The Jedi Order, attachments, and dogmatism

Much has been made of the Jedi doctrine forbidding attachment, as introduced in the prequel trilogy. Some believe it to be a sign that the Jedi Order was hopelessly dogmatic and already caught in a terminal decline before Palpatine was even born. Others contend that the doctrine's meaning is typically misunderstood, and that the critical representation of the prequel-era Jedi aspiring to be (let us say) "Vulcan-like" in their attitude doesn't correspond to the actual Jedi beliefs and aspirations. I would like to argue that both these views are correct. The Jedi doctrine regarding attachments isn't what some critics make it out to be... but the actual doctrine also isn't the sensible ideal that its defenders would like it to be. More importantly, and often overlooked: the doctrine that we see in the prequels is not the historical norm for what the Jedi believe.

First of all, let's define the Order's actual doctrine during the prequel era. The Jedi are not encouraged to repress their emotions and act in a purely "unfeeling" or "rational" manner. They are also not encouraged to distance themselves from the experience of love. The core point of the doctrine is that they Jedi must let go of selfishness and reject materialism. They are encouraged to act out of compassion— ideally compassion for those who deserve it and those who don't alike. These ideals are at the core of the Jedi philosophy. They have been all along. What sets the prequel-era doctrine apart, however, is the approach to how the ideal can and should be attained. In short: the prequel-era Order has come to believe that possessions are a temptation towards materialism, and thus potentially to selfish greed. Moreover, the Order has come to believe that strong personal love for specific individuals detracts from the goal of universal compassion.

There is a certain logic to that. Certainly, a spouse and children are (quite naturally) the people you will typically love the most, and the most fiercely. You will prioritise their well-being over anything else. Universal and "equally distributed" love-for-all is then automatically impossible. It's not for no reason that we speak of "loved ones" when we mention those closest to us. That doesn't mean that we can't spare love for others, but that we do naturally have our "nearest and dearest"— our most loved ones. It's also true that the loss of our loved ones, or a threat to them, typically produces a strong emotional reaction. If someone cruelly hurts your child, you will quite naturally want to destroy that person. So from a Jedi perspective, "loved ones" can thus be seen as a potential liability: any harm or threat to them may lead one to the Dark Side. It can (and has) been argued that Anakin Skywalker is in fact a prime example of this risk.

That, however, does ignore a crucial fact. Namely that specifically because of the ban on these "attachments", Anakin had to hide that he had a wife and that he was soon to be a father. Which is why he couldn't openly seek out help and advice that could have greatly helped him. He tried to seek that advice out covertly (using veiled terms), but miscommunication rendered that effort fruitless. If the ban hadn't existed, Anakin wouldn't have been so at risk. Now, the counter-argument to that is obvious: if Anakin had just followed the rules, he wouldn't have been at risk, either! But that ignores two things: firstly that the history of the Jedi clearly proves that the rules is pointless, and secondly that the rule is (at least for humans!) distinctly unnatural.

Human beings don't function as detached, all-compassionate beings. We have emotional impulses, and we do in fact form strong attachments. While the Jedi don't teach that emotions should be suppressed, they do teach that emotions should be "worked through", and eventually dispelled. Meditated away, so to speak, until there's a calm serenity. That's a nice ideal, but it doesn't actually work. Force meditation can help when you're emotionally disturbed, to be sure, but that's the issue: the prequel-era Jedi treat all strong emotional experience as "being disturbed". To them, experiencing strong hatred is something to overcome— but so is falling in love. They see it as a problem, when it's actually good and natural.

Throughout galactic history, the Jedi have clearly known this, and indeed lived by it. Jedi being married and having children was completely normal for most of the Jedi Order's long history. There are no indications that it was an intrinsic source of problems. Even through the prequel era, the Corellian Jedi stuck to their own interpretation of the Jedi Code, and had no issue with personal relationships. Nor with Jedi owning material possessions, such as houses or personal vehicles. And unlike the rest of the Order, the Corellian Jedi actively strove to live "among the people". They weren't full-time Jedi, typically, but used their Jedi abilities in the context of normal jobs. In this, the Corellian Jedi were actually far more like the "historical Jedi" than those who followed the Council's doctrines. And did the Corellian Jedi prove to be unusually corrupt, or susceptible to the Dark Side? On the contrary: they appear to have been very mentally healthy.

An obvious reason for this is that, if we understand that something like falling in love is natural, we don't treat it as a "bad thing" that should be avoided. And so we can learn to experience it in a healthy way. If we're instead taught to "overcome" it, then it will actually still be natural, we'll still be likely to fall in love... but then we have no experience with it, we feel misplaced guilt over it, and we are compelled to hide it. That's not healthy. And indeed, the evidence clearly shows that the prequel-era Jedi frequently felt romantic love for others. They just managed to succeed in meditative self-denial, whereas Anakin failed. But did this do them any good? Did this make them more stable? Did it make them happy? I think not. I think the Corellian Jedi, and the vast bulk of the historical Jedi, simply had it right. Romantic love isn't wrong, and it isn't against the ideals of the Jedi Code.

Again: the doctrine against "attachments" demonstrably wasn't aimed against all physical possessions or against personal relationships. It was meant as a caution against selfishness and materialism. So rather than banning personal relationships, it was meant to prevent Jedi from engaging in unhealthy, possessive relationships. (Because those are a path to the Dark Side.) Rather than forbidding attachments, it was meant to stop Jedi from forming a greedy attachment to possessions that became stronger than compassion for others. (Because selfish greed, too, is a path to the Dark Side.) And at some point before the prequel era, the Jedi Council began to interpret that doctrine in a more restrictive, literalist way. The Jedi Council became dogmatic, and to some extent forgot the intent behind the doctrine.

The way that "attachments" are defined in the prequel era certainly aren't the historical norm. Jedi being married, having children and owning possessions was perfectly normal for most of the Order's history. The concept of all or most Jedi treating the Temple as their home is also a "recent development": historically, Jedi lived among the people, and were mostly out and about in the galaxy. They only gathered for conclaves, and there were some dedicated specialists who taught young apprentices or maintained the Jedi Library. The notion of one monolithic Jedi Temple functioning as a semi-monastic home for all the Jedi must've somehow become the norm in some latter stage of galactic history.

On that note, the prequel-era insistence that children must be "taken in" at a young age, so they can be properly trained to overcome their emotional impulses, is also a recent development. We see that throughout history, people in their late teens are welcomed into the Order regularly— and without intrinsic problems. Even people of far more advanced age were regularly inducted into the Order, and are seen to have flourished. This was in the days that emotions weren't seen as something to "overcome". The prequel-era Jedi insisted that only young children could be inducted, because older children were already used to attachments too much. Their belief was that these attachments would lead to the Dark Side. More credible is another interpretation: the prequel-era "methods" of the Jedi could only ever work for people indoctrinated in those ways from infancy. It's not the emotions causing the problems, but the unnatural doctrine that's wholly unsuited to normally raised people!

There's ample proof of all this. From the Order's founding in 25,783 BBY all the way through 4000 BBY (when Vima Sunrider was born, to which nobody objected), we know that the Jedi weren't dogmatically opposed to personal relationships or to Jedi owning property and living regular lives among the people. We see this demonstrated repeatedly in such stories as Tales of the Jedi, not least in the case of Nomi Sunrider, Vima's mother. She was married to a Jedi, and herself untrained but Force-sensitive. After he was murdered, she trained as a Jedi, being at least somewhere in her twenties at this point. It was no problem, and in fact she ended up becoming Grand Master of the Order in due time.

We know that the dogmatic interpretation of the "no attachments" rule was first introduced shortly thereafter, presumably just after Nomi died or stepped down as Grand Master. We know that this must be the case, because KotOR II tells us that Brianna was born to Arren Kae in 3976 BBY, and that this had to be hidden because the Council had forbidden Jedi from engaging in personal relationships by that time. But we also know Vima Sunrider had a daughter, and this is never suggested to have been a problem. Assuming she didn't have this daughter at an absurdly young age, Jedi having romantic relationships and children must've been acceptable until at least 3980 BBY or so. So it seems that the change in doctrine was very recent when Brianna was born.

Of course, Vima's daughter also had kids, and her descendants were a "famous line of Jedi". And Revan and Bastila got together canonically. And the Jedi Council that had been so dogmatic about the whole matter got killed off, and then the Order was re-started by Meetra's apprentices. And Revan and Bastila's son (born 3954 BBY) married and had kids, too. And a whole lineage, culminating (as far as we know now) in Theron Shan, whose birth was kept hidden, but to keep him safe— and not to because there was some rule forbidding his very existence. So it really seems that after the events of KotOR II (3951 BBY), the "no marriage, no kids" rule was out again. (Having been in place for less than three decades.)

We don't know much about how the Jedi operated in the period 3600 BBY - 1032 BBY, but we know that a substantial part of that period saw Jedi Lords and entire Jedi dynasties proliferating throughout the galaxy, so the notion that relationships were banned seems untenable. The dogmatic stance was only re-introduced at an unspecified time after the Ruusan Reformation (which happened c. 1000 BBY). Can we infer when and why this might have happened? Well, it could be reasoned that the that the dogmatic stance may have been re-introduced by the Jedi as a consequence of the Ruusan Reformation. Some have even raised the suggestion that its introduction may have been part of the Ruusan Reformation— as a corollary to the decision to disband the Army of Light et cetera.

One argument I'd personally raise against that interpretation, though, is that we don't get any mention of such a provision. We do learn that the Army of Light is disbanded and the Jedi Lords give up their political (and, essentially, 'worldly') power. That's already treated as being a huge shock. Valenthyne Farfalla certainly didn't expect Tarsus Valorum to make proposals/requests that far-reaching. It did get passed, with the consent of the Jedi, and that was the Jedi Order's part in the Ruusan Reformation. So my reasoning goes that if some kind of further dramatic reform of the Jedi Order had been included at that point, it would have been an even greater shock. Surely one that would be much commented upon and argued over. Yet we see none of that.

More credible is the notion that this particular "change in doctrine" may have resulted from the changes introduced by the Ruusan Reformation. The Order, after all, was effectively reformed into a more monastic entity. This would mean that the new dogma would have been in place (but only as of recently!) by the time Yoda joined the Jedi Order. So he'd then see that as the proper norm, and his extremely longevity and his prominent place in the Order can then have been a key factor in entrenching this doctrine very thoroughly. (Imagine a mediaeval Pope living for 900 years, and staying in charge of the Catholic Church's doctrine all that time— that would be a sure-fire way to keep literally ages-old dogmas firmly entrenched! Yoda's position as Grand Master is functionally akin to that.)

On the other hand... I'm not convinced by the notion that the dogmatic stance simply resulted from the Ruusan Reformation. We have no evidence either way, but I choose to think instead that the dogmatism snuck back in somewhere during the Great Peace of the Republic. I think it probably happened later on in that period (at most a couple of centuries before the prequels), and I think that the Order's increasing dogmatism is actually the result of Sith manipulation. We know that by the prequel era, the Jedi's insight into the Force has become clouded. They admit this in the films, and in the EU, it is revealed to be an ongoing process that they are more-or-less trying to keep secret. In reality, this is because the resurgent Sith (working in secret) have long been working towards the culmination of their master plan. Their machinations (which involve structurally corrupting and undermining the Republic) greatly bolster the Dark Side, and this affects the Jedi.

My reading, therefore, is that the Jedi have increasingly retreated into dogmatism because, increasingly, the established dogma is all they have. The evil of the Sith has disturbed their previously-existing insight into the Force, and in that sense, the Jedi have become blinded to the truth of things. I also suspect that this played a great role in leading them to slowly retreat from society, into the isolation of their Temple. The Sith, naturally, actively (but surreptitiously) encouraged this process. Being isolated from society and from (at least in a sense) the Force, the Jedi subsequently relied more and more on "received knowledge": the established dogmas. And as the dogmas became more important to them, they became (quite naturally) more and more inviolate. The dogmatic view that we see in the prequel era is, in fact, a result of Sith machinations, which have caused the Jedi to increasingly make errors in both action and doctrine.

As such, I feel that to criticise the position of the prequel-era Jedi Council, it isn't remotely required to misrepresent their beliefs. Accurately describing, and explaining, their beliefs provides ample evidence that their views are deeply mistaken. They are clinging to a literalist dogma that goes far beyond the intent of the Jedi Code; a dogma that has only been dominant in two relatively brief periods of the Jedi Order's long and storied history. A careful observer, incidentally, cannot fail to discern that both those times happened to precede the near-total annihilation of the Order, led by a dissatisfied defector from its own ranks, with literally only a handful of survivors left to rebuild a new (and less dogmatic) Order from the ground up. It's almost as if an ultra-doctrinaire attitude is a bad idea that often leads to horrible consequences...