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Author Topic: Were the Jedi celibate?  (Read 6877 times)

Ratman_tf

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« on: May 07, 2020, 12:07:09 PM »
I've seen this comment pop up in the fandom from time to time.

I don't remember any time in the prequels were it's claimed the Jedi were celibate. They were forbidden to form attachment, but friendships were clearly tolerated, and a general "love your fellow man (being)" ethos was encouraged.

So, could Jedi get it on, as long as they didn't form an attachment? Could Jedi form families? How did this affect alien Jedi who maybe had different ways of relating to their mates and offspring?
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Shrieking Banshee

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2020, 01:47:17 PM »
Answer is no and the prequels fucked up majorly because of this. Its a mix of Bhuddism and Christianity. The end result is incongrous with itself.

Thornhammer

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2020, 02:23:17 PM »
"No passion?  Heh!  Misled, you have been.  Many younglings have I left behind.  Hiding on Dagobah?  Not just from Empire."  Yoda chuckles and slowly shakes his head.  "Much child support, Master Yoda owes.  Collect now, they will not."

jhkim

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2020, 02:33:48 PM »
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1129124
I've seen this comment pop up in the fandom from time to time.

I don't remember any time in the prequels were it's claimed the Jedi were celibate. They were forbidden to form attachment, but friendships were clearly tolerated, and a general "love your fellow man (being)" ethos was encouraged.

So, could Jedi get it on, as long as they didn't form an attachment? Could Jedi form families? How did this affect alien Jedi who maybe had different ways of relating to their mates and offspring?
Prior to the prequels, the Jedi were assumed to have families and were portrayed as such in the expanded universe. But as of the prequels, the canonical answer is that the act of sex isn't strictly forbidden as such, but attachments are forbidden and it's certainly against the portrayal of the prequel Jedi for them to engage in casual sex. None of the canonical Jedi are portrayed as engaging in casual sex, or having families.

I understand there were some potential romantic encounters in the Knights of the Old Republic video game -- but it's unclear what those represent. (Are they breaking the Jedi rules like Anakin and Padme?)

It's dumb, like a lot of things in the prequels. Actually, as of the prequels, I've found the Jedi to be not just dumb but actively horrible and evil -- thuggish killers whose only redeeming feature is that they're not quite as bad as the Sith they want to exterminate.

Armchair Gamer

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2020, 03:18:00 PM »
Quote from: jhkim;1129146
Prior to the prequels, the Jedi were assumed to have families and were portrayed as such in the expanded universe. But as of the prequels, the canonical answer is that the act of sex isn't strictly forbidden as such, but attachments are forbidden and it's certainly against the portrayal of the prequel Jedi for them to engage in casual sex. None of the canonical Jedi are portrayed as engaging in casual sex, or having families.

I understand there were some potential romantic encounters in the Knights of the Old Republic video game -- but it's unclear what those represent. (Are they breaking the Jedi rules like Anakin and Padme?)

   My understanding in the old canon--or at least my headcanon--is that the celibacy rules only get introduced after the last Sith War as part of the Order's "play it safe, avoid anything that might lead to the Dark Side" approach. (This is the same reason they start only training babies.)

Ratman_tf

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2020, 03:27:17 PM »
Quote from: jhkim;1129146
It's dumb, like a lot of things in the prequels. Actually, as of the prequels, I've found the Jedi to be not just dumb but actively horrible and evil -- thuggish killers whose only redeeming feature is that they're not quite as bad as the Sith they want to exterminate.

Ugh. I agree that the Jedi were not well thought out in the prequels and it brought up a lot of odd questions about how their system actually worked, but the idea that the Jedi were actively evil is as tedious as the idea that the Empire were really just misunderstood "good guys".
« Last Edit: May 07, 2020, 03:30:12 PM by Ratman_tf »
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GeekyBugle

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #6 on: May 07, 2020, 07:26:33 PM »
Quote from: jhkim;1129146
Prior to the prequels, the Jedi were assumed to have families and were portrayed as such in the expanded universe. But as of the prequels, the canonical answer is that the act of sex isn't strictly forbidden as such, but attachments are forbidden and it's certainly against the portrayal of the prequel Jedi for them to engage in casual sex. None of the canonical Jedi are portrayed as engaging in casual sex, or having families.

I understand there were some potential romantic encounters in the Knights of the Old Republic video game -- but it's unclear what those represent. (Are they breaking the Jedi rules like Anakin and Padme?)

It's dumb, like a lot of things in the prequels. Actually, as of the prequels, I've found the Jedi to be not just dumb but actively horrible and evil -- thuggish killers whose only redeeming feature is that they're not quite as bad as the Sith they want to exterminate.

Yes, yes, agreed, the prequels turned the Jedi in just an extremist cult in some regards worst than the Sith.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1129149
Ugh. I agree that the Jedi were not well thought out in the prequels and it brought up a lot of odd questions about how their system actually worked, but the idea that the Jedi were actively evil is as tedious as the idea that the Empire were really just misunderstood "good guys".

Both the Jedi and the Empire can be the baddies with the Sith aligning themselves with the Empire to get help in fighting those who seek to exterminate them.
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Lurkndog

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #7 on: May 07, 2020, 09:13:15 PM »
Given that Force ability is clearly depicted as a genetic trait, wouldn't that mean that celibacy was self-defeating? By selecting for force sensitivity, and then demanding that their members be celibate, the Jedi would effectively be breeding force abilities out of the general population.

Of course, the prequels also imply that the Jedi order had lost its way to some extent.

Shrieking Banshee

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2020, 09:22:26 PM »
Quote from: Lurkndog;1129203
Given that Force ability is clearly depicted as a genetic trait, wouldn't that mean that celibacy was self-defeating? By selecting for force sensitivity, and then demanding that their members be celibate, the Jedi would effectively be breeding force abilities out of the general population.

An argument can be made that the force is evil and is incredibly dangerous without insane self control and the Jedi work to eliminate the force from the galaxy.

Thats what the prequels and sequels taught me anyway.

Lurkndog

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #9 on: May 07, 2020, 11:58:32 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1129204
An argument can be made that the force is evil and is incredibly dangerous without insane self control and the Jedi work to eliminate the force from the galaxy.

Except they don't, in any way, do that. And the Force is explicitly defined as having a light side in addition to the dark side.

In Star Wars Rebels, we saw the Empire attacking force users via the Inquisitors, but that was an "if you're not with us, you're against us" situation. The Empire didn't deal in ethics, to put it mildly.

jhkim

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #10 on: May 08, 2020, 02:27:40 PM »
Quote from: jhkim
It's dumb, like a lot of things in the prequels. Actually, as of the prequels, I've found the Jedi to be not just dumb but actively horrible and evil -- thuggish killers whose only redeeming feature is that they're not quite as bad as the Sith they want to exterminate.
Quote from: Ratman_tf
Ugh. I agree that the Jedi were not well thought out in the prequels and it brought up a lot of odd questions about how their system actually worked, but the idea that the Jedi were actively evil is as tedious as the idea that the Empire were really just misunderstood "good guys".
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129189
Both the Jedi and the Empire can be the baddies with the Sith aligning themselves with the Empire to get help in fighting those who seek to exterminate them.
The Jedi's moral code doesn't even include opposing slavery. If Anakin was just a child slave and didn't have force powers, they wouldn't have lifted a finger to help him -- as indeed they did nothing for his mother. When given the "gift" of thousands of people with abusive childhoods, they decide "Hey, let's take these kids and use them as shock troops." There is no effort to give them rights or help them recover from their abusive childhoods. They don't just tolerate slavery -- they actively participate in it.

More broadly, they act to violently enforce the law, with no question of whether the law is wrong or right. The only exception to this, it seems, is if the law is by a Sith -- in which case they try to kill them. As Palpatine rose to power, they had some thought that it was a bad direction -- but they took no action against him. It wasn't until they learned he was a Sith that they acted. If he had just been a non-Sith bad guy, it's unclear when if ever they would have opposed his rule. Maybe they would have, but given that they took no action even to oppose slavery, he'd have to go very far for them to actively oppose him. They took wholeheartedly to owning a slave army and violently suppressing the Separatists, after all.

As portrayed, the Separatists are evil -- but the Jedi attack them not because they're evil, but because they are Separatists. They don't take any action - even mild action - to oppose other evil regimes like the Hutts.

Omega

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #11 on: May 08, 2020, 02:41:35 PM »
The answer is simple really.

There is no answer.

Whatever has been presented before can and will get tossed right out the window and turned on its head without warning.

Jedi have families and emotions.
Something in between.
Jedi dont have families or emotions.
Something totally fucked up like all Jedi and Sith are force babies with no father. Or Jedi are really vampires that need to suck the midiclorians from the veins of the living!

Ratman_tf

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #12 on: May 08, 2020, 02:49:04 PM »
Quote from: jhkim;1129302
The Jedi's moral code doesn't even include opposing slavery. If Anakin was just a child slave and didn't have force powers, they wouldn't have lifted a finger to help him -- as indeed they did nothing for his mother. When given the "gift" of thousands of people with abusive childhoods, they decide "Hey, let's take these kids and use them as shock troops." There is no effort to give them rights or help them recover from their abusive childhoods. They don't just tolerate slavery -- they actively participate in it.

More broadly, they act to violently enforce the law, with no question of whether the law is wrong or right. The only exception to this, it seems, is if the law is by a Sith -- in which case they try to kill them. As Palpatine rose to power, they had some thought that it was a bad direction -- but they took no action against him. It wasn't until they learned he was a Sith that they acted. If he had just been a non-Sith bad guy, it's unclear when if ever they would have opposed his rule. Maybe they would have, but given that they took no action even to oppose slavery, he'd have to go very far for them to actively oppose him. They took wholeheartedly to owning a slave army and violently suppressing the Separatists, after all.

As portrayed, the Separatists are evil -- but the Jedi attack them not because they're evil, but because they are Separatists. They don't take any action - even mild action - to oppose other evil regimes like the Hutts.

The alternative is Jedi vigilantes without even the slight responsibility to the Republic that they had in the prequels.
Tatooine was outside the Republic. As peacekeepers for the Republic they had no juristicion there. Sending in a Jedi strike team to liberate all the slaves would not have ended slavery on Tatooine. They would have to annex Tatooine and enforce Republic law there.
Maybe the Jedi were in the wrong to place themselves (or to have been placed) in the role of peacekeepers for the Republic, but if not, then they would have no place supporting either the Republic or the Seperatists.
But like I said, the prequels didn't have a clear vision of what the legalities of Jedi police actually meant. Can the Republic force the Jedi to kick out a corrupt member? Do they enforce petty laws, like littering and jaywalking? Are there departments that oversee Jedi enforcment of laws? None of this is covered and so we're left to speculate.
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Ghostmaker

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #13 on: May 08, 2020, 03:00:34 PM »
IIRC, one of the Jedi council, Ki-Adi-Mundi, was specifically given permission to have a family due to his species' relatively low birthrates.

Which of course muddies the water further. Man, Star Trek's explanation of Vulcan logic was more consistent.

David Johansen

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Were the Jedi celibate?
« Reply #14 on: May 08, 2020, 05:00:22 PM »
Quote from: Thornhammer;1129144
"No passion?  Heh!  Misled, you have been.  Many younglings have I left behind.  Hiding on Dagobah?  Not just from Empire."  Yoda chuckles and slowly shakes his head.  "Much child support, Master Yoda owes.  Collect now, they will not."


Really, that's very close to how I thought Rey's parentage would work.  Suppose you're Luke Skywalker, last Jedi, bearer of the Skywalker Jedi Genes (TM) and its all falling apart and the Sith are winning again because Disney lacks the conviction to innovate, so you go and you spread those Skywalker Genes, you spread 'em til your junk drops off and twenty years later you back track and collect all those dozens of super force sensitive kids and train them in secret.  Really, the Bene Gessert would have a field day with the Star Wars universe.
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