Time for The Jedi to End

Greetings, mortals. It is a glorious time to be a Star Wars fan, isn’t it? We’ve gotten numerous TV shows and movies the past few years with more to come. I am beyond excited for The Last Jedi next month and I think it’s going to be an epic addition. But I’m glad that the title of the film is the last Jedi because I think “The Last Jedi” has the right idea with Luke’s quote, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” And why, do you ask? Well, my friends, please turn your lightsabers over to my security before I answer that question because you aren’t going to like it. The truth is that the Jedi are the real villains in the Star Wars universe. Pick your mouths up off the floor. It’s time to take off the rose-colored glasses and analyze what the Jedi have done as well as what they’ve allowed to happen in the Star Wars universe.

Now, am I saying they are villains in the same vein as the way we view the Sith as villains? No, of course not. They aren’t what we view as classic evil i.e. killing rampantly, pillaging, seeking galactic domination, etc. BUT their beliefs, their methods, their passive way of conducting their role as the guardians of peace and justice directly and indirectly caused the fall of the Republic along with the rise of the Galactic Empire. Now, I am going to break this down into several points so that both the broad and narrow angles can be analyzed. That way the Jedi’s beliefs and motives can be shown as villainous, as well as specific examples of their toxic mindset.

The Jedi Code:

In order to delve into the thought of the Jedi being villains, you have to really understand the fabric of their beliefs. Above you see the Jedi Code. At first glance it seems like a reasonable code to live by. You get caught up on the latter half of each sentence instead of looking at each as a whole. The problem with this is that the Jedi don’t have any type of balance in their belief system. Instead of embracing emotions and using them to strengthen themselves as well as their bonds with others, they shun them. They feel emotions are a path to the dark side and in essence they “fear” emotion. Ironic, isn’t it? They always speak of fear being a path to the dark side but fear is rooted in their very belief system. They constantly harp on what they perceive as to be the negatives of life and enforce that on their entire order. How is this villainous, you ask? Well, it all has to do with how a Jedi starts. Jedi are identified at birth by their high midichlorian count and recruited throughout the galaxy. If they have parents then the parents are asked for permission for the child to be taken and trained. The majority of parents see this as an honor and willingly give their children up in service. This is where the problem begins. Once they Jedi take an infant that is normally the last those parents ever see their child. The Jedi don’t believe in having “attachments” so they do all they can to remove a person’s past so that they aren’t tempted to form personal attachments outside of the Jedi Order. Now, I ask you, does that not reek of cultist antics? You take a child from its family and don’t allow it to have any kind of personal contact ever again? And that behavior is justified by saying that attachment is within the shadow of greed, which guess what? Leads to the dark side.

So, what the Jedi basically do is take people when they’re infants and perform extensive, routine brainwashing on them. As much as they speak of fear being a tool and path to the dark side, they actually use fear in a subtle way to get their recruits and younglings to stay on the path that they deem acceptable. It is actually a tool that religions like Christianity use to keep people tied to their belief system i.e. “If you don’t believe in God then when you die you’ll go to hell.” And when a Jedi begins to stray from the Jedi Code they are chastised and lightly scolded. There is no room for error and true personal growth. It is all built within the rigid system that the Jedi have had in place for millennia.

The Negligence of Anakin Skywalker:

The next stop on our Jedi tour of villainy is how they completely mishandled and fumbled the ball with Anakin Skywalker. Anakin was unique among the Jedi being that he wasn’t recruited at birth. He was brought by Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi before the council when he was 9 years old. The first bit of negligence from the Jedi, specifically the Jedi Council, was their fear of him being trained at 9 years of age, stating that he was too old. Here is where the hypocrisy of the Jedi creeps of again. Fear. Over and over again the Jedi state how fear is the path to the Darkside and that a Jedi needs to cleanse themselves of it. Yet, Yoda, himself, stated “grave danger I fear in his training”. Before Anakin had even picked up a lightsaber they had decided he wasn’t fit for their order simply because they didn’t understand him. Fear based in ignorance is a common trait of religious zealots. Which is ironic because one of the lines of the Jedi Code is There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. Anakin had spent the first 9 years of his life living as a slave on Tatooine. He had experienced a life of hardship and all the emotions that accompany it. The Jedi knew this but instead of trying to understand Anakin they shunned him and treated him almost as an outcast, with the exception of Obi-Wan who was his master. Mace Windu, in particular, showed outright disdain for him whenever in his presence. They felt that the life he’d had, with all the attachments, combined with his unprecedented Force talent would lead to disaster. In my opinion, if they would have embraced him and tried to understand him, catered to the life experiences he’d had then Anakin would have turned out quite differently.

The second bit of negligence with Anakin we can credit to Yoda. When Anakin had premonitions of Padme’s death he went to Yoda for guidance, seeking a way to prevent her death. In the vaguest of ways, as to not reveal his secret marriage to Padme, Anakin told Yoda of his concerns. And what did the most sagacious master the Jedi Order had ever seen have to say in response? “Rejoice for those who transform into the Force. Mourn them not. Miss them not.” He basically told Anakin just to send thoughts and prayers. In one of the most crucial moments of Anakin’s fall to the Darkside, the greatest sage the order had ever seen could offer no better advice than “let things pass out of your life”. Yoda did not have the foresight nor the insight to the turmoil that was tearing Anakin apart at the seams. It was this bit of ignorance that actually helped facilitate Anakin being even more easily manipulated and seduced by Darth Sidious. Why? Because Darth Sidious was giving Anakin the semblance of solutions, not useless platitudes. He heard Anakin’s problems and slyly advised to Anakin that there were ways to fix those problems, even though these were lies. Anakin was desperate and searching for any kind of viable life line, which Darth Sidious offered to him. The Jedi being completely rigid, did nothing to help Anakin. And it was this criminal negligence which helped to carve the path to his fall.

Jedi vs Sith:

So now we get to the true crux of the matter of how the Jedi are villains. They are villains because due to their arrogance, rigidity and cultish antics, they allowed the Sith to remain behind scenes for over a thousand years strengthening themselves and destabilizing the foundation of the entire galaxy. After the defeat of Lord Kahn’s Brotherhood of Darkness, Darth Bane remade the entire Sith Order into the Rule of Two. Only two Sith Lords at a time. One master and one apprentice. He did this because he knew the best way to beat the Jedi was not with an army but with manipulation and subterfuge. He would use the very thing the Jedi were protecting, the Galactic Republic, against them. He evolved the ideology of the Sith in order to maximize their potential. For 1000 years, Darth Bane’s line of Sith waited in the shadows, manipulating and influencing galactic events. Waiting for the right time to strike against the Jedi Order. And what did the Jedi do during this entire time? They grew metaphorically fat and lazy, content in their perceived victory over the Brotherhood of Darkness. They did nothing to change themselves and improve upon their practices. Whereas the Sith evolved, the Jedi stayed stagnant. And once again most of this is due to Yoda, who being well over 900 years old and a senior member of the Jedi Council, didn’t allow change. He was stuck in his ways and the old ways of the Order. And it wasn’t until his final fight with Darth Sidious that Yoda came to realize the truth. That in the millennia since the last war, the Jedi hadn’t changed. They’d spent 1000 years waiting to fight they Sith as they had been. Not as what they had currently evolved into. You see the problem with the Jedi is they see the Force as an end in itself. The Sith see the Force as a means to an end. Both are extremes in the spectrum and what is needed is balance. This is more essential to the Jedi because of their role in the galaxy. They are supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice. It would have been smarter and more beneficial for them to acclimate to and understand all the different aspects of life, including the Darkside of the Force. Yet, they showed their hypocrisy in fearing it. They completely ignored the tenet of There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. They treated potentially their greatest member, Anakin Skywalker, as no more than a tool to be used when needed and shunned when not, which alienated him and caused him to seek the council of a Sith Lord.

So, my friends, this is why we must view the true villains of the Star Wars franchise as the Jedi. Are the Sith essentially villainous? Yes. But in reality, they only did what the Jedi allowed them to do. The Jedi had every opportunity to right the ship and protect the galaxy but they failed at every single turn. Their actions and lack of action led to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Galactic Empire. Its high time we stop putting them on a pedestal and start viewing them as an example of what not to do.

For those of you that read this and enjoyed it I appreciate you. For those of you that read this and are literally shaking with anger right now then understand that with each passing moment you make yourselves more my servants. And I appreciate you. Always remember...

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