“But in preserving life, there was still the act of taking it.  And losing even more of it.  An endless tide of it.  I could feel thick pockets of it snuff out–small tremors in the Force, each like a clench squeezing the air from my lungs.“ I can’t stop thinking about this moment during the war, when we get a glimpse inside what it’s like to be a Jedi in the middle of a battle.  How the focus on the determination to protect people and to save lives can clear the way, but that also means taking life.  This is not a situation where there’s a way out, to preserve life means you have to take the life that’s determined to kill others. And to feel all that life being snuffed out around them, a Jedi feels that like a physical clench around their lungs. They still have to keep going or they’ll die, the people behind them will die, more people will die. But every battlefield, not just the psychic weight of every person’s anger and fear being pressed down on the Jedi–because the Jedi are literally psychic empaths who feel other people’s emotions through the Force–but their deaths reach out through the Force and squeeze the air out of their lungs. It happens again and again and again and again, it never stops until the battle is over. And then you have the lingering death in the air, no longer active, but suffused through every atom of it.  Every clone feeling the loss of their brothers. All of this piled on top of your own feelings. Imagine being a psychic who feels other people’s anger and fear and their death will reach out and drag you down just a little, bit by bit, but if you don’t stay and help, people will die.  And you have to maintain your focus through all of that, you have to clear the noise of your own thoughts out of your head, you have to clear all those deaths and all that fear from others out of your own head, because if you reach out to the Force in fear or anger, that’s how the dark side literally works. Just imagine what kind of mental discipline that takes. Just imagine what kind of horror show it is not just to see it, but to have all that death reach inside you and squeeze. This is what it’s like to be a Jedi.

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi

Jedi Master Depa Billaba and Padawan Caleb Dume

Jedi Master Luminara Unduli and Padawan Barriss Offee

Jedi Master Quinlan Vos and Padawan Aayla Secura

Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus and Padawan Ezra Bridger

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padawan Anakin Skywalker

Jedi Master Jaro Tapal and Padawan Cal Kestis

Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Padawan Ahsoka Tano

Jedi Master Kit Fisto and Padawan Nahdar Vebb

Jedi Knight Ky Narec and Padawan Asajj Ventress

More jedi babies on the brain 🥰

A chart of the galaxy’s most dysfunctional family.

Depa just rolls throught the family reunion on heelys sipping her drink and not talking to anyone… just here to watch the drama and keep Feemor out of trouble so she isn’t the only sane one left

STAR WARS: REBELS (2014—2018) OBI-WAN KENOBI (2022)

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope dir. George Lucas | 1977

The Five Core Precepts of the Classic Jedi Code

I. There is no emotion, there is peace

II. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

III. There is no passion, there is serenity.

IV. There is no chaos, there is harmony.

V. There is no death, there is the Force.

Kanan The Last Padawan #2 Obi-Wan Kenobi makes an appearance. Was crying from page 1 of this issue but THIS oh THIS made me cry harder

oh no, oh no, oh no, oh NOOO.

I remember seeing the clip of this recording from Rebels, and I still think this is one of the most important Obi-Wan moments I’ve ever seen.

In Revenge of the Sith, I always figured Obi-Wan just changed the beacon broadcasting out of the Temple from “come home” to “stay away,” like a simple coded signal that Jedi would recognize, a string of…beeps, or Morse code, devoid of details or any real context.

But instead, it was this.  And this is everything.  This is why I see Obi-Wan as a teacher, a consummate teacher, a teacher at heart, a teacher to the bone. Because yes, this message is meant for any surviving Jedi, but it’s phrased for the children, for the ones who can’t take care of themselves and don’t know what to do next.  Look at it - Caleb is just a child, and Obi-Wan’s message is structured for people like him.  Adults would know what to do regardless, would recognize immediately the need to disappear, to stay hidden. Adults would be disciplined enough to heed even a simple string of “stay away” beeps.  

But children - children, confronted with the total and utter disintegration of everything they know, and most likely the elimination of the person who is supposed to take care of them - children who heard a simple and unexplained “stay away” would never listen and obey.  They couldn’t.  They would try to come home.  They wouldn’t know what else to do.

Obi-Wan knows that.  That is what teachers do; they anticipate what their children need, what their children are going to do next.  That’s why he says what he does, that’s why he’s so explicit, that’s why he shows them his face and tells them exactly what to do next, that’s why he steps in where their fallen teachers can longer provide direction.  He knows those children know his face. For all he knows, he may be the last adult figure those children have to look to. And so he gives them their last assignment, in terms they can understand; he gives them a last benediction, a last breath of familiarity, he gives them one last utterance of the short string of words that probably mean more to Jedi children than anything else in the world.

His message tells them he knows they are out there.  His message tells them he still believes in them.  His message tells them to have faith, and reminds them - they, the decimated people - that their teachers have not forgotten them.  That someone is still thinking of them first, that there is an adult out there who remembers them, who knows that they need direction.  His message tells them that they are not alone, no matter how dark the coming years will be.

I just…I’m imagining how important that would be.  For any Jedi, but for the children especially.  For the horrified and shell-shocked Caleb Dume’s of the world.  That holoplate is a lifeline, and of course Obi-Wan is the one who threw it, because Obi-Wan is a teacher first, last, and every bit of himself in between. His life is for the Jedi, and their children, and while he, like any teacher, knows he can’t save all his people’s youth singlehandedly, he knows he can at least give them a fighting chance.  

Difference between the Jedi and the Sith

A Jedi Knight: fighting out of compassion, which is saying, "I love them: I want them happy and free from suffering. I won't let you hurt them, I won't let you cause them suffering."

A Sith Lord: fighting out of hate, which is saying, "I want to hurt you, I want you to suffer, to die, because you made me angry and I hate you. I want something for myself and you are in my way."

Luke: Is the dark side stronger?

Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.

"People have a tendency to confuse it — everybody has the Force. Everybody. You have the good side and you have the bad side. And as Yoda says, if you choose the bad side, it’s easy because you don’t have to do anything. Maybe kill a few people, cheat, lie, steal. Lord it over everybody. But the good side is hard because you have to be compassionate. You have to give of yourself. Whereas the dark side is selfish." - George Lucas, 2019

I really think that adopting the Palpatine-esque take of "good and bad are just points of view" leads to the sort of antimorality in which the consequences of one's actions become meaningless. While I am all for adopting multiple perspectives, I think this should lead to greater compassion and empathy, and thus a more nuanced understanding of how harm can be caused and how to avoid causing this harm. The sort that makes good and bad more complex, but not inexistent.

While I think that internally, just movie-wise, the notion that Palpatine's reasoning is ultimately a sophism should be clear not only from the fact that persuasion is his main tool, but also from the things he does, potentially from this reasoning, mainly: engineering a war that causes millions of deaths, destroying the Republic, executing (directly and indirectly) a genocide, and pushing Anakin into the Dark Side.

But externally? George Lucas couldn't have made it clearer that the Dark Side is the side of those who care not for others, and the side that robs joy from the individual that resides in it. His interviews haven't made it subtle and I am, I suppose, pleased by it, because he was right in one thing: stories where morality of a simple black and white binary will always be necessary. And the nice thing of Star Wars is that it does have an explanation for why this binary exists.

concept design of Jocasta Nu, Chief Librarian of the Jedi Archives, in 2.01 Holocron Heist by Wayne Lo

“Being a Jedi is about being.  Letting go….” This is it, this is the absolute heart of what I’ve been yelling about for ages and why this entire storyline was so good for me.  Attachment isn’t about love or care or not having feelings about things, and the Jedi have said over and over that feelings are normal and to be cherished, but you must have control over them.  George Lucas explicitly states that, had Anakin Skywalker come to the Jedi earlier, he would have been trained to love people but not attached to them.  It is explicitly not attachment = love, via word of god. Attachment, instead, is about the inability to let go, it’s about greed.  This is said in multiple places like when George Lucas talks about it: The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213:

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:

Interview with George Lucas, Time Magazine 2002:

Attachment, in the terms we’re talking about (as in not that it means “caring about other people”), for the Jedi means, “The inability to let go.”  It means being unable to accept a situation as it is, when it’s time and there’s nothing more you can reasonably do to change it. Luke here is meditating and feeling his way through the Force, he’s had hardly any Jedi training, just a few days with Obi-Wan and what few scraps he can piece together on his own, and he comes to the same exact conclusion that the Jedi of the prequels taught, the same exact conclusion that George Lucas explicitly lays out–that attachment, for a Jedi, is the inability to let go.  And this is what saves the day, realizing that being a Jedi is about being, about letting go, and about feeling free.  He is explicitly rewarded in the narrative for coming to the same conclusions that the Jedi Order did, because that’s how the Force works in the galaxy far, far away. Luke doesn’t have the precise words for it, but when you include the word of god explanations, it’s clear that all these concepts are tied up together, that what Luke’s talking about here is a lack of attachment as the word is defined by the Jedi in this galaxy.  And just how good they are and that the galaxy works better when you’re on the side of good.

George Lucas on Prequel Jedi: "They are the most moral of anybody in the galaxy."

GEORGE LUCAS: No. They're not like cops who catch murderers. They're warrior-monks who keep peace in the universe without resorting to violence. The Trade Federation is in dispute with Naboo, so the Jedi are ambassadors who talk both sides and convince them to resolve their differences and not go to war. If they do have to use violence, they will, but they are diplomats at the highest level. They've got the power to send the whole force of the Republic, which is 100 000 systems, so if you don't behave they can bring you up in front of the Senate. They'll cut you off at the knees, politically.

They're like police officers. As the situation develops in the Clone Wars they are recruited into the army, and they become generals. They're not generals. They don't kill people. They don't fight. They're supposed to be ambassadors. There are a lot of Jedi that think that the Jedi sold out, that they should never have been in the military, but...

PAUL DUNCAN: Do you think that?

GEORGE LUCAS: It's a tough call. It's one of the conundrums of which there's a bunch of in my movies. You have to think it through. Are they going to stick with their moral rules and all be killed, which makes it irrelevant, or do they help save the Republic? They have good intentions, but they have been manipulated which was their downfall.

GEORGE LUCAS: There was never a war between the Jedi and the Sith Lords. The Sith lords were in control for a long time. And what happens when you have a world full of Sith Lords? They start killing each other t see who's going to be the top Sith Lord. They don't vote; they just kill. It's the medieval feudal system. (...) Then the Republic came to power and the Jedi brought peace into the galaxy by being ambassadors and troubleshooters. So when the Senate decides to do something, or the Jedi Council discovers something that's amiss, the Jedi fix it. The Jedi don't like to fight people. They're monk-warriors. They're monks first, and they try to convince people to get along. And if you don't comply, your hand comes off. They use their power to keep the governments of all the planets in line, so that they don't do terrible things.

PAUL DUNCAN: And they have the moral authority to do that?

GEORGE LUCAS: Yeah. They are the most moral of anybody in the galaxy. They're monks. The Sith practice the dark side and are way of of balance. They Jedi aren't as much out of balance because they're the light side of the Force. They still have the bad side of the Force in them, but they keep it in check. It's always there, so it can always erupt if you let your guard down. The Emperor snookered the Jedi with Order 66. The nascent Rebellion and the Jedi didn't move fast enough.

GEORGE LUCAS: The Jedi won't lead droids. Their whole basis is connecting with the life force. They'd just say, 'That's not the way we operate. We don't function with nonlife-forms." So if there is to be a Republic army, it would have to be an army of humans.

(The interview is form Star Wars Archives 1999-2005)

George Lucas' foreword for Shatterpoint:

"For a thousand years, the Old Republic prospered and grew under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the venerable Jedi Knights."

"As dedicated as the Separatists were in their resolve to create a new order to replace the failing Republic, the Jedi were equally determined to preserve the Republic and defeat the Sith, who they understood all too well were the masterminds of the Separatist movement. They still believed in the Republic, still deemed it a Republic worth saving. Their faith, which gave them superhuman strength in the face of mind-boggling power of the enemy, had yet to be shaken."

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And how they function with life forms:

YODA: Clones you may be, but the force resides in all life forms.

(TCW S0101)

SHAAK TI: They're [the clones] living beings, not objects.

(TCW S0301)

CLONE: We're just clones, sir. We're meant to be expendable.

PLO KOON: Not to me.

(TCW S0102)

"He's not acting like the other Jedi. He has no respect for us."

(Clones between each other about the fallen Jedi, Krell (TCW S0409)

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The Jedi were not enslaving the clones, they were not fighting for the Republic because they were corrupt, they were not fanatic stoics and certainly not the villains of Star Wars.

“Are they going to stick with their moral rules and all be killed, which makes it irrelevant, or do they help save the Republic?“ That’s it, that’s the conundrum that they were faced with.  Do you choose your morals and everyone dies or do you try to find a way forward in the only path feasibly available?

Jedi + Language of Love (to the people of the galaxy)

If you define yourself by your power to take life, a desire to dominate, to possess, then you have nothing.