the examined life

In the Prequels it's very much explicitly told that the fatal Jedi flaw is that they are unable to love, and not only in a romantic/sexual sense. Anakin is not allowed to love his mother, is not allowed to love his wife, he is not allowed to love his children, and while he can confide in his master and his padawan, it's all repressed. George Lucas practically looks at you directly through the screen and tells you "Anakin fell to the Dark Side because he was not allowed to love". In the original trilogy, Obi-Wan and Yoda tell Luke not to have attachments, not to care for his friends, his family or the fate of his father. Luke does not cling to this and rescues his friends, redeems his father and saves the Galaxy.

What happens in the sequel universe? They tell us that the prequel Jedi were right. Ahsoka turns from the passionate girl she was and the determined she grew up into a generic wisdom dispenser. Luke tells the Mandalorian "no I can't train Baby Yoda... you tainted him with... fatherly love... he needs to be separated from everything he loves to be a Jedi, Jedi can only care about being Jedi" the exact same thing that we saw in the prequels started the fall of Anakin and the Jedi order.

So what, after all that change, after a whole galactic war and opera, they reach the same conclusion: Jedi are just emotionless bathrobe wearers who don't have sex. No need to improve or change things, let's just do things just as they were!

*googles it*

yeah there's a great post compiling all lucas' quotes on this issue from 1999 all the way to 2020, and he says over and over again that the problem is not love, it's possessiveness and fear. it's exactly the same lesson aang has to learn with katara: you can love them, you SHOULD love them, but you can't hold onto them for the sake of your own selfishness and fear.

The whole post is worth reading if you really want to absorb his philosophy, but I've picked a few choice quotes:

GEORGE LUCAS: They (the Jedi) trained more than anything else to understand the transitional nature of life, that things are constantly changing and you can't hold on to anything. You can love things but you can't be attached to them, You must be willing to let the flow of life and the flow of the Force move through your life, move through you. So that you can be compassionate and loving and caring, but not be possessive and grabbing and holding on to things and trying to keep things the way they are. Letting go is the central theme of the film. George Lucas to BBC, May 12, 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1989505.stm)

GEORGE LUCAS: Well, a lot of people got very upset, saying he should’ve been this little demon kid. But the story is not about a guy who was born a monster – it’s about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that’s why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much. George Lucas to Rolling Stones, 2005 (https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/george-lucas-and-the-cult-of-darth-vader-247142/

GEORGE LUCAS: The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness - the inability to let go.  J. W. Rinzel - The Making of Revenge of the Sith page 213, published in 2005

George Lucas has a very clear point of view, and that point of view is basic-ass white dude Buddhism. Love good! Attachment bad!

Once Star Wars was out of Lucas' direct control, that 'clear point of view' thing fell apart, so the Jedi aren't necessarily very ideologically coherent in the sequels and spinoffs. But if you're wondering what Lucas actually was trying to say, it was...the stuff the Jedi kept saying in bold underlined words to Anakin over and over.

The position taken by the prequels is that Anakin's experience of slavery on Tatooine did not make him into some sort of enlightened figure of universal slave-freeing compassion, it made him--understandably--very very very afraid of losing the specific people he cared about keeping. Anakin is abnormal orders of magnitude more upset about bad things happening to the people he loves than he is about bad things happening to random innocent Tusken villagers. He is also abnormal orders of magnitude more upset about bad things happening to the people he loves than any possible principle that might constrain his actions on their behalf, even principles his loved ones fully believed were worth dying for. His attachment to his loved ones is canonically portrayed as very bad and dangerous and the direct cause of him committing atrocities in return for the promise of power!

I can't really endorse OP's read of the original trilogy, either. When Yoda tells Luke he should stay and finish his training instead of running off to Bespin, he doesn't tell Luke to not care about his friends. He specifically says that going to Han and Leia will risk destroying everything Han and Leia are fighting for.

LUKE I saw... I saw a city in the clouds. YODA Mmm. Friends you have there. LUKE They were in pain. YODA It is the future you see. LUKE Future? Will they die? Yoda closes his eyes and lowers his head. YODA Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future. LUKE I've got to go to them. YODA Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.

He says that if Luke tries to reach for power too quickly out of fear, he'll very likely fall to the Dark Side, which is not just bad because it's arbitrarily bad, but bad because it will give the Emperor power and doom the rebellion that Han and Leia, the people whom Luke ostensibly cares about, are fighting for.

Then Luke goes anyway, because he can feel he's strong in the Force now, which must mean he can definitely help....

....Aaaaand Han gets frozen in kryptonite and Luke loses his hand. The movie is called The Empire Strikes Back because it's the low point of the trilogy. The movie ends on a downer, the heroes defeated and maimed and separated, because the position of the very opinionated filmmaker was that Luke made a mistake.

GEORGE LUCAS: It’s pivotal that Luke doesn’t have patience. He doesn’t want to finish his training. He’s being succumbed by his emotional feelings for his friends rather than the practical feelings of “I’ve got to get this job done before I can actually save them. I can’t save them, really.” But he sorts of takes the easy route, the arrogant route, the emotional but least practical route, which is to say, “I’m just going to go off and do this without thinking too much.” And the result is that he fails and doesn’t do well for Han Solo or himself. It’s the motif that needs to be in the picture, but it’s one of those things that just in terms of storytelling was very risky because basically he screws up, and everything turns bad. And it’s because of that decision that Luke made on [Dagobah] to say, “I know I’m not ready, but I’m going to go anyway. George Lucas, Empire Strikes Back DVD audio-commentary, 2008

Luke only redeems his father in the next movie, after learning to not hold the people he cares for so tightly, not hold fear and anger so tightly. He leaves his friends to fight as best they can on Endor and goes to face the Emperor. When the Emperor reveals that his friends have been led into a trap (the memeable "It's a trap!" of Admiral Ackbar fame, even) Luke has to find a way to put aside his fear for his friends and remain a Jedi.

GEORGE LUCAS: Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes, and Luke says no. (…) We have the scene when Anakin decides to save Palpatine and join him, so they could learn how to save Padmé. The equivalent scene in VI is when the Emperor’s trying to get Luke to kill his dad so he can save his sister. George Lucas, "Star Wars Archives 1999-2005" p. 421 and p. 212. (2020)

This is from the script as Lucas (and Kasdan) wrote it, descriptions and all, after Luke has already once tried to strike the Emperor down in anger over his trapped friends and has been fighting Vader up and down the room for a while, then stopped and started just dodging when he realized he was so upset he was starting to use the Dark Side:

LUKE I will not fight you. VADER Give yourself to the dark side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for... Vader stops and senses something. Luke shuts his eyes tightly, in anguish. VADER Sister! So...you have a twin sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her, too. Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will. LUKE Never-r-r! Luke ignites his lightsaber and screams in anger, rushing at his father with a frenzy we have not seen before. Sparks fly as Luke and Vader fight in the cramped area. Luke's hatred forces Vader to retreat out of the low area and across a bridge overlooking a vast elevator shaft. Each stroke of Luke's sword drives his father further toward defeat. The Dark Lord is knocked to his knees, and as he raises his sword to block another onslaught, Luke slashes Vader's right hand off at the wrist, causing metal and electronic parts to fly from the mechanical stump. Vader's sword clatters uselessly away, over the edge of the platform and into the bottomless shaft below. Luke moves over Vader and holds the blade of his sword to the Dark Lord's throat. The Emperor watches with uncontrollable, pleased agitation. EMPEROR Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side! Luke looks at his father's mechanical hand, then to his own mechanical, black-gloved hand, and realizes how much he is becoming like his father. He makes the decision for which he has spent a lifetime in preparation. Luke steps back and hurls his lightsaber away. LUKE Never! I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

It's hard! He nearly fails! He's incredibly distracted by wanting to tap into the power of the Force and kill these assholes so he can save his friends! He only succeeds when he puts his fear aside and stops trying to defend Leia in a thoughtless passion.

This zen surrender is the crowning moment of victory in the movie. It's the literal title drop: the Return of the Jedi.

At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).

Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.

On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.

At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).

...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).

E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.

(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)

Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.

...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”

-the idea that women are less capable of abuse than men is an extension of the idea that women are weaker than men.

-the refusal to acknowledge men's mental health and emotions as valid things worthy of support comes from the idea that emotions are inherently feminine in nature and having them is, again, a sign of weakness.

-the treatment of men as generic and expendable and women as special contributes to the idea that women should have less representation because we already "have enough" and "don't need more" and we gotta "even the playing field" or some dumb shit, so any need or want for more attention, regardless of reason, is attributed to "pointless attention-seeking".

-all of this puts trans men in an even more uncomfortable position, because either they're made an exception (because they ~aren't really men~ you see) or they're viewed as self-hating misogynists because why else would you "choose" to be the Trash Gender (tm)?

-the idea that men are inherently terrible only serves to excuse men for being terrible. because, hey, they can't help it, so why bother trying, right? part of holding men accountable for their awful actions is believing they can in fact be better.

-the reason "not all men" is so frustrating to hear is because it's often used in poor faith to derail much needed conversations about toxic masculinity and how it manifests, not because the phrase itself is untrue.

-continuing from the trans men thing, misandry can and does make it harder for trans men to come out, for fear of the aforementioned responses.

Natasha has the most friendships here, but for the most part the people she’s friends with don’t seem to consider her a bridge to befriending the others. Natasha is friendly with Bruce and Natasha is friends with Clint and Natasha is friends with Steve, but Bruce & Clint, Clint & Steve, and Steve & Bruce don’t even have enough of a dynamic for me to remember what it would be. Clint is friends with Natasha and as far as I can remember that’s the end of his list. Bruce and Tony hang out, sure, but Iron Man 3 makes it a huge joke that Bruce got so bored listening to Tony talk about his PTSD adventures that he fell asleep partway through and Tony is so self-absorbed he didn’t notice no one was listening to him. Thor isn’t really friends with any of them. Sam is only in this movie for 34 seconds. Rhodey doesn’t break 3 minutes.

The chance that the movies have to establish the proof of these people genuinely relying on each other in an interpersonal sense are largely sacrificed for jokes or dramatic tension. To my memory it’s pretty much just the Winter Soldier cast with each other, or Natasha serving as an emotional lodestone for one of the other male characters. The Winter Soldier cast isn’t even really special in that everybody in the Avengers is close with the casts of their own movies and moderately friendly coworkers with everybody else. It’s just that there are more Avengers interacting per film in The Winter Soldier than there were in the other Avenger solo films out at the time.

It gets worse the more comics-canon Avengers get introduced. Wasp and Ant-Man are close with… each other. Vision and Scarlet Witch are close with… each other. Black Panther and Doctor Strange are in the lineup without anyone from their own movies and accordingly they aren’t visibly close with anyone else considered an Avenger. Carol Danvers doesn’t even get a proper Monica Rambeau to be close with until after Avengers: Endgame. And don’t even get me started on Peter Parker!

The problems comes from how the plot ends up focusing so much on the conflict between the character and not much on how the characters friendships pull the group together. Tony and Steve never become friends, they just put their issues aside for the time being. Again, not in itself bad thing, but because so much focus is on these struggling to work together at all mean there little time to show the power of friendship.

Bruce decides to leave earth at the end AoU and how that affects the group as whole is not a discussion that ever had, and for a teammate and friend to banish himself from the planet not to be more of note makes it seem like the Avengers aren’t much as friend as they are a workforce where members can be swapped and filled in.

Natasha has the most friendships here, but for the most part the people she's friends with don't seem to consider her a bridge to befriending the others. Natasha is friendly with Bruce and Natasha is friends with Clint and Natasha is friends with Steve, but Bruce & Clint, Clint & Steve, and Steve & Bruce don't even have enough of a dynamic for me to remember what it would be. Clint is friends with Natasha and as far as I can remember that's the end of his list. Bruce and Tony hang out, sure, but Iron Man 3 makes it a huge joke that Bruce got so bored listening to Tony talk about his PTSD adventures that he fell asleep partway through and Tony is so self-absorbed he didn't notice no one was listening to him. Thor isn't really friends with any of them. Sam is only in this movie for 34 seconds. Rhodey doesn't break 3 minutes.

The chance that the movies have to establish the proof of these people genuinely relying on each other in an interpersonal sense are largely sacrificed for jokes or dramatic tension. To my memory it's pretty much just the Winter Soldier cast with each other, or Natasha serving as an emotional lodestone for one of the other male characters. The Winter Soldier cast isn't even really special in that everybody in the Avengers is close with the casts of their own movies and moderately friendly coworkers with everybody else. It's just that there are more Avengers interacting per film in The Winter Soldier than there were in the other Avenger solo films out at the time.

It gets worse the more comics-canon Avengers get introduced. Wasp and Ant-Man are close with... each other. Vision and Scarlet Witch are close with... each other. Black Panther and Doctor Strange are in the lineup without anyone from their own movies and accordingly they aren't visibly close with anyone else considered an Avenger. Carol Danvers doesn't even get a proper Monica Rambeau to be close with until after Avengers: Endgame. And don't even get me started on Peter Parker!

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

you don't have to prove it every month (unless your state fucking sucks): "States must verify compliance of applicable individuals at application, at renewal, and—at state option—at more frequent periodic intervals. "

there's a "medical frailty" exemption that "encompasses anyone with a serious medical condition or a disability that significantly impairs their ability to live or comply with the requirements." downside: what actually counts will depend on your state

its not an 80 hr paid work requirement, the 80 hrs can include school hours and volunteer work OR you can meet the minimum earnings of 80*minimum wage aka ~$580 per month (so if you have an above min wage part time job, you don't have to fight for 80 hrs to still qualify)

most importantly, this is an Interim Rule THAT IS STILL OPEN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT UNTIL July 31, 2026! YOU CAN COMPLAIN DIRECTLY TO THE AGENCY HERE (anonymously, too): https://www.regulations.gov/docket/CMS-2026-2047/document?withinCommentPeriod=true

will a comment actually do anything? I don't know. But agencies are legally required to review them, so SOMEONE in the agency has to at least read it.

I made a Room Building tutorial! Lemme know if it helps! 🧡

Anyways, just to let me know I'm not alone