Spoilers The Jedi: Good? Bad? Where do we see them?

[Moist_Cake]

The Jedi are good in the sense that they will fight oppression and the mistreatment of people who can't fight for themselves. But they are not a group of righteous, benevolent people. I view them as the impression I got from the OT, as the lone wolf, the samurai, the ronin. If a bad guy needs to be dispatched, or you have to hurt someone to make a point, that's what is done. Kenobi didn't have to cut off that guys arm in the cantina. He did it to make a point. To send a message to all the other scum in that place that you are not to fuck with us. He could have easily resolved the situation with no violence at all. he chose to take the most extreme route next to killing him.

Also Lucas himself said that if a Jedi were to sit down and negotiate with someone, they would remove their lightsabre, put it on the table in front of them for the purpose of intimidation.

They are not uber good. They were, but that was their downfall, and at some point Kenobi learned this.

 

[Reverend]

The Jedi are good in the sense that they will fight oppression and the mistreatment of people who can't fight for themselves.

Except when they don't.

Again; the presumption that the Jedi are any kind of a monolithic constant in purpose, intent, and deed is simply fallacious. They're a group of individuals that have at various points behaved and intended wildly different things. Sometimes those things have even been internally contradictory, which is what was happening to them over the course of the Clone Wars.
Lest we forget; the first Sith were Jedi too, and likely many more after,

Kenobi didn't have to cut off that guys arm in the cantina. He did it to make a point.

It's kinda both. They both drew on him at point blank range. Taking them both out was the simplest, safest, and most direct route to resolve the situation.

A Jedi would (ideally) attempt a diplomatic resolution first, which is exactly what Ben did; "This little one's not worth the effort. Now, let me get you something."
But yeah, as a general rule of thumb the Jedi aren't comic book superheros with a contrived "no kill" rule. They will end a person, dispassionately, and without hesitation. However it is always lest resort; the person in question must first choose the path for themselves. You pull a weapon on a Jedi, or on in innocent any where near a Jedi; you've chosen to loose life and/or limb.

Another example is how Kanan approached Fenn Rau; he placed his sabre on the table, making it clear that he doesn't want to use it, but the option is there if Rau chooses it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The Jedi certainly displayed hubris. They took force sensitive in as children a trained them to suppress their emotions because they believed the dark side was so enticing any emotion or desire would inevitably lead them to its addictive grasp.

Luke was the one who proved them wrong. That emotion and attachments can have the oppose effect and protect you from the dark side.

 

[Reverend]

The Jedi certainly displayed hubris. They took force sensitive in as children a trained them to suppress their emotions because they believed the dark side was so enticing any emotion or desire would inevitably lead them to its addictive grasp.

Incorrect on all counts.

1. Starting Jedi training young had nothing to do with what you describe; it was because the younger a mind is, the more open and accepting it is. Adults and adolescents must first be taught to unlearn their basic assumptions right down to the unconscious level before they can advance to achieve what comes perfectly naturally to a two or three year old.
2. Jedi don't "suppress" emotions as a rule. They're not Vulcans. They're allowed to have feelings, just like anyone else, but they're also trained and expected to not allow such feelings to control them. To not allow passion to override sense, and to serve selflessly, come what may.
3. The Dark Side isn't some supernatural siren song that only space wizards can hear. It's a potential that exists within all living things, and going down that path is always a choice. The danger comes in denying it. Of not confronting and accepting it for what it is, and in allowing it to fester and grow within unchecked. This isn't a Jedi thing, it's a people thing. It's just as true for a Knight of the Order as it is for a powerful politician, a petty bureaucrat, a crime lord, or a moisture farmer.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Incorrect on all counts.

1. Starting Jedi training young had nothing to do with what you describe; it was because the younger a mind is, the more open and accepting it is. Adults and adolescents must first be taught to unlearn their basic assumptions right down to the unconscious level before they can advance to achieve what comes perfectly naturally to a two or three year old.
2. Jedi don't "suppress" emotions as a rule. They're not Vulcans. They're allowed to have feelings, just like anyone else, but they're also trained and expected to not allow such feelings to control them. To not allow passion to override sense, and to serve selflessly, come what may.
3. The Dark Side isn't some supernatural siren song that only space wizards can hear. It's a potential that exists within all living things, and going down that path is always a choice. The danger comes in denying it. Of not confronting and accepting it for what it is, and in allowing it to fester and grow within unchecked. This isn't a Jedi thing, it's a people thing. It's just as true for a Knight of the Order as it is for a powerful politician, a petty bureaucrat, a crime lord, or a moisture farmer.

Interesting. First you said I was wrong then you argued against something completely different than I actually said in a way that sounded like a paraphrasing of my actual intent.

A for ideas, F for reading comprehension.

1. Don’t you think that one of the reasons they needed young, adaptable (Impressionable) minds is so they can intercede before they form their own emotional constructs?

2. I never said they were “Vulcans”. They are trained to avoid having their own attachments and ambitions that could lead to fear, jealousy and anger. Natural emotions of normal children.

3. Of course it’s a potential in all living things but most living things don’t have access to the kind of addictive power than overwhelmed Anakin.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Separatists where the most likely assholes to start the Rebel Alliance after Shev started the Empire.

Shev pulled them to one side, and told the Separatists that now, 32 BBY, was best moment for the most freedom loving freedom lovers to strike for their love of freedom. Actually he probably told the separatists this in 42 BBY, so that they could start building droid foundries, and raise an army ready for 32 BBY.

The Jedi murdered them, when all the Separatists wanted to do was go live somewhere else with lower taxes.

Ummmmmmm...

Jedi don't pay taxes?

If the hypocritical Jedi had to pay taxes, maybe they wouldn't have been so fast to exterminate the Separatists.

 

[Dee1891]

Starting Jedi training young had nothing to do with what you describe; it was because the younger a mind is, the more open and accepting it is.

And a young mind can be easily indoctrinated and controlled in the long run. Unfortunately, the Jedi had trained its acolytes to not only blindly accept its views, but also not to question them. Which is why I have a problem with the Order beginning the acolytes' training so young . . . when they're too young to really understand what they are learning.

For me, it's not about whether the Jedi are good or bad. It's about how flawed or ideal they truly were. I'm more inclined to believe they were flawed.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's not about small young brains being more sponge like.

It's about being mother lovers.

Mother lovers are full of fear about losing their mothers who they love.

Fear leads to the Darkside.

Republic Genetic screening finds force users above a certain level, in the womb.

Mandatory orphaning.

Jedi younglings get a minute with their mother, and then the Jedi midwives take the babies off to temple to be nursed and raised motherlessly.

Losing a wife is just as bad.

Anikan lost his mother, and then his wife, feeling the pain and loss both times.

POOF!

Darkside Rising.

Didn't stand a fuc*ing chance.

 

[Kor]

I found it interesting that Jedi who apparently had never even been part of any army were considered qualified to be commissioned as Generals. The curriculum at the temple must have had some first-rate stuff on military strategy and command and such.

Kor

 

[Reverend]

I found it interesting that Jedi who apparently had never even been part of any army were considered qualified to be commissioned as Generals. The curriculum at the temple must have had some first-rate stuff on military strategy and command and such.

Kor

It's probably the most comprehensive education in the galaxy. A Jedi has to be equally at home in a royal court as they are in a junk yard, or in a tribal elder's tent. Be adept at diplomacy, negotiation, linguistics, and a wide variety of technical skills, and they have direct access to the most comprehensive libraries in the galaxy. Indeed, it being the best education a person can have combined with essentially being provided for for life, and the widespread knowledge of how few even get offered a place is likely a huge reason why so many parents so willingly give up their children to the Order. For the poor, it's a far better and more significant life than they could have ever hoped to provide them, and for the privileged it's it's own special kind of prestige.

 

[Ithekro]

"A Jedi Knight" is a pretty big title to earn to regular people in the Republic. Carries a lot of weight. A lot is expected of any Jedi. Even in the Outer Rim a slave boy knows about the Jedi and has massive expectations of them.

 

[dupersuper]

"A Jedi Knight" is a pretty big title to earn to regular people in the Republic. Carries a lot of weight. A lot is expected of any Jedi. Even in the Outer Rim a slave boy knows about the Jedi and has massive expectations of them.

Yet within a few decades they're legends of old...

 

[fireproof78]

Like flip phones and cassette tapes.

 

[Ithekro]

The Empire's propaganda machine, mixed with sour feeling in the wake of the Clone Wars. Plus, if the Empire was actively hunting down Jedi and anyone associated with them, then people will clam up about them and deny them.

 

[Reverend]

Yet within a few decades they're legends of old...

A generation of systematic suppression will do that. If the parents don't talk about it for fear of being disappeared in the middle of the night by black armoured Imperial agents, then the kids don't hear about it, and it's all just myth and rumour for those that grew up in the Empire. (Just ask anyone who's parents or grandparents were around for the Tulsa Massacre how that works.)

Though for a little perspective; when Obi-Wan mentioned "I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father", Luke didn't exactly react as if he'd just said he once rode a flying unicorn to do battle with the goblin king, or anything like that. He seemed to take it in stride as if a Jedi Knight is exactly what they were by the end; a kind of military leader and warrior that aren't around anymore. Hardly mundane, but also not exactly fantastical either. And for extra context; that's the view of a farmboy in the desolate wastes of a backwater world, in one of the least civilized areas of the outer rim, who's guardians have been very deliberately keeping him in the dark about Jedi.