#the jedi code

Maybe this is because Phantom Menace is my favorite Star Wars movie and so I have rewatched it a million times, but for me Anakin is the most genuinely caring and selfless character in Star Wars. He wasn’t just an innocent kid (kids can be cruel and selfish and they’re usually better when they grow up not worse) he was compassionate and kind and despite growing up surrounded by some of the worst scum in the galaxy he knew nothing of greed. That says so much about his character.

Anakin’s fall to the dark side took over a decade of carful manipulation that culminated in cascade of tragedy and loss. It wasn’t an accident. Every bit of the emotional trauma, physical trauma, and mental trauma from the moment Anakin met Palpatine and on ward was planned. We don’t see the decade he spent between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones but immediately in the second movie we see how much Anakin has changed. Where he used to be confident he’s insecure, where he used to bold and fearless he is now arrogant, where he was once inquisitive he is now cautiously enthusiastic, where he used to build he now destroys. Every change in his behavior and outlook is the result of either the teachings of the Jedi Order which are pretty much the antithesis of his entire personality, the result of Sidious’s manipulation, or the result of the toxic attitudes of many Jedi towards him.

Now I know a lot of people have… misconceptions about what the Jedi Order is and what they stand for. It’s understandable, since I guess a lot of people think of Luke as an everything a Jedi is supposed to be but he is NOT, he wasn’t even taught their philosophy! Yoda and Windu and Luminara are everything a Jedi is meant to be. They take an impersonal approach to justice, they treat others coldly, they believe themselves to be above petty things like emotion and pain and human connection. There are Jedi who take a more progressive stance like Obi-Wan and Quinlan and Qui-Gon but you have to understand that they are not model Jedi and have their own struggles with the Order and its teachings. The Jedi code literally says “There is no emotion.” That is what Jedi strive for. And that isn’t even getting into the genocide or the politics. Focusing on how this affected Anakin. That’s what I’m doing.

Anyway, Anakin is a deeply emotional person. This is not a bad thing. It’s the source of his conviction and his empathy (which a surprising amount of Jedi lack). Anakin feels deeply, so he feels love and anger and sadness more keenly than Jedi who have worked their whole lives to shut off emotion. And he was never taught how to deal with it. The most the Jedi did was tell him to meditate, release his emotions into the Force, focus on the present or other platitudes that do not help! I would know. I’m also a deeply emotional person who feels things very keenly to the point where I had a full psychological evaluation when I was 6 years old. When a person deals with this it NEEDS to be addressed. I have wonderful parents who did everything in their power to help me from a young age and I still ended up suicidal! Anakin did not get help and was instead shamed for feeling so strongly and he ended up bottling it up. People complain about how he was “whiny” and I (a person who has also been called whiny) just go what the fuck do you expect?? Expressing his frustration verbally is literally the healthiest option he has! And we know what it looks like when he chooses other forms of venting! Anakin vented to Padmé almost immediately after reconnecting with her because she is literally the only person in his life who will listen to him (other than Sidious but he makes things worse on purpose).

So yeah. Sensitive people need to be taught how to deal with their emotions in healthy ways. Really everyone does but especially people with strong emotions.

But when Anakin isn’t overwhelmed by emotions he doesn’t have the tools to deal with, or surrounded by toxic people, or being actively manipulated by an evil dictator, that’s when you see who he really is. Which means pretty much all of Phantom Menace, a good chunk of the time he’s alone with Padmé, and… nothing else really. (I’m just going to say here that I am not including Clone Wars Anakin due to the purposeful butchering of his character. I still consider the show canon in everything but Anakin’s characterization in a lot of specific instances.)

Anakin has never been a selfish person. The things people perceive as selfish are his needs. He needs unconditional love. He needs Padmé because she is the only person who gives him that. Even without getting into his psychology and bpd and what a splitting episode is, it isn’t hard to recognize that when he places Padmé’s safety above other people’s it’s an act of self preservation more than self interest. He knows that he would literally go crazy without her. After years of being systematically isolated and traumatized she is the only thing keeping him together. In his desperation to save her and consequently his own sanity he lost both those things. But it’s important to note that he tried to do things right, that he went to Yoda for help, that he told Padmé so she could take her own steps to ensure her health. He did everything he could think of before getting desperate enough to go to Sidious. Not to mention he did everything right after discovering Sidious’s identity. It wasn’t until he was presented with a false dichotomy that boiled down to choosing his mentor and confidant of over a decade and his wife’s life or the man who has scored and distrusted him since he was child that he made the objectively wrong choice. And that was after not sleeping for weeks and having a traumatizing realization that triggered a splitting episode so he wasn’t in a head space to understand what was going on in an objective way.

So yeah. That’s my rant about Anakin Skywalker. If you want to comment or debate know that I will reply with an explanation of my thoughts that could be just as long as this post and that I will not stop until you do. You will not get the last word. I feel very strongly about this and if you’ve gotten this far you have to know that I have thought very deeply about this as well. I have heard every argument. You will not change my mind. I have done research. Engaging with this post to disagree will only lead to me expanding on this even more because this is really a brief summary of all my thoughts and feelings on the matter. If you’re just curious about the rest of my thoughts and feelings just ask.

The Jedi Code "Padawan. Carmen. First tenet."

"There is no emotion, there is peace."

"Second?"

"There is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

"Meaning?"

"We must learn to look at things how other beings see them. Jedi are called to be mediators, we must empathize."

"Hmm. What else?" "The more of the galaxy we see, the wider our visions get. To quote an ancient philosopher, 'Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.'"

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Clone Troopers & Jedi Characters (Star Wars) Characters: Lissarkh (Star Wars), Original Clone Trooper Character(s) (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Jedi are space Buddhists and you cannot change my mind, Meditation, Force Meditation (Star Wars), Jedi Code (Star Wars), Jedi Culture & Customs (Star Wars), Jedi Appreciation (Star Wars), Jedi June Appreciation Event 2026, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, canon is an orchard and I am baking a single pie, One Shot, Clone Troopers and Jedi as Found Family (Star Wars), jedi love to teach, no beta we die like my sleep schedule Series: Part 2 of Lissarkh's Leisure-Time Lecture Series (Jedi June 2026)

Like, they know that, but a lot of them don't think about what it means.

Take the Jedi Code, for instance. Sort of the foundational text of the order, the core of what it is to be a Jedi. Ultimately, everything derives from that, or everything distills down to that. On the surface, it is simple enough, ish. But...

I mean, take the ten commandments, from Christianity (and Judaism, but I'm particularly talking about the Christian context here). They seem pretty simple and straightforward. But there have been oceans of ink spilled over what the specific meanings of each commandment really is, and the exceptions and the carveouts (even if they probably don't mean it like that) to some of them and how one actually violates them.

A Religion almost always has very simple teachings at it's base. Christianity can be summed up with: embrace Jesus and achieve salvation. That's something that most Christians would agree is accurate...ish, but it's also utterly incomplete.

Or: Jesus is the son of God, and there's a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That Jesus is both human and divine. All seemingly simple, no? And yet, hooooooo boy has Christianity had a ton of disputes about what that all means. A nonexhaustive list of controversies/heresies related to those two (distinct) ideas just off the top of my head: Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophytism, Miaphytism, Monothelitism, Monoenergism, Unitarianism

All this to say - Jedi have teachings. A Code. Rules. A specific stricture and doctrine. But holy shit are there probably a ton of ways to understand and interpret them. And we see that in action in even in the much simplified and stripped down Disney Canon, let alone the OG expanded legends.

We have seen the execution of Jedi teachings vary over time, and we've seen how even in the same era, different Jedi will understand the code and rules differently.

Based on my own understanding of the (Expanded Legends) lore, you get the idea that before the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi were probably a lot more diverse in their teachings or rather - a lot more diverse in what counted as acceptable deviations from whatever Orthodoxy the High Council set down (and I don't mean that in like, some 'oh no they're autocrats way, I mean, the High Council as the leaders of the Order presumably had a legitimate hand in adjudicating any doctrinal questions that made it to them). Various sources in the EU will show a diversity of jedi opinions around certain key controversies, and many stay fine within the Order.

Now, there were things that get people cast out - the OG Dark Jedi that started the Hundred Years Darkness, Kreia, etc. But there probably was more acceptable diversity of opinion - as source for that, I'll note that a key provision of the Ruusan Reformations was that the Order centralized all teaching and organization through the Temple on Coruscant. That tends to be a technique to prevent ideological deviation. (Also, it fits within the larger trends of the SW galaxy during the PT era, within the EU, where everything is stagnating and ossifying and has become less flexible).

But even during the PT itself, we see that variation, a bit. Just less, just narrower.

Critics of the Jedi will make great hay about the teachings of the Jedi re: Emotion and Attachment. And to be clear, I think the Jedi are a little inflexible on that front, across all eras, but especially the PT.

But I would also say that in religion... doctrine is rarely so simple. Words... don't always mean their surface meaning. There's usually layer upon layer of deeper meaning. Theology is complicated. So we need to look as much at Jedi action as Jedi words. We need to consider that the code is as much aspirational as it is... dictatorial (in the sense of dictating action and thought).

Jedi are supposed to strive for that, perhaps, but I mean, most major religions I'm aware of tend to at least have some grasp of the idea that you can fail to perfectly live up to the goals of the religion, even make outright sins, and keep striving, keep trying to follow those teachings. There's some things that might be seen as unsalvageable and permanently condemnatory, but falling short? Probably not, for most.

So Critics of the Jedi have a tendency to take that very surface reading of the rules and the Code, and so on, and then assume they know what they mean, and attack the Jedi on that basis.

On the other hand... there are people who will take 'the rules' on a very strict, surface basis, and treat any falling short as unforgiveable. And those teachings, when more interpreted, can sometimes still be pretty strict. And there's enough variation in how we see Jedi behaving in the EU (and even in Disney Canon) and even in the PT itself that we can see some are more strict than others.

Defenders of the Jedi need to remember that that strictness will exist. That when you have teachings that are so seemingly restrictive on the surface, some people are going to take that surface as gospel. They're going to scratch the surface and, to quote Cordelia Chase, find just more surface. They are going to interpret things strictly.

There are going to be Jedi that are real assholes about the doctrines regarding Emotion and Attachment, real sticklers. Maybe they're as 'wrong' about their views as say, fundamentalists christians are (according to moderate and liberal Christians) or say, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists are about Islam (according to so many people who - rightly - point out that groups like ISIS and Al Queda etc don't actually represent all that there is in Islam and they get certain teachings wrong, etc). But they're still part of the Jedi and still creating that perception.

Jedi teachings are a religion, and religions are complicated, nuanced and full of layers. Words can have multiple or archaic meanings, there's often translations, there's context to how something was written thousands of years ago now forgotten by most and a million other things.

Jedi teachings are not simple. And at the end of the day, we're only getting what actually makes it into the material. There's going to have to be some interpretation and expansion.

There's a reason religion have a tendency to split into subsets. Almost every religion has sects and divergent tendencies and offshoots and heterodoxies and heresies and splits and subsects and so on and so on.

George didn't care about consistency, he could never imagine how pedantic we would all be. He was writing a mythology, his world was tailored to the story he was telling, in the case of the prequels that story was the fall of Anakin Skywalker.

So, the rules of the Jedi established in the prequels exist to be a thing Anakin can't do first and world building second.

It's a little clunky too, a bit of telling rather than showing. Sure, there's some philosophy there, that speaks to the broader themes of Star Wars, but at its core Jedi in the prequels can't get married, or build their world around people because Anakin is a guy who wants to get married. Jedi don't rescue Anakin's mom cause she needs to die. Jedi only take very young children so it can be too late to recruit Anakin. It's sewing the seeds of the tragedy.

That's the real reason Yoda doesn't lay them out in the OT. When people are like "these rules don't work!" Yeah, it's cause they were tailor made for one story.

That misconception has gummed up the works, because they have to address fans expectations about this thing or that thing when they were never really interested to be the axis around which the narrative pivots.

Hey! Sorry it took me so long to answer this!

Short answer: Love and attachment often go hand in hand, however, they are NOT the same thing.

Long answer:

At the end of the day, this question hinges on how you define love, and what kind of love you are talking about. The English language is quite limited when it comes to love, because there are many different kinds love. (I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we need to bring back all the Ancient Greek words for all the different kinds of love, they were on to something.)

Love in general is not forbidden for Jedi, which means that there are at least SOME kinds of love that do not require attachment.

As Anakin puts it:

Compassion/agape/unconditional love is essential to being a Jedi. And this kind of love is not attachment. This kind of love expects nothing in return. This kind of love is never jealous, is never possessive, and does not hinge on ego or desire. This kind of love is not physical or sexual. There is no "I love you, I want you, I need you," and instead, there is self sacrifice, there is generosity, and it transcends personal desire.

HOWEVER.

When it comes to romantic love, there is always some aspect of attachment. This kind of love (when shared between two people) does come with expectation: I expect you to support me emotionally, I expect intimacy, I expect communication, I expect commitment, I expect loyalty, etc… (might sound demanding, but put it this way: would you be with someone who didn't care about your emotions? Who never wanted to be intimate with you? Who refused to communicate? Who refused to commit to you? Who cheated on you? I hope the answer is no because that would be very unhealthy).

Romantic love without attachment can come off as very cold, and uncaring. If your romantic partner said, "Hey, I love you so much, but if you left me for someone else or died, I would let you go and get over it and be fine, it's just the way of life," you might be slightly hurt.

Romantic love is deep, biological (not only in the sense of "it's for procreation" because it's so much more than that, and so much deeper, it fills a need for human companionship, friendship, someone you can trust beyond trust, someone to share everything with), and at its core, romantic love requires some level of attachment. It comes with all that "I LOVE YOU, I WANT YOU, I NEED YOU" passionate emotional insanity which is also inherently possessive. Romantic love requires an acknowledgment of the ego, it feeds the ego: I love you, AND you love me, and that feels great.

Romantic love centers around the self. Romantic love stems from what you want. (I'd never tell my sister, "On your next date, don't think about what you want or what you are looking for, think about what the guy wants and be selfless" because that is the worst dating advice ever.) Romantic love is inherently selfish- you want to end up with the person that makes you happy!

AND THAT IS NOT A BAD THING.

Unless you are a Jedi. (If you need a reason why, please just watch the Star Wars Prequels and you'll have your answer.)

IN CONCLUSION

Love is NOT attachment, however romantic love inherently comes with attachment.