happydalek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydalek) wrote2008-05-13 08:18 pm
happydalek) wrote2008-05-13 08:18 pm
Jedi, and the Way of Nonviolence
Today, Invincible, the last of the 9-book series, Legacy of the Force came out, in which we presumably will see the defeat of Darth Caedus, Dark Lord of the Sith
(aka, the Jedi Knight formerly known as Jacen Solo)
. Today is also the day I took all my graduation gift money to the bank. Saving $50 to "congratulate" myself, I went to the local Borders. But, surprise! I didn't purchase Invincible, for two reasons: a) it's in hardback, which means it's a billion times more expensive than a paperback, and b) I actually haven't read any of the LotF novels and figured that skipping right to the end would be both cheating, and probably a wasted experience because of all the backstory I'd have missed. So instead, I purchased the first three novels of the series, Betrayal, Bloodlines and Tempest. Then I went to the local park, sat down on a sunny bench, and started reading Betrayal. I'm already about a third of the way through it, and much to my surprise, I'm discovering that I've developed a huge ideological conflict with the Jedi. So far, the novel has been a big space battle between the Galactic Alliance (the good guys) and the planet Corellia (yep, Han Solo's digs), with Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker flying in their X-wings and shooting people dead, while Jedi Knight Jacen Solo (yep, Han Solo's son) and his padawan, a 13-year-old Ben Skywalker (yep yep) infiltrate a secret Corellian doomsday weapon and try to take it out, killing people along the way.
The whole time I'm reading this, I'm thinking--increasingly loudly to myself--"Why are the Jedi killing people?" Jedi are supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, but all I've ever seen and read of them are super soldiers at the beck and call of a government, enforcing a universal morality whether other people like it or not.
If you watch any of the Star Wars movies, you'll notice that in every battle involving a Jedi, it's the Jedi who draws first. It's the Jedi that force the fights, that accelerates the conflict to outright violence. Yet wasn't it Yoda who instructed Luke, "Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they," [emphasis added]. If that's supposed to be the official rule, then the Jedi are even bigger hypocrites than I thought. In the novels, Luke has made changes to his Jedi order, but the sanction of violence remains. Throughout the battle in Betrayal, Luke expresses regret over killing as he repeatedly shoots people down with his X-wing. Yet, it's clear he believes there's no other choice and that they've forced the action upon him.
I find this tragically ironic, because Luke's crowning glory as a Jedi Knight came when he threw down his lightsaber and refused to fight. I'm referring, of course, to when he defied the Emperor and rejected the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi. That, to me, was always the defining moment of what it was to be a Jedi. Luke brought down the empire because he believed that no one was irredeemable. He risked his life to reach out to the humanity in Darth Vader, and essentially sacrificed himself on the belief that Violence Was Not the Answer, and it worked.
This philosophy was laid down even earlier, in Obi-Wan Kenobi's final duel with Darth Vader in A New Hope. Remember Kenobi, standing tall, warning Vader "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine," then calmly taking a saber slash as he disappeared into the Force? And Kenobi was, in fact, a powerful influence on Luke as a ghostly spectre in both subsequent films. Luke didn't seem to get this at first, but by the end of the trilogy, he had realized the strength inherent in such self-sacrifice and wielded it expertly.
Sadly, Vader didn't quite follow suit with his whole chucking of Palpatine down that mighty deep chasm, and as anyone who has followed the novels (and the Dark Empire comic series) in the Expanded Universe will know, simply killing the Emperor didn't do the trick. The bugger came back. And came back again (he had clone bodies). Violent solutions were tried over and over again until finally, a dying Jedi named Empatojayos Brand captured Palpatine's spirit and personally escorted him to the netherworld. Why didn't the Jedi try that sooner? (Anyone with a more thorough knowledge of the Dark Empire series please let me know.)
In a equally tragic twist, a young Jacen Solo was able to reason with the Yuuzhan Vong's World Brain on Coruscant to save the planet from being devastated in the New Jedi Order series, and the invading aliens were eventually undermined by both a "heretic" sect that spread through their society out of the oppressed caste of Shamed Ones (hello structural violence), and the discovery that the living world, Zonoma Sekot, was in fact the seed of the Vong ancestral homeworld. Though a decisive battle that killed the major Vong leaders ultimately lead to the end of the war, these other, nonviolent developments were crucial to ending the conflict. In the beginning of Betrayal, Jacen is shown to have outgrown the sensitive, empathic personality that allowed him to bond with the World Brain, clearing the path down the Dark Side that he eventually takes.
Over and over again, the Star Wars universe presents us with Good Guys finding and killing Bad Guys only to have more Bad Guys pop up somewhere else. Bertrand Russell once said, "War does not determine who is right, only who is left," and that's all I could think about while reading Betrayal. The problem, that Corellia is demanding all the benefits of Galactic Alliance membership while secretly readying itself to launch a bid for independence, prompts the Galactic Alliance to send their entire fleet to Corellia as a "show of force" while Jedi take out their doomsday weapon, hoping to scare Corellia into obedience. Naturally, Corellia deploys its own fleet in response. Then Luke decides to take his X-wing into Corellia's atmosphere. Corellia warns him away. Luke doesn't leave, so Corellia fires anti-aircraft missiles at him. Like the Shot Heard Round the World, in approximately two seconds' time, there's a monster space battle going on around the whole planet, and so the GA's military commander decides, despite the fact that his orders did not tell him to fight, to invade one of Corellia's neighboring planets.
Once more, the "good guys" went and escalated the problem, and we find the Jedi, with Luke in charge, going along with all of it. All we have left of the gutsy, unarmed "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," is a servant with mind powers who occasionally feels regret when he kills people, taking the easy way out. If this is how the Jedi are going to operate, it's no wonder there hasn't been peace in the galaxy far, far away in almost a century. The Old Republic stood for 10,000 years, in peace, protected by Jedi. There's absolutely no way that could happen if violence was the de facto response to conflict.
The use of violence for any reason simply validates its use for any reason. To have lasting peace, you need to practice peace. For Force users, a discipline that prides itself on sacrifice, hard work and is based on the concept that users can feel life, nonviolence ought to be the gold standard, and Jedi, more than anyone, should be willing to put in the grueling hard work and self-sacrifice to make it work.
As Gandhi put it: "I seek entirely to blunt the edge of the tyrant's sword, not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon, but by disappointing his expectation that I would be offering physical resistance...I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die...history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. Without drawing a drop of blood it produces far-reaching results. It never rusts and cannot be stolen."
Try cutting that with your saber, Luke.
The whole time I'm reading this, I'm thinking--increasingly loudly to myself--"Why are the Jedi killing people?" Jedi are supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, but all I've ever seen and read of them are super soldiers at the beck and call of a government, enforcing a universal morality whether other people like it or not.
If you watch any of the Star Wars movies, you'll notice that in every battle involving a Jedi, it's the Jedi who draws first. It's the Jedi that force the fights, that accelerates the conflict to outright violence. Yet wasn't it Yoda who instructed Luke, "Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they," [emphasis added]. If that's supposed to be the official rule, then the Jedi are even bigger hypocrites than I thought. In the novels, Luke has made changes to his Jedi order, but the sanction of violence remains. Throughout the battle in Betrayal, Luke expresses regret over killing as he repeatedly shoots people down with his X-wing. Yet, it's clear he believes there's no other choice and that they've forced the action upon him.
I find this tragically ironic, because Luke's crowning glory as a Jedi Knight came when he threw down his lightsaber and refused to fight. I'm referring, of course, to when he defied the Emperor and rejected the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi. That, to me, was always the defining moment of what it was to be a Jedi. Luke brought down the empire because he believed that no one was irredeemable. He risked his life to reach out to the humanity in Darth Vader, and essentially sacrificed himself on the belief that Violence Was Not the Answer, and it worked.
This philosophy was laid down even earlier, in Obi-Wan Kenobi's final duel with Darth Vader in A New Hope. Remember Kenobi, standing tall, warning Vader "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine," then calmly taking a saber slash as he disappeared into the Force? And Kenobi was, in fact, a powerful influence on Luke as a ghostly spectre in both subsequent films. Luke didn't seem to get this at first, but by the end of the trilogy, he had realized the strength inherent in such self-sacrifice and wielded it expertly.
Sadly, Vader didn't quite follow suit with his whole chucking of Palpatine down that mighty deep chasm, and as anyone who has followed the novels (and the Dark Empire comic series) in the Expanded Universe will know, simply killing the Emperor didn't do the trick. The bugger came back. And came back again (he had clone bodies). Violent solutions were tried over and over again until finally, a dying Jedi named Empatojayos Brand captured Palpatine's spirit and personally escorted him to the netherworld. Why didn't the Jedi try that sooner? (Anyone with a more thorough knowledge of the Dark Empire series please let me know.)
In a equally tragic twist, a young Jacen Solo was able to reason with the Yuuzhan Vong's World Brain on Coruscant to save the planet from being devastated in the New Jedi Order series, and the invading aliens were eventually undermined by both a "heretic" sect that spread through their society out of the oppressed caste of Shamed Ones (hello structural violence), and the discovery that the living world, Zonoma Sekot, was in fact the seed of the Vong ancestral homeworld. Though a decisive battle that killed the major Vong leaders ultimately lead to the end of the war, these other, nonviolent developments were crucial to ending the conflict. In the beginning of Betrayal, Jacen is shown to have outgrown the sensitive, empathic personality that allowed him to bond with the World Brain, clearing the path down the Dark Side that he eventually takes.
Over and over again, the Star Wars universe presents us with Good Guys finding and killing Bad Guys only to have more Bad Guys pop up somewhere else. Bertrand Russell once said, "War does not determine who is right, only who is left," and that's all I could think about while reading Betrayal. The problem, that Corellia is demanding all the benefits of Galactic Alliance membership while secretly readying itself to launch a bid for independence, prompts the Galactic Alliance to send their entire fleet to Corellia as a "show of force" while Jedi take out their doomsday weapon, hoping to scare Corellia into obedience. Naturally, Corellia deploys its own fleet in response. Then Luke decides to take his X-wing into Corellia's atmosphere. Corellia warns him away. Luke doesn't leave, so Corellia fires anti-aircraft missiles at him. Like the Shot Heard Round the World, in approximately two seconds' time, there's a monster space battle going on around the whole planet, and so the GA's military commander decides, despite the fact that his orders did not tell him to fight, to invade one of Corellia's neighboring planets.
Once more, the "good guys" went and escalated the problem, and we find the Jedi, with Luke in charge, going along with all of it. All we have left of the gutsy, unarmed "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," is a servant with mind powers who occasionally feels regret when he kills people, taking the easy way out. If this is how the Jedi are going to operate, it's no wonder there hasn't been peace in the galaxy far, far away in almost a century. The Old Republic stood for 10,000 years, in peace, protected by Jedi. There's absolutely no way that could happen if violence was the de facto response to conflict.
The use of violence for any reason simply validates its use for any reason. To have lasting peace, you need to practice peace. For Force users, a discipline that prides itself on sacrifice, hard work and is based on the concept that users can feel life, nonviolence ought to be the gold standard, and Jedi, more than anyone, should be willing to put in the grueling hard work and self-sacrifice to make it work.
As Gandhi put it: "I seek entirely to blunt the edge of the tyrant's sword, not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon, but by disappointing his expectation that I would be offering physical resistance...I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die...history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. Without drawing a drop of blood it produces far-reaching results. It never rusts and cannot be stolen."
Try cutting that with your saber, Luke.
no subject
Well stated! I don't have perfect knowledge of the EU, but I have read quite a number of the books and I find myself agreeing with you. If we are to believe that the Old Republic really stood in peace for all those millenia, than the Jedi really were never meant to be soldiers. They were never meant to take up arms except in defense. What doomed them, IMO, was their arrogance, complacency, overconfidence, and willingness to fight offensively. When they became soldiers and generals, they ceased to be Jedi.
Now, with the New Jedi Order, you have a bunch of children with so much power but who don't understand the awesome responsibility of that power. They are too close to the darkside all of the time. But then again, how could it be any different? They are products of the misery wrought by the Empire and really, all they know is war. And as well intentioned as Luke is, he can't realistically hope to rebuild the Jedi Order in his lifetime. I mean he never actually completed his training with Yoda, and so much of the Jedi's history (if not all of it) was destroyed when the Order fell. He's doing the best with what he's got, but it isn't enough. The new order are really Jedi in name only.
For Force users, a discipline that prides itself on sacrifice, hard work and is based on the concept that users can feel life, nonviolence ought to be the gold standard, and Jedi, more than anyone, should be willing to put in the grueling hard work and self-sacrifice to make it work.
Absolutely. Sadly, these new jedi have never experienced peace. At least not any kind of real peace. I think a lot of what Luke has accomplished is doomed to failure for that reason. It's going to take a lot of trial and error, and sacrifice, and wrong turns, and tragic mistakes before the Jedi can really rebuild. It will be interesting to see if they can figure out that they are repeating the mistakes of their predecessors before it's too late.
no subject
Wasn't it Einstein who coined that phrase about insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Luke just makes me angry, because he should really know better. I think distant EU history will regard Luke favorably as the one who resurrected the Jedi, but hopefully it will realize what a fundamental mistake he's made in their philosophy, and later Grand Masters will return the Jedi to their proper place. I hope.
I just think none of these EU authors know squat about Buddhism or Gandhi. ;-)