeur, of ruling the empire, the way it's painted in the Novelization.

I've never read the Novelization. I couldn't care less about it. I just remember Luke's action in "Return of the Jedi" and how he came close to committing murder, due to his personal rage and his attachment to Leia.

 

[Prax]

Anakin wasn't born to become evil. I'm not sure he was ever truly evil anyway. He was born to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force. He fulfilled his destiny.

 

[Guy Gardener]

No.

He was born to destroy the Jedi and bring balance to the force.

40 thousand Jedi vs. 2 Sith.

Balance comes from murdering 39,998 Jedi, or training 39,998 Sith.

Although that interpretation has been argued down by challenging the definition of "Balance".

 

[Ithekro]

Balance, via Lucas' idea, was the Sith imbalancing the Force through unnatural power and domination of the Force. A corruption of the Force. The idea that Darth Plaguous and Darth Sidious were trying to manipulate the Force to create life was thought to be the reason Anakin was born...and the Force's reaction to the Sith. An effort to stop the Sith by bringing about the Chosen One.

 

[Prax]

The Sith each count for ...umm...47 Jedi, so we need to locate 92 more surviving Jedi. Then we'll have balance...

 

[Guy Gardener]

(New thoughts)

The "death energy" pressing on Plageous and Palpatine (if they are not the same person), when diverted, had to find someone else to kill (like in Pushing Daisies) but kindly, the Force creates new life (Like Anikan who is a virgence force baby and may not carry even any of Shmi's DNA.) to capture that "death energy" and be killed by it eventually which is another reason that Vader looked like (old white) shit in Jedi.

 

[fireproof78]

Balance, via Lucas' idea, was the Sith imbalancing the Force through unnatural power and domination of the Force. A corruption of the Force. The idea that Darth Plaguous and Darth Sidious were trying to manipulate the Force to create life was thought to be the reason Anakin was born...and the Force's reaction to the Sith. An effort to stop the Sith by bringing about the Chosen One.

Also, an idea put forward by the ROTS novel, was that the Force was also out of balance due to the darkness from other Force users, and the inner darkness of other sentient beings. I honestly don't know if it was explored beyond that novel but it was interesting to me. I think Sam Witwer made a similar comment in one of his PT commentaries.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Balance, via Lucas' idea, was the Sith imbalancing the Force through unnatural power and domination of the Force. A corruption of the Force. The idea that Darth Plaguous and Darth Sidious were trying to manipulate the Force to create life was thought to be the reason Anakin was born...and the Force's reaction to the Sith. An effort to stop the Sith by bringing about the Chosen One.

If he'd said "Purity" instead of "Balance" then the shit would have hit the fan, because that's how racist Nazis talk.

 

[Prax]

Do you mean like regular people AWA the Jedi were "feeding into" the dark side?

 

[Guy Gardener]

If Jedi can control minds with the force, then the force is in every buggers minds being random like the weather influencing mood and behaviour, if not actual direction on a human level.

 

[Prax]

Are you saying the Jedi are unwittingly feeding the masses dark emotions...like Sarek?

 

[Guy Gardener]

No, not at all.

If you believe this purity = balance bullshit, then the jedi are benign, and the Sith shit in the force wellspring. In the context of water = force it's what happened to the Ganges and the drinking water that that Inca's would dump daily human sacrifices into: Untenable pollution.

Here's the problem...

Yoda, and the Jedi et all thought that the Sith were dead.

If there was an imbalance to the Force's purity, it was not Sith associated, by Jedi reasoning, because there are no Sith anymore.

Another thing.

"Prophecy" sorta sounds like Anikan's arrival was predicted to have have happened, hundreds, or maybe thousands of years ago...

So what ever imbalance the Jedi of old saw being needed to be fixed upstream in the distant future, the Future jedi in the present had acclimatized and thought the imbalance that was always happening all around them was normal and it was their preferred state of existence.

It'd be like some alien rolling back EPA regulations to help the coal industry, because coal way more important than clean drinking water that does not ignite.

 

[Prax]

I don't see balance as "purity." The way I understand it is a "balance of nature" that allows all life to flourish/grow. Life creates the force.

Do the Jedi say there's an imbalance? They remain skeptical of the prophesy AND Anakin's "chosen one" status to the end. They just think he's a super high speed Jedi with a streak of defiance. And they talk a lot about the dark side growing and whatnot.

 

[fireproof78]

The prophecy is not clear and even Yoda and Mace were uncertain if it had been read correctly.

Secondly, Yoda thinks that Obi-Wan can be defiant as well, like Qui-Gon, so that's not a trait unique to Anakin. The ROTS novel also implies that Sidious is manipulating the belief in the prophecy to his own ends.