As always, this is an interesting topic!! Because Pablo Hidalgo personally defined attachment in Star Wars/re: the Jedi as, “that sense of ownership, that sense of entitlement to someone else in your life“ and a psychologist (when looking at Star Wars through the lens of psychology–and vice versa) defined it as, “Non-attachment refers to allowing things to be as they are.” and that really, really makes a lot of sense within the Star Wars narrative.
I think a lot of people assume that attachment means any kind of bond to anyone else, but we see that’s not true–Depa says that feelings are to be cherished, Obi-Wan says of course they’re allowed romantic feelings, and in that Character Encyclopedia about Mace and Depa’s relationship, it’s described as:
Attachment isn’t about caring about someone or having a close bond with them or working to help them, it’s about being entitled to having that in your life (regardless of if they just want to leave or if they’re dying and you want to literally stop death itself), it’s about being unable to accept otherwise.
What Yoda has learned, after training and watching so many of his family pass into the Force, over TWENTY-THOUSAND OF THEM (as there can’t be that many still alive that he’s helped train) is that eventually death comes for them all and, as someone who is a psychic space wizard, he touches the Force every day of his life and feels it when people return to it.
After watching 20,000 of your grandkids die, yeah, you learn to accept that death is a part of life, trying to fight against the tide to an unreasonable amount–ie, yes, Anakin, if you think Obi-Wan is going to die in battle, watch his back, if you think a Senator is going to die in childbirth, encourage her to go to a doctor, but don’t obsess over it, don’t feel that the galaxy owes you that person in your life, don’t become so invested in someone else that you will literally burn down the rest of the galaxy if they die, if they’re going to die and you can’t stop it, work towards rejoicing in what time you have with them, because joy is better than suffering–that is what Yoda’s life has taught him.
When you live 800+ years, you realize that you’re just a small part of a greater galaxy, that you should enjoy what you have while you have it, that life is always and forever fleeting, the only thing that is forever is the Force. Of course he’s learned that there’s joy in that, in becoming part of something that’s forever.
Because wrapping yourself up in someone so much that you’re ripped apart when they die for reasons beyond your control (because people do eventually die) really is a tragic thing and only leads to suffering. Accepting things as they are (ie, that some things can be changed, but some cannot) leads to joy. It’s not always easy, Yoda himself struggles with it still sometimes (I DID NOT ASK FOR SAD GRANDPA FEELINGS, THERE IS ANOTHER) but ultimately letting go and accepting things and being selfless are rewarded in the Star Wars narrative.
THANK YOU, I agree, I’ve always liked the core Jedi philosophy tbh, though I do think it’s easy to misinterpret, even by the writers themselves haha (and the Jedi haha)
TBH I kinda sometimes roll my eyes at how much some people seem to hate the Jedi doctrine, though I do understand why that is also, and I can give Yoda a bit of the benefit of the doubt. He’s been at this so long, and most of the Jedi are brought up knowing his teachings and never knew anything else. Non-attachment is taken for granted, plus their family are the other Jedi. I do believe they’ve become very insular in that regard, making them utterly unprepared to deal with Anakin’s very different situation and background, unfortunately to catastrophic ends.
(Not to mention I always feel like there’s a bit too much of taking the blame away from Anakin and especially Palpatine in the more unfavorable interpretations of the Jedi, when we also have to remember during the Clone Wars era, Coruscant was literally bathing in the Dark Side and Palpatine was like MUAHAHA and stuff.)
I also had a thought about the Clones, how they’re literally bred for the purpose of war, and genetically identical to each other and indoctrinated from birth, yet we’re shown that they’re all very much individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, and personalities, and we’re explicitly told this right in the beginning by YODA. I just can’t get behind the idea that he’s so callous and doesn’t care for others.
I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT GFFA WORLDBUILDING. 😀 And why the Jedi were misunderstood is a really fascinating thing! Because, yes, part of it is that they were distant from the Republic in general as a culture, but also we don’t really know how much Jedi did/did not interact with the other people on Coruscant. We know seeing a Jedi out in the wilds of the rest of the galaxy was rare–the Nemoidians had never actually seen a Jedi before. But how much does that really say when we’re dealing with 10k Jedi on a planet of trillions in a galaxy of probably a thousand times that? In comparison, Earth would have one Jedi (or a single third of a Jedi, depending on your math) for the ENTIRE PLANET, even if they were the most gregarious person ever, how likely would it be that you actually ever interacted with them? Not very likely! So we don’t really know how much interaction Jedi had with non-Force-sensitive people.
But part of it was also that they were just really hard to understand, in a way that was nobody’s fault. When so much of your life is this connection to the Force–which isn’t just a belief or a faith, it’s a tangible, touchable thing that is the very foundation of life and connects them to everything, it connects them to other people, it connects them to the planet as a whole, it connects them to the eddies and swirls of time itself, it connects them to the very blades of grass growing under their feet. It’s hardly impossible to form relationships outside of that, certainly we see Obi-Wan and Dex being great friends, we see Ahsoka and Rex’s developing friendship, we see Kanan and Hera’s developing relationship–but it does mean that there’s this whole thing that you can’t really share, something that’s vital to a Jedi’s life.
And even though we’re talking about Yoda usually interacting with other Jedi, I think it’s important to remember that the Force isn’t just a religion to the Jedi, it isn’t just a belief in something they can’t touch. Instead, it’s something that’s provably there to them and they are seekers of understanding it, living according to it.
So, Yoda’s an interesting character because I think one of the most frustrating things about him is that he doesn’t say what he’s trying to get across in the most coherent way and so he gets misunderstood sometimes. Part of that is just the word salad nature of the quirky grammar, but I was watching a Behind the Scenes documentary about ESB and this caught my attention:
“It made the dialogue more compelling, because you had to figure out what he was saying.” In other words, it’s supposed to make you think. And it’s not just for the audience, but for the other characters as well–the Forces of Destiny episode with Anakin and Ahsoka training, where Yoda watches them and tells Ahsoka, "Much like your Master you are. What makes you unique, makes you strong. This you must use. Yourself, you must always be.“ as a way to give her advice about sparring.
Ahsoka, who has been super frustrated that she keeps losing in this match, stops and thinks about it for a minute, then her face clears, “I think I understand. I need to fight like myself.”
Why doesn’t Yoda just SAY THAT then?? Why doesn’t he just state it plainly?
Because he’s trying to get her to really think about what he’s saying, because he’s trying to teach her to parse through things and sort them out for herself, to look within and figure this puzzle out. I suspect a big part of Yoda’s way of speaking–apart from the whole aspect of wanting him to sound quirky as a narrative trope–is that he wants to help others learn to think for themselves, so that the next time they face something they’re having trouble with, they’ll have learned how to puzzle it out for themselves.
Should he have been more direct with Anakin? Yeah, I think Anakin (despite that he often pretended to have his shit together way more than he actually did, Anakin got pretty good at hiding things by the time of ROTS, especially under the cover of how much the war was affecting all of them) needed something more straightforward (even if he’d already made up his mind by the time of ROTS, that he wanted to stop death altogether), to just state things plainly, but I also don’t think Yoda spoke to him the way he did out of lack of care or lack of ways that usually worked. He does this with Obi-Wan, with Ahsoka, with Luke, and they grow from it, learn how to think even better from it. But also he’s an 800 year old alien space wizard frog, he talks in riddles, that’s what that trope does.
But also PALPATINE. That was the guy who was telling Anakin everything he wanted to hear and undermining every single lesson the Jedi ever tried to teach him. I genuinely believe that, had Palpatine not been an interference, that Anakin WOULD have learned to eventually apply the beneficial teachings to his life, would have learned how to let go, would have learned how to balance himself. Because the point has never, ever been that Anakin was inherently evil (AND I WILL INTERNET FIGHT ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE ^_~), but that he was someone who was preyed upon by an external force that made it so much more difficult for him to overcome his internal problems and so he wound up making terrible, terrible choices.
i'll apple your turnover 