Morality, Trust, and the Force–toward a new model of Force instruction

What went so fatally wrong with the Jedi Order?

It’s a recurring and fundamental question. Through the prequel, original, and now sequel trilogies we’ve watched the Jedi Order fall, rise, and then fall again. Unless they can end this cycle the end of Episode IX won’t be an end, but rather a prelude to a new tragedy.

I believe the old Jedi Order’s reliance on inborn Force power became warped into blood worship in Luke’s new Jedi Order, and Kylo Ren was a product of this repugnant and ahistorical belief. To overcome the mistakes of the old and new Orders, a new model of Force instruction must arise: One that does not rely on inborn talent and certainly not on the nonsensical idea that a lineage confers a special destiny or rights. Rather the new model must recognize and nurture the Force powers inherent in everyone, and instruction itself should be a horizontal process where the students teach each other.

Below I will lay out these ideas in more detail. First I will explain the progression from the old Jedi Order to the new one, and how discontinuity in history led to Luke’s mistakes and Kylo Ren. Then I will lay out the new model that I believe must take the Jedi’s place in order to prevent new Kylo Rens from arising, or at least minimize their damage, while also avoiding the mistakes of the old Jedi Order.

The Old Jedi Order: Meritocracy and forced obedience

We know quite a few details about the workings of the old Jedi Order prior to Order 66 and the fall of the Order. When it comes to selecting and instructing students for the way of the Jedi, they followed two main tenets:

First, select naturally strong Force users.

Second, induct them young before they form lasting attachments with family.

Jedi in the old Order, in other words, were skewed toward individuals with strong and inborn Force powers that manifested young. In order to ensure that these unusually talented people would not go astray and turn to the Dark Side of the Force, they were taken young enough that the attachments they would have formed with their families could be transferred to the Jedi Order–more specifically, the padawan’s own Master–the better to make them obedient to the Order’s will. The First Order would later on explicitly copy the second part of this model for their Stormtrooper program.

The most obvious failure of this model is the case of Anakin Skywalker, who failed the secod test and ordinarily would not have been made a Jedi. Some might even use his case to argue that the fault was not in the Jedi model itself but in the deviation from it.

The failure of the Jedi, however, was much more profound than the individual case of Anakin. The problems of the Republic and the Jedi preceded Anakin and were bigger than him, and the Jedi were complacent in these problems including the militarization of the Republic and the decline of its democracy. They did nothing about the plight of enslaved persons like Shmi, and they actively led the armies of clones created and enslaved for war.

The Jedi Order model worked for its intended purposes. In fact, it worked too well. It had become an entire order of powerful beings who were discouraged from independent thinking, who participated in and amplified the injustices of the Republic. Palpatine and Anakin may have ended the Republic and the Jedi, but they were able to do so because of the deeper failures of both institutions.

The New Jedi Order: Blood supremacy without safeguards

Though we do not have many details about Luke’s new Jedi order, we probably saw the beginning of his instruction methods with Obi-Wan Kenobi’s and Yoda’s teaching of Luke himself. The second part of the old Jedi Order’s selection model was no longer workable at this point, with the tattered remainders of the Jedi being in no shape to take in children and raise them to be Jedi.

Both Kenobi and Yoda were products of the old Jedi Order, however, and they still hung on to the first part of the model: the selection of Jedi for powerful inborn talent. Because they were unable to roam the galaxy looking for child talent, hunted as they were, they used the novel method of relying on a known Force bloodline–Anakin’s own children. They pinned their hopes on Luke and, should he fail, Leia, because they were out of options and certainly not because it was the traditional Jedi way. Out of these circumstances was born a pernicious belief that poisoned the future of the Jedi and brought about its destruction yet again.

Though we do not know much about Luke’s own Jedi school, Luke is likely to have applied the teachings he received to his own students. He probably did not put much stock in starting Force instruction young, having started training as an adult himself. One thing he did seem to have believed in, however, was the power of the Skywalker bloodline, in a jarring line from The Last Jedi:

My nephew with that mighty Skywalker blood. In my hubris, I thought I could train him; I could pass on my strengths.

As many have pointed out, this is a blatantly ahistorical vision of both the Jedi Order and the Skywalker line. The Jedi Order never selected candidates by lineage, but by individual merit. There was no mighty Skywalker blood, a family whose matriarch was an enslaved woman who lived and died on a backwater planet.

Is it so implausible that Luke himself at this time believed this manufactured myth, though? Kenobi and Yoda had died before they could teach him the full history of the old Order, and even if they spoke to him afterward I doubt they were completely candid about its failures. The fable about Skywalker blood was Luke’s own story of involvement with the Jedi Order, and one of the few things he knew–or thought he knew–about the Jedi. Kenobi and Yoda’s desperate plan may well have turned into a Skywalker myth in a universe where history itself was irreparably broken from massacres, terrors, purges, and outright rewritten pasts. The Empire’s own fixation with supermen and heritage may have been an influence as well, since Luke after all was a good citizen of the Empire for twenty years before he turned rebel.

So not only was the old Jedi’s belief in inborn meritocracy continued in Luke’s Jedi order, it took on an unbelievably more sinister form with the added layer of the Skywalker myth and all it implied–that certain bloodlines and people from those lines were special and were destined to save the universe. The proof was in recent history, after all, with three people who were born into or married into that line having freshly saved the galaxy.

Now imagine what this ahistorical yet powerful belief had on the mind of young Ben Organa-Solo. Imagine what it’s like to believe that you are born to a holy line and are destined to save the universe. All it would take is a little bit of entitlement, a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of narcissism. Combine these with your considerable personal power and the privilege you enjoyed your entire life, a welcome word whispered in your ear about how special and exalted you are, and there would be nothing to stop you from believing that you are, indeed, destined to be a god. Your power and desires are paramount values and the lives of lesser beings are nothing but kindling for your ambitions. There will always be some conflict because your parents and their friends loved you and taught you better than this, but these petty concerns of morality are fetters meant for lesser beings, bonds that you must break on your triumphant way toward your manifest destiny.

The stirrings of Kylo Ren were growing in the belly of Luke’s new Jedi Order, spreading to other students in what would become the core of the future Knights of Ren. Without even the weak and imperfect bonds that tied the Jedi to the old Order, there was nothing to restrain this new faction that would bring a new whirlwind of destruction. Luke was very right to see that the practice of taking children from their families was morally repugnant and ultimately futile. The problem was that he had failed to recognize the real need that had given rise to that practice, and had come up with nothing to take its place. His imperfect instruction in the ways of the Jedi, and more importantly its failures, had taken its toll and brought about tragedy and new war.

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.
It’s the only way to become what you’re meant to be.

Kylo Ren wasn’t entirely wrong when he said all the old edifices had to be destroyed. He is completely wrong about both the means and the endpoint, of course. The way to overcome the mistakes of the past is not to build an empire on a mountain of corpses, which is just a repeat of yet more crimes from the past. Rather, the way forward is to create something new that refutes the wrong beliefs that led to these mistakes in the first place.

So what is the way forward? If the Jedi must end, what should take its place?

A new model of Force instruction: Morality and democracy

What really needs to end is not the idea of Force instruction per se, but the whole idea of inborn Force meritocracy. Why not flip the whole idea of the Jedi on its head? They don’t have to be people with some special inborn talent. They most certainly don’t have to be from some special bloodline, which as explained above was never true of the Jedi in the first place.

If the Force is truly in everyone, there’s no need to select people for their power in the Force and then either try to restrain them (the old Jedi) or fail to restrain them (Luke’s new Jedi). Why not take on people who don’t need restraint in the first place, who don’t need to be treated like bombs about to go off?

Why not, in other words, take on already trustworthy people regardless of their level of Force powers, and instruct them in the ways of the Force?

The belief that only a select few people with special inborn powers can handle the Force has failed miserably and multiple times. It is irrational to keep trying the same thing when it plainly doesn’t work and has never worked.

What’s more, the method of Force instruction doesn’t have to be a vertical master-apprentice relationship, and there is no one left to be a Jedi Master anyway with most of them dead and Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren emphatically disinvited from all study sessions. Rather than Jedi academies the new model of Force instruction would be more like Jedi study groups, out of sheer necessity if nothing else. Obedience to the Order will no longer be a virtue. The new Jedi will have to seek a way forward together, seeking the meaning of the Force and the ethics of using it.

Yes, the individual users might not be as powerful as those of the old Jedi and Luke’s new Jedi. Classically powerful Force users like Rey would still have a place and play a major role, though. What’s more, there would be many more Force users of more diverse powers to meet potential evil Force users and other threats. If @themandalorianwolf‘s theory that Finn is a wound in the Force who awakens other Force users is true (link), more characters could awaken to their Force powers.

In sum, the Jedi model of meritocracy has been an unqualified failure and it is well past time to try something new. A new, democratic model of Force instruction would be a way to move toward a new future instead of repeating the mistakes of the past.