Well, okay...I don't stan them.
But I have mixed feelings about them.
As a kid I was really into Star Wars and looked up to the Jedi, so I think it's a hold over from that.
The Jedi are flawed, foolish, short-sighted and kind of cowardly (among other things) and The Republic is a stagnant beasts with an inefficient anachronistic and byzantine system where the worst kind of poverty has existed for millennia.
...But I still kind of like them, despite their tragic faults.
Well...Idk if I like The Republic as depicted in Star Wars, in some ways I hate it.
But the idea of a galactic society where hundreds if not thousands of peoples and cultures are brought together to coexist is one I really like, and I can understand in the early days why the Jedi would of supported the creation of such an organization.
Of course it is just that, an idea , and the lore is filled with the many ways The Republic as a bourgeoise order failed these ideals.
Ultimately I think the Jedi erred in so closely associating themselves with and mooring themselves to a state.
Their understanding of the force and themselves is also incomplete or lacking, I think.
But at the end of the day I still like the little space wizard monks.
I respect their aim in controlling their emotions (even if it often materializes in suppression instead) and in being diplomats and peacekeepers for the galaxy (even if it often materializes in propping up an unjust status quo).
But now I am starting to ramble about children's media, which is an unforgivable crime, so I'll stop.
Star Wars is in the weird spot where people are randomly born with like, demigod tier powers. Having them be volcel monks with no emotion is basically a 99% effective form of harm reduction, since every other method tends to end with evil people starting wars that kill millions. Can you even imagine if Earth had the same system, fucking Sith capitalism or some shit?
This is why Kreia in KOTOR 2 has the only correct take, that the force should be deleted entirely. Obviously she has to fail, it's not Star Wars without the force, but removing would save literally billions of lives.
Nah, the force is cool and good, it's people who are bad.
The Force is cool and good. It's using your powers and abilities to hurt people and do selfish things that is bad.
The Force as a metaphor is very basically "If you wield power over people bad things will inevitably happen." It's a variation on "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Powerful men are almost always bad men". The Force wins when it acts subtly or when it rejects violence. You "Win" at having supernatural power by using its cautiously and only when it can help people, or for self defense. You "Lose" when you use it to pursue and fulfill personal ambitions or to lash out at the world.
This is why Kylo Ren is the best dark Jedi - He's a petulant child, basically a school shooter wannabe nazi
Obi-wan is some weird desert monk who steps out of the shadows to basically do a good deed. The Emperor is an evil dude who seizes control of everything out of a pure, unalloyed lust for power.
Yeah, I just can't get behind eradicating this unifying force that connects everything in the universe because people misuse it or become too reliant on those who have it.
Qui-gon said in the first movie that life as we know it wouldn't even exist without the force, so who knows what the ramifications for destroying it would be in their world.
:curious-marx:
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The Empire didn't need the Force to build the Death Star, but Luke did need the Force to stop it.
Yeah, but the Empire needed the Force to become the Empire
Honest question; At what point did Palpatine use the force to bring about the Empire? As far as I remember he only used the force to hide his own force power from the Jedi. Everything else was done by straightforward political manipulation, playing on people's fears and greed.
Apparently in the old canon, he got angry at his dad and "accidentally" killed his entire close family, which got him scouted by the previous sith and all the connections that come with that. It also puts him in the comfortable position of being more or less the strongest person in the universe, the dude was almost invincible and being immune to assassination attempts and whatnot as space Hitler is a big bonus.
Okay but my point is that you don't need space magic to do any of those things. Hitler was famously immune to assassination, too.
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But that's all stuff that countered the actions of other space wizards. 1 + -1 = 0. If you take the space wizardry out of the equation he did it all by good old fashioned murder and skullduggery, just like Hitler on whom he was largely modelled.
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Also, the escalation of what the Force is and does between the OT and a lot of the expanded universe material does is wild.
Darth Vader, the most feared man in the galaxy; Chokes people, can sense when someone is strong in the force, can cut up mooks really good.
KOTOR: Here's a guy who eats planets because he's sad.
Like... These are not the same story, and you shouldn't assess them as though they were.
"Don't be so impressed with this technological terror you have created, it is insignificant next to the power of the Force"
Later
Luke blows up the technological terror using the Force