LOL! Wtf Anakin!?! Seriously, what the f*ck is wrong with you dude? Jhallcomics illustrated this amusing little Star Wars comic for College Humor about Anakin’s reasoning for claiming, “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!” after Obi-Wan tells him Chancellor Palpatine is evil:
Artist: Jhallcomics for College Humor
(via: Geek Girls)
And yet, the Jedi of the late Old Republic era actually ARE evil. Here are the reasons why.
Firstly, they force the removal of children from their families, regardless of the wishes of their parents, on the basis that they claim that only they can teach the children a proper moral and ethical code in the light of their powers. WE call that state-sanctioned kidnapping; but to the Jedi, it’s all about removing the children from a familial context so that they end up with no connection to their families, and thus no reason to show favouritism towards said families. It’s also designed to ensure absolute loyalty, as life under the Jedi rapidly becomes all they’ve ever known.
Secondly, the Jedi deliberately take young children almost exclusively, as they’re the easiest to indoctrinate utterly. Their refusal to train older students shows that they fear the ability of an older child, much less an adult, to in any way think for themselves and question their indoctrination’s conclusions or outcomes.
Thirdly, the Jedi teach their indoctrinates to deny emotion rather than manage it, leaving them vulnerable to falling to its worst excesses due to an inability to ride out its storms and keep from falling under its sway. This leaves young Jedi exceedingly vulnerable to falling to the Dark Side, and results in an insanely high number of Dark Jedi as a direct result. Anakin might have remained on the side of the Light if only he’d been taught to properly face, accept and process his fear, pain and anger. Instead, he was taught to let go of it; which ultimately led to it conquering him and causing his fall.
Fourth, the Jedi teach that lethal weapons use is preferable to the use of Force techniques which, if appropriately managed, could instead result in live capture of criminal targets. Force lightning is not immediately lethal; a quick blast could easily cripple a criminal target long enough to slap on the cuffs without delivering any long-term harm. It requires rage to use; but rage is a fair reaction to the excesses of crime. As long as that rage is controlled, there’s no reason it can’t be a valuable tool. But instead of allowing their students to do this, they teach them to kill or maim via a lightsaber. And they do this precisely because their failure to teach emotional understanding and management leaves their students too incapable in the face of their anger to be able to regulate it well enough to not go Dark when they call upon that power in pursuit of justice.
Fifth, the Jedi deny their members the right to marry or raise children. Considering that the ability to channel the Force is an inborn trait, this reduces the ability of this trait to spread throughout the Galactic populace. They claim this is to teach love in a broader sense, but its real intent is the removal of the risk of nepotism and offering a sense of themselves as a limited power to their political rivals, who feel that an uncontrolled spread of people with the powers of the Jedi poses an unacceptable risk to the peace and safety of the galaxy. It’s a coward’s answer that diminishes the galaxy in the name of preserving it, and punishes those who find love merely for the act of finding it, irrespective of whether or not it leads them to the commission of inappropriate actions.
The Jedi are trying to do what they see as good, and honestly believe that they are the good guys. But then, the same is true of a lot of evil entities throughout actual human history. Hitler truly believed that he was improving humanity through his policies, despite the fact that he was actually mutilating it. The same is true of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, or the government of Yugoslavia during the Bosnian genocide, or the ‘civilizers’ of Third World nations who have wiped out entire cultures and languages which they’ve deemed primitive, ignorant or barbaric.
The best that can be said of the Jedi is that their evils are based on good intentions. But we all know which road is paved with those, now don’t we?