The Jedi donât really do any of those things though? While many Jedi are reserved in their emotional expression, and I can agree with Pop Culture Detective about how that can play into real world patterns, he also heavily misunderstands core things about the Jedi and the Force.Â
To start with, the Jedi do not ban emotions. We see even very quintessential Jedi show emotions all over the place. What they speak of is controlling them, because things can go really bad when trained force-sensitives loose control. Controlling your emotions is not the same as not feeling them. That Jedi Code people talk about at times is from a 1980âČs roleplaying book and not a central part of the worldbuilding. To the extent that it has been picked up in higher levels of canon itâs as a meditation mantra. Anakin wasnât prevented from expressing his feelings as a Jedi, he was told to control them. The problem was that Palpatine was dripping poison in his ear.
The âdark sideâ and âlight sideâ isnât really Good and Evil as much as they are Selfishness and Selflessness. Iâm gonna use a Lucas quote, where he talks about how the force works, to show what I mean:
âThe core of the ForceâI mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody ⊠because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether itâs a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience.
âOnce you become afraid that somebodyâs going to take it away from you or youâre gonna lose it, then you start to become angry, especially if youâre losing it, and that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person whoâs selfish, because you spend all your time being afraid of losing everything youâve got instead of actually living.
âWhere joy, by giving to other people you canât think about yourself, and therefore thereâs no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience, therefore youâre constantly trying to replenish it, but of course the more you replenish it, the harder it is to, so you have to keep upping the ante. Youâre actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy.â Â âGeorge Lucas, The Clone Wars writers meeting
The Dark side is selfishness, and that fear->anger->hate->suffering path Yoda speaks of is literally how Lucas describes the force working. Itâs a core of the Star Wars world-building.Â
This also plays into how attachment as the Jedi define it is not the same things as love. Itâs not the same attachment that we use colloquially or the attachment of attachment theory. It is brought up in connection to possessive relationships, obsession, greed and an inability to let go when time comes. Iâm gonna bring in some Lucas quotes to explain further:
âNo human can let go,â Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. âItâs very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because itâs inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while youâre alive, you canât be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, âYou must learn to let go of everything youâre afraid to let go of.â Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And thatâs what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more.âÂ
âThe Jedi are trained to let go. Theyâre trained from birth,â he continues, âTheyâre not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they canât form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.â-Â The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213
âJedi Knights arenât celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.â Â âGeorge Lucas, BBC News 2002 interview
âHe turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He canât let go of his mother; he canât let go of his girlfriend. He canât let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when youâre greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear youâre going to lose things, that youâre not going to have the power you need.â âGeorge Lucas, Time Magazine 2002 interview
We also see this expressed in-universe. In âRise of Clovisâ when Obi-Wan goes to see Anakin to try and talk to him, he brings up his feelings for Satine and says âItâs not that we are not allowed to have these feeling. Itâs natural.â We have also seen Obi-Wan say that Jedi are forbidden attachments. So, once again, these two concepts being the same thing wouldnât really make sense. Loving someone is not the same as being attached to them in Jedi jargon. To what extent attachment and love overlaps itâs with attachment as selfish love. What the Jedi instead value, and hold as central to their life style is compassion, selfless love thatâs about the other person rather than your own feelings for them. Them not getting married might be just as much about commitment to the order and a need for neutrality as anything else.Â
Attachment, the driving force behind Anakinâs fall, is very much presented as being a bad thing, both by Lucas in commentaries and the narrative of the movies. Anakin is attached to his mother, unable to let her go, so the loss of her drives him to a horrible massacre, where he kills not only those responsible for her death but also innocent children. Attachment is what makes him join Sidious. He couldnât bear the pain of losing PadmĂ©, but it wasnât about what PadmĂ© wanted but rather his own emotions. I cannot see PadmĂ© agreeing to a genocide just so she can stay alive. Anakinâs love for her turned selfish. Sidious didnât trick Anakin with promises of letting him feel, Anakin wanted a way to stop death!
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:Â
âThe key part of this scene ultimately is Anakin saying âIâm not going to let this happen again.â Weâre cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi. The only way you can really do that is to go to the Dark Side because the Dark Side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side which is the Dark Side, but ultimately it would be your undoing. But itâs that need for power and the need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and to allow the natural course of life to go on, which is that things come and go, and to be able to accept the changes that happen around you and not want to keep moments forever frozen in time.âÂ
Iâm not trying to attack you here, Iâm just saying that Pop Culture Detective video had a lot of misconceptions about the Star Wars universe and itâs world-building. Of course, no-one have to like this world-building, and if you find more value in critiquing it, thatâs also a valid stance. Youâre not obligated to change your mind only because I sent a wall of text at you. But personally I really like the themes of Star Wars and the Jedi and find value in them, so I tend to want to defend them ^^
