May the Force Be With You, or: Good (Moral) Luck With All That!
So, I came across a question on Quora: “If the Jedi Masters could sense the darkness in Anakin, then why didn’t Mace Windu become his Master and teach him to use Shatterpoint?”
Now, the answers to this question are pretty great and shout-outs to the loremasters who know their lore. But there was a bit of a tangent that I found to be ten times more interesting than the use of Shatterpoint, or Windu creating Vaapad to channel the dark side to defend against the dark side — and that IS really cool, by the way. I’m not a Windu fan but he’s objectively impressive as Jedi go, and especially Jedi of the latter centuries of the Old Republic.
Of more moment and perennial importance to me, however, was the self-fulfilling prophecy that was Jedi Champ-pawn, Anakin Skywalker. Spoilers ahead if you’ve been in a cave for the past five decades.
Now, there’s no doubt there was some prophecy that got self-fulfilled. But I’ve always thought that the main fulfiller wasn’t Anakin but the Jedi Order. The Jedi Order that had grown prideful and complacent, just as it had many times before in the TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND YEARS of the Old Republic’s existence — notably, during the time of the Jedi Knight, Revan … the only other known Chosen One of the Force besides Anakin Skywalker … and who lived a VERY similar life, if on a much grander scale and three thousand years prior.
Like any agency or group, the Jedi Order, with time and power and no challenges, grows stagnant and complacent and corrupt. Dogmatic and unimaginative. With time and power the Force gets SICK OF THEIR FUCKING SHIT, and kills about ninety-odd percent of them. It’s happened more than once and, again, notably, around Revan’s time. The Jedi Order was destroyed. Then it was rebuilt by a banished Jedi — the Exile, Meetra Surik, an ally-apprentice of Revan who was one of the Jedi who joined him to disobey the Jedi Council of the time, and fight to end the Mandalorian Wars, which were destroying the Republic several sectors at a time.
It’s a long, cool story without a happy ending for the named characters above. And it happens again, history and the Force repeat themselves, three thousand years down the timeline. With Anakin playing Revan, Obi Wan playing the Exile, and the Jedi Council playing … the Jedi Council. If war never changes (shout-out to the Fallout series) then neither does the damned Jedi Council, it appears. And no matter how many times it’s destroyed, it manages to come back and metastasize into the most calcified, useless, Force-annoying, galaxy-borking version of itself that is possibly possible.
It is these most Jedi of the Jedi, the Council, who fulfilled the Chosen One prophecy — who keep fulfilling Chosen One prophecies through their attempts to control the Force … like what Sith try to do, only, y’know, stupider and lacking scale, ambition, and the sheer balls-out brazenness that gets things achieved more often than it doesn’t. All that disaster-Jedi, Anakin, did was what the Force decreed. Not what he should do or could do, but what the Force had planted him in existence to do. The Force said: “You, my child, have been created to do this. This is your entire purpose for being.”
And Anakin did as he was made to do, and was about that life. As much the Force’s fool as Jar-Jar Binks — more so.
The Jedi predictably helped and hindered the Force’s will, as is their wont, and basically did the same as Anakin: played a pawn-y part that, for all their struggling, changed nothing … and, in fact, was ultimately part of the Force’s intent and planning. Thing is, Anakin wasn’t struggling against but fighting for — that’s literally all he’d ever done and had never been taught to cope with in better ways. The Jedi were struggling against … against the inevitable. Against history. Against the Force, itself, and their own obvious and willful decline.
None of what happened would have happened had everyone not played the part they were created by the Force to play. Anakin was the Chosen One but he could never have been if everyone else hadn’t also been a Chosen One of the Force. Shmi was chosen to be his loving mother and the center of his world. The one who would inform his relationship with and love of Padme. Palpatine was chosen to be the Sith who would meddle (along with Plagueis) in the Force to create life (Anakin) in an attempt to harness the Force and its powers. Qui-Gon was chosen to not only find Anakin and see him for what he represented but to do the same with Anakin’s true mentor: Obi Wan Kenobi. Palpatine would not have existed had Darth Bane’s instituting of the Sith Rule of Two not become a tradition. HAD DARTH BANE NEVER FOUND DARTH REVAN’S WRITINGS, he would not have gone on to institute the Rule of Two (master and apprentice, one to embody power and the other to crave it), which put the power of the dark side in the hands of TWO Sith at any given time, rather than thousands. As it had for millennia before and as the Jedi still did with the light side. And, whereas one Jedi wasn’t terribly powerful since tens of thousands of Jedi were tapping into the light side … at any given time there were, ostensibly, only two Sith — and some small number of non-Sith dark-siders — tapping into a capacious dark-side.
Fewer in number with fewer to tap into that power, so more power to go around for the few. And little in the way of restraint, or checks and balances.
The Jedi Council and every member on it, from Yoda and Windu, to Ki-Adi-Mundi and Shaak-Ti, etc., was chosen to be their role as either friendly guide or not so friendly guide, or placeholder in Anakin’s life and times. Even they, the greatest Jedi Knights of their era, masters and members of the Jedi Council, were only ever pawns. Not merely pawns to Darth Sidious but to the Force as well. Not even servants, as the Jedi tend to think of themselves, but mere pawns with no say or choice in how they carry out their duties. Pawns, who can only move with the intent and will of, and as prescribed by their controlling player.
As such, Anakin fulfilled nothing that he hadn’t the help of an entire galaxy in fulfilling. From the day of his creation to his final breath he and an entire galaxy stepped to the tune of the Force in an exact and detailed dance. They were faithful marionettes. They weren’t jumping to barked orders but moving to the dictates of who they were created to be and who they would become. Anakin being Anakin led to Vader but so did the Jedi Council being the Jedi Council. And, so did Yoda being Yoda, Windu being Windu, etc. But the Jedi Council’s treatment of Anakin from his small boyhood through his twenties — having become a knight with his own padawan (Ahsoka Tano) and a general in the Republic — led more directly to Anakin becoming Vader than Anakin being Anakin (and Palpatine being Palpatine) did. I have thoughts on why this is so, and which I’d never really discussed before seeing someone’s reply on that Quora thread. It stated that Anakin was not just a victim of trauma (former slave, taken from his still-enslaved mother) but of at least neglect and abuse by and while in the Jedi Order. And while Anakin being Anakin is also sometimes a grown-ass Jedi being a temperamental, whiny little bitch … his whiny-little-bitch-itude isn’t without reasons nor without precedent. It’s easy to spot and trace back to its OBVIOUS sources. YET it went untreated and uncared about or for by the ADULT JEDI who trained him FROM CHILDHOOD to do EVERYTHING but be mentally healthy and stable. Just as the Force decreed.
I replied to a commenter who stated, among other things, that Anakin being Anakin was largely a result of abuse-neglect by the Jedi Council. I tend to agree deeply — and while intent can be argued till the cows come home, what cannot be argued is the Jedi Council’s history of STUPID-ASS decisions regarding Anakin, the Republic, and the galaxy, in general. But ESPECIALLY regarding Anakin, the Force’s CHOSEN ONE:
The Jedi Council’s treatment of Anakin is one of two things that made his fall not only possible but highly likely. PLUS, allowing a politician, and one they never trusted, access to this powerful, super-important instrument of the Force, this already traumatized child … that’s more than negligence. It’s leaning into malice. Though, ultimately, intentions don’t mitigate outcomes — not really. Whether the Jedi’s treatment was merely negligent and stupid, or was outright malicious doesn’t make Anakin LESS Vader, in the end.
If I intend to lock my home when I leave but forget, and come home to see my house has been burgled … my intent doesn’t make my stuff not stolen. The fact that I didn’t mean to get burgled but meant to lock up doesn’t mean that I actually did and that my stuff is still there. Intent behind actions doesn’t necessarily nor often mitigate outcome. Self-fulfilling prophecy, yadda-yadda, but HAD events in the prequel era shaken out differently in a few spots, so that Anakin DID NOT fall … that still wouldn’t have been down to the intentions of the Jedi Council. It could’ve been another case of Moral Luck: Anakin doesn’t fall because he’s literally not given that opportune moment. Instead, he’s off on a mission. Or is in the med-bay with a broken leg. Or Padme goes into early labor and gives birth but DOESN’T die. And Anakin’s most opportune moment to fall passes. He stays “good” not because he is but because the opportunity to go bad isn’t presented or isn’t particularly tempting. And, let’s be real, if he doesn’t fall by the time the twins are born and if Padme’s still alive after they are … he’s not likely to fall under pressures that aren’t far greater than his very worst fears coming true. Even if the Council de-Jedis him. Even if Palpatine escapes Republic “justice” (which he definitely would, for all the folks in his jingling pockets). Only direct threats to his wife and children would be enough to make him fall. But since the Chosen One is unlikely to be tossed from the Order (and with Order 66 never getting off the ground with Sidious’s capture) the family of the Chosen One would be under so much special protection that even Anakin wouldn’t be able to get in to see them.
If it’d all shaken out like that, that would be pure Moral Luck (or the Force … maybe the same thing in this galaxy) not Jedi wisdom and care. Their actions were idiotic no matter what informed them: negligent indifference or outright malice. Or even if it was pure, shining love for Anakin but a terrible mentoring-style, the actions themselves created fertile ground for Palpatine to do what Palpatine gonna do. Whatever the Council MEANT for Anakin to take from their tutelage and actions, he perceived it the way he perceived it. I don’t think his feelings regarding the Order were far from the mark (the Jedi were evil but a banal evil: the evil of dogmatic complacency that had been running on auto for thousands of years, not on the carefully considered good intentions that fluffed their hype). Except in the case of Obi Wan Kenobi who, more so than ANY Jedi after Qui-Gon Jinn, listened to the Force and tried to do its bidding. To the Council Anakin was an inconvenience at best and an unhelpful mirror/reminder more likely: powerful but weak, strong yet fragile, great by his hype and deeds but as petty and flawed as any other person. That’s not necessarily something of which a bunch of powerful Jedi who know they’re losing their strength and power in the Force would want a reminder. And the CONSTANT reminder that, for all their piety and dogma … broken, unstable, arrogant, impetuous, former-slave ANAKIN SKYWALKER, was still the Chosen One of the Force. And there was nothing they could do to change that no matter how much they hated that fact and Anakin. And this is LITERALLY the same path the Jedi Order of the Old Republic walked when it came to the only other known Chosen One: REVAN. Who, like Anakin, became a Sith lord — then was redeemed by a loved one. Not by the Jedi Order’s dogma and hidebound stupidity. In light of the Jedi Order’s horrible choices after Revan’s time through the next three thousand-plus years, pride and complacency is what the Order always fall to. In the time of Grandmaster Yoda, simply the Council’s behavior and actions facilitated the birth of Darth Vader. No amount of love, indifference, nor malice would have mitigated Anakin’s fall, in light of the Jedi Council’s actions. Only different behavior/actions to and regarding Anakin could have done that. Or better Moral Luck/May the Force be with you. But at that point, the Force was DONE with the Jedi Order and I’m pretty sure that Yoda, at least, consciously knew that well before Anakin was born. Windu probably suspected it, as well, or his first loyalty would have been to the Force, not to the Order nor the broken Republic, for both of which he was instantly willing to compromise. The rest of the Council and Order were blind or too arrogant to notice or care, or too busy doing the dirty work of holding the Republic together to have time to notice.
In the words of Jolee Bindo … “Fuck that Jedi Council-bullshit, I’mma go live in the woods.” I’m paraphrasing. But my point still stands: the Jedi Council is neither champion nor guide, merely another pawn in the claws of the Force. Puffed up and convinced of its own superiority (like the Sith Order, which the Jedi Order LITERALLY SPAWNED, way back in The Day). It knows nothing more nor less than what it’s willing to share and carry out/correct. Which, as that turns out, isn’t nearly as much as it should.
It’s easy to blame one unstable fail-son Jedi for the fall of a galaxy. But nothing and no one is ANYTHING AT ALL without its context. Anakin was and always would be a hot-damn-mess of a person. It’s the responsibility of a caring community to REIN THAT SHIT IN, not to ostracize, belittle, exacerbate, and use-our-most-accomplished-knight-only-for-good-PR, thus cement the instability and poor choices. The BEHAVIORS that are so undesirable. And yet, the Force knew it could rely on its, ahem, servants. If Palpatine gonna Palpatine, we can be Maker-damned certain that Jedi gonna Jedi. Especially members of the Jedi Council. And unfortunately with their ultimately calcified nature coming into play, that rarely works out well for the galaxy in the long-run.
