Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Discussion Are the Jedi Really the Good Guys?

Emberlene's Daughter, The Jedi Generalist
The Acolyte isn't really a good metric to measure any of it. The lead writer said it was made to cast the jedi as villains and the darkside as good.

Are the jedi perfect no but story wise Giovanni has more consistency and he is just the team rocket boss trying to stop and recapturre the dangerous mewtwo.

Creates team rocket
steals sliph scope to find ghost to combat psychic type
breaks into silph corp to get masterball
 

Laphisto

High Commander of the Lilaste Order
good an evil is subjective. The dark side or the light side are just titles slapped onto the force; the light side can be used for evil just as much as it can for good, and vice versa. i do believe it depends on how you look at it and from what perspective. it all depends on how its used.
 
If you need a label for me, then you don't know me
The only person worth talking to is George Lucas (maybe Zahn, or Filoni) the sequel trilogy, Acolyte, they can be attributed to two words (imo) Kathleen Kennedy.

My opinion is similar to Laphisto attributes how Caltin and now Connel look at the Force "It's the choices we make that make us who we are"
 
It depends on your point of view in my opinion. It's far easier for an individual to be a "good guy" as opposed to an entire group. It's not impossible to find a "bad" Jedi, with Pong Krell being a perfect example in my eyes, but on average, you are more likely to have a canonical Jedi that leans towards being "good", like Obi-Wan. Even then though, you could argue that there are some Jedi who can be considered morally right but not be a "good guy", with Mace as an example.

I will admit though, I'm not super up to date with modern star wars anymore so maybe things have changed.
 
When it comes to the force and force users. My opinion is both the Jedi and Sith are misguided. Since we are strictly talking Jedi i'll limit it to that.

The simplest answer to your question is yes they are the good guys, however there are issues.

Jedi are intended to be custodians of the force, defensive, and restrained. But time and again we see Jedi lead armies, prop up a corruption filled republic. They hold prophecy and tradition above common sense sometimes, they taught Jedi to suppress emotion when that in fact makes Jedi more susceptible to corruption and fall.

Are they good guys? Yes but not flawless, they tend to create as many problems as they solve.
 
Yes, the Jedi are the good guys. My metric for measuring this is by going back to the source material and the original creator, George Lucas - who emphatically has said, the Jedi are the heroes. The lightside is the Force in balance, the darkside is a corruption/twisting of the Force, and there's no in between. A lot of fans did not like the Acolyte, for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest complaints was because it breaks story continuity, and flies in the face of the original creators actual words and statements.

Also, personally am kind of tired of the trope of trying to make the good guys out to be villains, and making the villains out to be good guys.
 
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The Jedi are flawed, I think this is best explored in the Knights of the Old Republic video games. They can be dogmatic, rigid and disconnected from the galaxy. I mean would Revan have ever fallen if the Jedi actually acted quickly during the Mandalorian Wars? I mean, especially near the fall of the republic, it almost feels like you're talking to sociopathic Buddhist monks. As flawed as the Jedi can be, the Sith are just evil., or at the very least the dark side corrupts them to make it so.
 
I feel the Jedi had good intentions, wanting to protect people and democracy, but I also feel they did some things that weren't good (Mace going executioner, wiping out the sith species, engaging in war as generals and effectively commandeering the Republic military).

Do I think they are bad guys? No. Do I think they were the pinnacle of good guys? No. Just another flavor of Force practitioner.
 
My understanding of the High Republic era was that Jedi disbarred any force practices outside of their own doctrine, thereby arresting or hunting those they deemed to be heretics (putting it harshly).

They viewed independent practice as dangerous due to the lure of the darkside and possible corruption of power whereas the jedi believed themselves capable of teaching balance and discipline.

In the eyes of other Force Users, those who did not wish to be jedi, and the families of children who were taken and indoctrinated into the order, im sure they were viewed with fear.

If you look at any group or organization of similar likeness, im sure there is always going to be a period of morale correction. Mistakes made and learned from, but yes as far as the Acolyte is concerned, though not the best example to use, it does highlight said flaws of the jedi.
 
No. Not fully good, not fully bad. They are merely the opposite extreme of the Sith. Sith tend towards being passionate about all aspects of existence, but especially whatever brings them power and that gives them the freedom to do as they please unrestrained by morality or creed other than their own. A code which values strength above all. Meanwhile the Jedi preach control and emotional control approaching detachment to an outside observer, to a nearly ascetic degree as a path to following the Will of the Force, in which you will find your ultimate peace.

When you view both orders through their respective lenses you can see that they are just two sides of the same coin and obviously the Jedi are meant to be the 'heroic' option, however as the movies, shows, and books, portray them, eventually the Jedi lost their focus, they became complacent in their role and began to believe that unless one was a Jedi they were heretical. A mirror to many real world purges of similar sorts throughout history. Intentional to make someone look at who they always held as unquestionably the 'good guy' and ask, "Are they as infallible as we have been led to believe?" Not only as individuals, because obviously no individual is infallible, but also the teachings of the institution. Look more closely at the Jedi code line by line. The mantra they have drilled into them from the moment they are taken from their families as young children but I want to focus mostly on the most grievous line, the first line that "There is no emotion, there is peace." It sounds nice, but when you take a youngling who is likely only a few years old, and teach them to reject all emotion in any situation for peace, how well can that truly end? How moral is that? Can you really defend that as a 'good' action?
 
I think it's easy to say 'no lol look at all these canon examples', but like...

From the perspective of the story, yes, they are. Star Wars is built around the idea that the jedi are the good guys.

It's easy to zoom in and find examples of them being awful people. It's easy to cherry pick plenty of examples where the jedi fail to live up to the ideal.

Luke kills millions of people by blowing up the death star. But the story is that those were all bad guys. The story is that the death star was going to blow up an entire planet had he not. And had already succeeded in blowing up one, maybe two depending on how you see Scarif.

The Prequels are an interesting case, in that the point of them is that the good guys lost. And even then, the jedi are still supposed to be the good guys.

I think Chaos especially is very eager to justify 'these guys that are opposing to my faction's ideology are actually the bad guys', when it's not the case.

Star Wars is a story, and it's important to remember who plays what role in that story.
 
The Jedi as an idea are "the good guys" insofar that, collectively, they act as a force beneficial to the galaxy at large through the narrow scope of balance of the force. The actions of individuals, and sometimes as a whole, are not good in the sense of what you'd consider are qualitative of a good person but what makes someone a good person and what makes something good are not mutually inclusive. As long as there is something acting as a malevolent force in the star wars universe they are the good guys, because they are used narratively as such, and the only times you truly see them portrayed as anything else is when the narrative is missing that conflict and whoever is writing the story decides to subvert them as a more interesting take (and perhaps more realistic take) on what happens when they don't have someone to act as their foil.

Individually, and often, as an institution, however, is an entirely separate issue. Even in George Lucas's original vision of the story there are bad people within the Jedi Order (such as Count Dooku), and without falling into the No True Scotsman fallacy trap as an immediate defense, you very quickly find many examples where the Jedi are not "the good guys" - much like real life. However, this doesn't change that the purpose of the Jedi in the narrative is to act as the good guys as a whole in the end, and any of the people who are bad actors in the Jedi eventually fall out with them or are expunged and no longer are associated with them.

It is wholly possible for both of these things to be true at the same time, the Jedi is an organization and is not a monolith.
 
"There is no emotion, there is peace." It sounds nice, but when you take a youngling who is likely only a few years old, and teach them to reject all emotion in any situation for peace, how well can that truly end? How moral is that? Can you really defend that as a 'good' action?

I feel like this is one of those things that very often gets misinterpreted by the fans, and it's because we see how much Anakin struggled with the Jedi ideas, and meeting them. But, this doesn't mean reject 'all emotions in any situation, for peace'. The Jedi code is based off of Buddhist and stoic philosophies, where you try not to let your emotions dictate your actions. It's learning emotional control, not having a lack of emotions or being stoic 24/7, and there's evidence for that throughout all of the films. Yoda clearly grieves when the Jedi are killed en-masse during Order 66. We clearly see many Jedi who care for the clones throughout the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan grieves when Qui-Gon dies and again when Anakin falls to the dark side. Luke's love for his father ultimately becomes the thing that redeems Anakin and prevents Luke from giving in to his anger.

Anakin's tragedy is that he never really learns this balance and almost every major decision, and mistake, comes from an inability to let go. His fear of losing his mother leads him to murdering a bunch of Tusken Raiders, his fear and obsession of losing Padmé and his anger at the Jedi Council for not being given what he believes he deserves, leads him into dangerous ideology that brings down one of the longest-standing organizations of peace in the galaxy. Almost every time he is on screen, we see his emotions driving his actions instead of being something he can step back from, and the result is tremendous suffering.

Even in real life, when people act purely out of anger, jealousy, fear, or pride, they often end up hurting others and creating consequences they later regret - the biggest difference is that most of us don't have massive cosmic power, like little individual nukes, that can destroy lives on a large scale.
 

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