Shaddaq Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Hello, I was wondering how a prohibition against love came to be codified in the Jedi tradition, and whether some Jedi ignored the prohibition without becoming evil. It occurs to me that humans are not Vulcans, and freeing yourself of emotions might be a path to psychological damage that may be as dangerous as feeling emotions too intensely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfninjajedi Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) They are not really against love per-say, but they are more against what love can bring which is the jedi in question going to the darkside. Because lets say a jedi is in love, hes happy and everything next thing you know his/her lover is killed by a sith or what have you. This can cause some emotional problems, and also deep hatred in wanting to get revenge which can lead that jedi down the dark path. Qui-Gon almost succumbed to the darkside himself because of that, but pulled back at the last minute. Edited January 27, 2012 by Wolfninjajedi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smartalectwo Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) Yeah, lots of Jedi happily had relationships, marriages, etc. In fact, just 400 years before SWTOR is set, the Jedi Order was much less centralised and nomadic, with Masters scattered across the galaxy in isolated schools, training several apprenticeships at a time- and often with a single Jedi being given responsibility to watch over a specific world. In this time, Jedi candidates began training from teenage, as it was felt that joining the Jedi Order was a decision that should be made when the applicant has the ability to understand what that choice meant. But after what seemed a string of powerful Jedi falling to the Dark Side and becoming feared Sith Lords rampaging across the galaxy - Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, Revan and Malak, etc etc - the Jedi Order began to realise that one of the main things it had to protect the Republic from was its own members. So a much tighter and more monastic Jedi Code was developed. The idea was to indoctrinate Jedi early in life, and instil in them a tendency against attachment. Think of the Force as a fast-flowing river. If you're standing in the river, then you need some solid footing or you're going to be swept away. The new Jedi Code was developed in the hopes of giving Jedi that firm footing to stand on. Of course, developing attachment didn't always lead to the Dark Side. Perhaps in barely 5% of cases. And of those 5%, perhaps 0.1% flipped out and became an insane Dark Lord raising an army to trash the galaxy. But for the Jedi Council, that 0.1% was too much. Edited January 27, 2012 by smartalectwo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sai-to Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 There's a large misunderstanding that is pretty common among people who take things too literally or just aren't familiar with the lore. Jedi are not against emotions. They are not robots, and they do not seek to rid themselves of emotions. They do, however, seek to control their emotions. Love and Anger/Hate are two of the strongest emotions we can feel. Anger leads directly to the dark side. Love has been scientifically proven to be nearly the same emotion as Hate... there's a razor-thin line. The reason they have rules against love is because they know that Love is very difficult to control. Their "statistics", as it were, show it has a bad track record of causing Jedi to fall to the Dark side. That being said, it's not completely prohibited. Jedi who prove they can handle being in love and can control their emotions have been allowed. It's just extremely rare and is an exception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeDanger Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) The Jedi really just went for a 'kill them all' approach to the possible methods as far as stopping potential Sith are concerned. Not as in kill anyone who's even remotely dark, I mean they tried to kill any ideas that could lead to it. They saw love/attatchment as one of them because they probably realized how far people with power could go to protect someone they love, and saw the spiral from there. Honestly, I think the Jedi would of been better off to try and teach maturity in this than just ban love/attatchment altogether. Anakin's big problem was attatchment, and in TCW they pretty much establish that the reason Yoda assigned Ahsoka to him was so he could learn to let go when she was ready to become a Jedi Knight. That, I think, is a bit better. Let them learn in a (hopefully) safe enough enviornment that they can rebound, realize how stupid they may of been depending on how they handled it, and learn to accept that they need to let go sometimes. I don't mean become cold and heartless, but at least understand the pain. Edited January 27, 2012 by LukeDanger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meira_Arirai Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) According to a bit of lore in the KotOR comic series, the philosophy for disapproval of romantic attachments was something that was that went in and out of vogue, but became pretty mainstream right after the Great Sith ("Exar Kun") War, about 400 years previous to the setting of TOR. As for whether Jedi have managed to have what you or I would identify as a balanced, sane romantic life and not go kill-crazy, there are a lot of examples, both close to and far away from the date-range in which TOR takes place. One of my favorites is Nomi Sunrider (the TOR codex calls her Nomi-da-Boda because of some kind of funky trademark infringement issue with the name Sunrider). She didn't actually join the Order or seek training until after her Jedi husband (see what I just did there?) was murdered. She had a romantic relationship with Ulic Qel-Droma, and when he went over the edge, she was instrumental in both neutralizing the threat he posed and shepherding him back toward the light side. I always assumed that the blanket condemnation of romantic love/family life and the practice of conscripting young children were two of the big ways in which, from a narrative standpoint, we were being shown that the Jedi Order was in the process of decaying into a hidebound, legalistic, ineffective organization that had degraded so badly from its original purpose and strengths that it was susceptible to near-total obliteration by Palpatine's Empire. Edited January 27, 2012 by Meira_Arirai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonedawgz Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 matter of fact the code against love and relationships would be phased out when Luke reformed the Jedi order Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerxex Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Forbidding attachment (rather than love, I think a Jedi must learn to love all living things) makes perfect sense to me. After all, Jedi are a monastic warrior order. If we look at the monastic/religious part of the Jedi, we see celibacy recurring in many real-life religions. When you try to focus your life on God/Buddha/The Force/whatever, romantic relations are only distracting. On top of that, in the Star Wars universe the attachment may lead to the dark side in cases such as Anakin's. Looking at the warrior part, it makes sense as well. A Jedi goes about the whole universe, fighting, doing his thing. It is quite the unstable life. Having a relationship would only be distracting and troublesome. And it is not so nice for the partner, who will always fear for the Jedi's life. Nobody said a Jedi's life is gonna be easy! They're guardians of the galaxy, not damsel-rescueing Lancelots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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