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  1. #16
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    I think it's something that's kind of commonly misunderstood-the Midichlorians are not the force, just how the physical body 'receives' it. Still not the best idea though.
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  2. #17
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    I think it more depends on what the Dark Side actually is. If it's using the force for evil, then I would view it as the first. However, if it's more about using emotion, positive or negative, to help with using the Force, then I would go with the second, and I am leaning towards that anyway. I view balance as being where one uses the Force for good, but uses everything the Force can offer. But that comes with challenges and it's not a one size fits all, or dogmatically doing one thing for a variety of circumstances. Take this scenario for example. A legion of Stormtroopers are about to slaughter children at a park or even an orphanage and a Jedi is the only one that can oppose them. Mind tricks won't work on so many, and the will be less effective if even one starts shooting and there are too many blasters for the Jedi to reliably deflect them back at the troopers or even catch them in midair. In this scenario the best skill for saving the kids is to use Force Lightning, almost always seen as a Dark Side technique in the movies, to either render them unconscious or kill them. Balance would mean that the Jedi will use the lightning to stop the Stormtroopers but not take pleasure in doing so or use more than needed. If they can be stopped without killing them, he'll do it. If the only option to ensure the children's safety is to kill the Stormtroopers, though, the Jedi will be willing to do that, too, but won't take any pleasure in doing so, but also would not regret doing so to save the kids, either. It will simply be a necessary act to save innocent children. To me, true balance is an internal and is not necessarily something that can be measured externally. One would know if if they see it, though.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegeta View Post
    It is different circumstances for the prequels and the original trilogy though. So when he introduced the idea of a "chosen one" prophecy and than states that it is fulfilled when Anakin returns to the light and eliminates the Sith by killing Palpatine it isn't so much "on the fly." He has thought this part out.
    That doesn't negate what I've heard about the story in the original films being partially made up almost on the fly, though. Was Luke's father killed by Vader or was he *actually* Vader? Just one example of Lucas not knowing precisely where he was going with the story, among others. Maybe what I've heard is wrong and Lucas always had things worked out and knew exactly how the Force worked, how and why it required balance, etc. But if what I've heard is correct then there was less of concrete plan and plot and more of a general direction, with the details worked out as they went along. Which, again, there's nothing wrong with that kind of storytelling and who could blame Lucas when he didn't know if he'd ever get to make a second film, it just reduces the importance I personally put on the original intent.

    And Lucas has tweaked and screwed with those films incessantly ever since, which again makes me less inclined to put "proper" weight on the original vision. Doesn't matter if he's just fixing the things he was forced to change back in the day because he had less control over the films, it's still changing the canon of the films and the more changes that are made, the less sacrosanct the original plans are.

    Balance meaning equal parts dark and light is rather too simplistic, imo. When doctors say "eat a balanced diet" they are not suggesting that for every healthy vegetable you eat, you should follow that up immediately with a sugary unhealthy donut!
    Then you should find a new doctor! Donuts are amazing!

    Seriously though, I don't think your parallel works. The Force isn't a person and it's clearly patterned along similar lines to a number of Eastern philosophies where "balance" does include the understanding that "light" and "dark" are both part of the natural order. The Force isn't in balance when there's exactly the same number of Jedi and Sith. It's in balance when the universe is humming along harmoniously and the circle of life isn't bent out of shape. Both the Jedi and Sith helped put it out of balance by putting themselves out of balance; the Jedi lost their way and started down the wrong path, and Palpatine was actively a miasmic quagmire that blurred and corrupted the Force all around him. If that wasn't the original plan, Lucas himself changed it with the prequels.

    Plus, in latter projects we see the very Eastern ideology of the Force at play; the Clone Wars episodes dealing with the Father/Son/Daughter come to mind. The Force was meant to balance the Son and Daughter equally, but as the dark side gained too much prominence in the cosmos, the Son's ambition and hate grew too much to be properly contained against the Daughter's light side. And there's some Force users in the middle, who tap both light and dark sides, like the Bendu (from Rebels) and Father, and they're often the most zen and balanced Force users in any given scene. I don't believe something like the Bendu could exist if the Force's two sides weren't meant to coexist equally.

    Perhaps the original idea was that the Force's imbalance was due to the dark side, and the Sith alone were what needed to go. I don't know Lucas' mind. But tons of material since then, including Lucas' own work, has presented a different opinion; that both the Jedi and Sith had become the problem. Plus, if both the Jedi and Sith were the problem, it makes Anakin's journey more interesting (I think). He didn't fail to live up to his destiny, the Jedi failed to understand what his destiny actually was. Just like when farmers burn a field for planting; you don't just get rid of the weeds, you get rid of everything so that new life may flourish.
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  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Enterprise E View Post
    I think it more depends on what the Dark Side actually is. If it's using the force for evil, then I would view it as the first. However, if it's more about using emotion, positive or negative, to help with using the Force, then I would go with the second, and I am leaning towards that anyway. I view balance as being where one uses the Force for good, but uses everything the Force can offer. But that comes with challenges and it's not a one size fits all, or dogmatically doing one thing for a variety of circumstances. Take this scenario for example. A legion of Stormtroopers are about to slaughter children at a park or even an orphanage and a Jedi is the only one that can oppose them. Mind tricks won't work on so many, and the will be less effective if even one starts shooting and there are too many blasters for the Jedi to reliably deflect them back at the troopers or even catch them in midair. In this scenario the best skill for saving the kids is to use Force Lightning, almost always seen as a Dark Side technique in the movies, to either render them unconscious or kill them. Balance would mean that the Jedi will use the lightning to stop the Stormtroopers but not take pleasure in doing so or use more than needed. If they can be stopped without killing them, he'll do it. If the only option to ensure the children's safety is to kill the Stormtroopers, though, the Jedi will be willing to do that, too, but won't take any pleasure in doing so, but also would not regret doing so to save the kids, either. It will simply be a necessary act to save innocent children. To me, true balance is an internal and is not necessarily something that can be measured externally. One would know if if they see it, though.
    The thing about the dark side is I think it’s at a more conflicting part of Star Wars’s mythos building, where the elements of Eastern Philosophy and Western Philosophy actually clash a bit because of how Lucas is applying them. And in some ways, that fuels the dispute over what “balance” means.

    Because Lucas is applying on one hand a very western morality play aspect to the dark side, while simultaneously invoking some Daisy and Buddhist aspects on the Force as a whole. So while there’s a temptation to see the Dark Side and Force as a “Yin and Yang” concept, there’s also a blatant and simple fact that the Dark Side is pretty clearly really fucking evil.

    Which really moves us to kind of a pseudo-Zoroastrian idea of duality, where the dark side is evil but part of the natural order… but I don’t think Lucas ever wanted that.

    On another note, the idea that there *should* be some kind of yin/yang thing with the Force is probably one of the biggest philosophical reasons why a lot of fans (like myself) want to see some “Jedi Reformation” that seeks harmony and enlightenment while still allowing emotion, attachment, and passion; the fact Star Wars has some strong elements of Western Romanticism only further adds to it, especially a since even creators who claim to support the “serenity only” Jedi constantly end up making exceptions because the story feels like it could use a romance.
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  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    On another note, the idea that there *should* be some kind of yin/yang thing with the Force is probably one of the biggest philosophical reasons why a lot of fans (like myself) want to see some “Jedi Reformation” that seeks harmony and enlightenment while still allowing emotion, attachment, and passion; the fact Star Wars has some strong elements of Western Romanticism only further adds to it, especially a since even creators who claim to support the “serenity only” Jedi constantly end up making exceptions because the story feels like it could use a romance.
    Agreed. I'll take it one step further too; at this point, to justify everything from Anakin's fall to Luke's failure with Ben and his latter realization that "the Force doesn't belong to the Jedi," the old ways *cannot* be maintained.

    The Jedi's stubborn dogmatic approach led to Anakin, among several others, falling to the dark side. It allowed corruption and ambition into their ranks and drove others, like Ashoka, away. It led to Grogu choosing attachment and Din over Luke and his Academy, and ultimately led to Kylo Ren killing Luke's students. Sure, for every Anakin there's hundreds of Jedi who never lost their way, but that's not really the point, is it? Every failure led directly and inevitably towards the Jedi's own demise. It's like the Death Star's weakness; out of hundreds of Jedi, you wouldn't think a handful of rogues would mean much, but that one small weakness doomed everything. And this repeated itself again with Luke's academy.

    There should always be Jedi in Star Wars. But the Jedi cannot be what they were in the Old Republic, and if they simply return to the old ways it renders the entire Skywalker saga moot. What's the point in everything that happened, from Jedi genocide to the collapse of the Sith on Exogol, if things just return to normal?

    No. We need a new Jedi Order, one that isn't susceptible to the same flaws and failings of the previous one. We need something that honors what came before, is honest about the ramifications the Skywalker saga should have wrought, and justifies Luke's BS in the sequels. We need a Jedi Order that has learned the lesson of Anakin Skywalker, and changed their ways in accordance and acknowledgement of the Force's own prophesy.
    Last edited by Ascended; 07-01-2022 at 12:11 PM.
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  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
    Agreed. I'll take it one step further too; at this point, to justify everything from Anakin's fall to Luke's failure with Ben and his latter realization that "the Force doesn't belong to the Jedi," the old ways *cannot* be maintained.

    The Jedi's stubborn dogmatic approach led to Anakin, among several others, falling to the dark side. It allowed corruption and ambition into their ranks and drove others, like Ashoka, away. It led to Grogu choosing attachment and Din over Luke and his Academy, and ultimately led to Kylo Ren killing Luke's students. Sure, for every Anakin there's hundreds of Jedi who never lost their way, but that's not really the point, is it? Every failure led directly and inevitably towards the Jedi's own demise. It's like the Death Star's weakness; out of hundreds of Jedi, you wouldn't think a handful of rogues would mean much, but that one small weakness doomed everything. And this repeated itself again with Luke's academy.

    There should always be Jedi in Star Wars. But the Jedi cannot be what they were in the Old Republic, and if they simply return to the old ways it renders the entire Skywalker saga moot. What's the point in everything that happened, from Jedi genocide to the collapse of the Sith on Exogol, if things just return to normal?

    No. We need a new Jedi Order, one that isn't susceptible to the same flaws and failings of the previous one. We need something that honors what came before, is honest about the ramifications the Skywalker saga should have wrought, and justifies Luke's BS in the sequels. We need a Jedi Order that has learned the lesson of Anakin Skywalker, and changed their ways in accordance and acknowledgement of the Force's own prophesy.
    That's the intuitive response towards Star Wars’s kind of “melting pot” mythos and philosophy…

    …But a lot of people either think that Lucas was being firm and final in constructing the final form of the Old Jedi Order, and thus don’t want to break from that out of respect for him, or want to try and add some moral relativity where the Dark Side is acceptable and good and evil are only “good” and “evil.”

    I understand the former opinion, and blame Rian Johnson and LFL’s crush on Kylo Ren for much of the latter’s fuel in the modern day (can’t bear to examine what Kylo’s doing from anything but a biased perspective, after all.) But I also think that both ideas are going to keep running into the problem caused by Star Wars’s dramatic formula - the audience wants bad guys to be opposed and defeated by good guys, with empathy for the downtrodden and abused is too key to that formula for moral relativity, and the inherent dramatic and passionate nature of the story also means that Jedi who only seek serenity will always be a bit “cold fish” compared to the exceptions *everyone* eventually makes.

    I also think it would benefit the story a bit to suggest that some Dark Siders, like Palpatine and Dooku, are examples of Dark Side power that comes more from the lack of compassion or empathy that can be a twisted cousin to the “no attachments” policy - that they’re Sith who aren’t really passionate or ruled by emotions the way the Jedi fear and the Sith Code, but instead so high on arrogance and a kind of messed up “serenity” that they become cold-blooded sociopaths.

    There was some speculation back in the heady, mostly positive post-TFA days of the ST that the “Grey Jedi” could be a lore-filled philosophical subplot of the ST - like, someone discovered that the Sith Code derives from an older version of the Jedi Code, but is corrupted by the dark side just like how the Jedi are limited by not recognizing what secret truths it contains.

    Like, “my chains are broken” can be a powerful heroic statement if used correctly, and if the twist with Ben Solo was that he was killing his attachments too much and becoming a sociopath thanks to the no attachments policy, that could have serious dramatic ramifications for the ST.

    Instead, we”be kind for got this weird hodgepodge where no one knows what “balance to the Force” means exactly, and we’re keep being torn between half-hearted attempts at moral relativity and more banal acknowledgements of the dramatic conventions of the franchise.
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  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    a lot of people either think that Lucas was being firm and final in constructing the final form of the Old Jedi Order, and thus don’t want to break from that out of respect for him, or want to try and add some moral relativity where the Dark Side is acceptable and good and evil are only “good” and “evil.”

    Instead, we”be kind for got this weird hodgepodge where no one knows what “balance to the Force” means exactly, and we’re keep being torn between half-hearted attempts at moral relativity and more banal acknowledgements of the dramatic conventions of the franchise.
    I think, on a purely conceptual level, that the tension between the Eastern and Western flavored philosophies can actually be beneficial. I'd even argue that the original films *did* do this; you had the magic space wizards playing with binary yin/yang forces, fighting next to smugglers and criminals who were only "heroes" or "villains" because of that moral relativity. I'm just spitballing here, but maybe part of the appeal is in how everyday, flawed people move through a galaxy governed by a binary cosmology of absolutes.

    I think the franchise works best when the Force itself is treated in vague, mysterious terms soaked in quasi-Eastern precepts. The light side is good. The dark side is evil. But the ways people themselves interact with those truths....well, everyone comes into things from their certain points of view. A lot of narrative road can be laid down by people doing good things for bad reasons, bad things for good reasons, and then suffering the blowback from a Force that isn't interested in their justifications.

    And I wish that Gray Jedi rumor had turned out to be true. If that was the new version of the Jedi that rose out of the sequels, I don't think I'd complain too much.
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  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
    I think, on a purely conceptual level, that the tension between the Eastern and Western flavored philosophies can actually be beneficial. I'd even argue that the original films *did* do this; you had the magic space wizards playing with binary yin/yang forces, fighting next to smugglers and criminals who were only "heroes" or "villains" because of that moral relativity. I'm just spitballing here, but maybe part of the appeal is in how everyday, flawed people move through a galaxy governed by a binary cosmology of absolutes.

    I think the franchise works best when the Force itself is treated in vague, mysterious terms soaked in quasi-Eastern precepts. The light side is good. The dark side is evil. But the ways people themselves interact with those truths....well, everyone comes into things from their certain points of view. A lot of narrative road can be laid down by people doing good things for bad reasons, bad things for good reasons, and then suffering the blowback from a Force that isn't interested in their justifications.

    And I wish that Gray Jedi rumor had turned out to be true. If that was the new version of the Jedi that rose out of the sequels, I don't think I'd complain too much.
    I personally prefer to think that Star Wars’s “actual” moral status quo is effectively Black and Grey-But-It’s-Still-Laudable Morality:

    Every now and then (or at least once per movie ), something indisputably evil is ordered or perpetrated, and our collection of flawed protagonists can either defy it and become anti-heroes or give into it and become monsters.

    It’s why I like the idea that maybe the Jedi underestimate and compartmentalize the “Light Side” too much, but are correct in figuring out that something is seriously wrong and un-natural about the Dark Side; that maybe the Dark Side is imbalance in the Force, tainted and poisoned by the malevolence of countless Dark Siders so that it’s corrupted from being with the Living or Unifying Force.

    Like, the Force might actually be totally fine with a broad spectrum of life and it’s inherent struggles, and be beyond the Jedi’s total understanding in spite of their best efforts, where some moral ambiguity is allowed because it emerges from the natural conflict of life - but that sentient beings can twist and pervert the Force into the Dark Side, something the Force (all of it) actually opposes on some metaphysical level.

    Like the Old Jedi don’t realize that there *is* some serious yin-yang stuff that’s natural and healthy for the Force, but are correct that there is something infernal about the Dark Side, and their mistake is in interpreting the Dark Side as arising entirely from from the “Yin”, and thus are at risk of assuming that too much “yin” inevitably leads to the dark side.

    How’s that for some “syncretic” moral philosophy for a fictional sci-fi/fantasy universe?
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  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    Like, the Force might actually be totally fine with a broad spectrum of life and it’s inherent struggles, and be beyond the Jedi’s total understanding in spite of their best efforts, where some moral ambiguity is allowed because it emerges from the natural conflict of life - but that sentient beings can twist and pervert the Force into the Dark Side, something the Force (all of it) actually opposes on some metaphysical level.

    Like the Old Jedi don’t realize that there *is* some serious yin-yang stuff that’s natural and healthy for the Force, but are correct that there is something infernal about the Dark Side, and their mistake is in interpreting the Dark Side as arising entirely from from the “Yin”, and thus are at risk of assuming that too much “yin” inevitably leads to the dark side.

    How’s that for some “syncretic” moral philosophy for a fictional sci-fi/fantasy universe?
    I think that's very much along my own thoughts actually. I think the Force does indeed have that yin/yang duality to it, and that is entirely healthy and correct. Death is part of the natural order, blah blah blah. But dark side *users* twist that natural order, and *that* is where the problems arise.

    And I think light side users are capable of doing the same. By the end of the Clone Wars, the Jedi were about to overthrow the government in the name of goodness and righteousness, without ever once touching the dark side of the Force. But despite the Jedi's noble intentions and the threat of Palpatine, is that the kind of thing the light side of the Force, which doesn't give a damn about politics and justifications, is meant to be? Were the Jedi not in the process of corrupting themselves without actively accessing the dark side?

    I find the idea fascinating; you have the two absolutes of the Force which are beyond mortal understanding and beyond mortal rationality. But the people who access that power are another matter entirely, and are capable of using either side of the Force in ways that go against the natural order of things. And that, I think, is why the Force was unbalanced and needed correction. It's not the Force itself, it's the people using it that put things out of shape, and the old Jedi are almost as guilty of that as the Sith.

    And of course, this opens the door for Gray Jedi to be official in the new canon. If you understand the nature of the Force and the yin/yang of its two sides, can you use both sides without fear of corruption? Supposedly Yoda studied the dark side (as an academic/philosophical thing) without being twisted by it. And so have some others, I believe? So if they can do it, shouldn't it be possible for a whole Order of new Jedi to do it?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegeta View Post
    Whatever the actual creator of Star Wars and the concept of the Force intended it to mean is the correct interpretation, obviously. It's not a literal scale (2 Jedi and 2 Sith).
    Which was the amusing notion I had, after that Phantom Menace movie, that Anakin indeed balanced things out from a universe with hundreds of Jedi and two Sith to a universe with *two* Jedi and two Sith. Note to the Jedi Council. Don't wish for balance *when you are winning.*

    But seriously, I do think both *some* bits of Jedi and Sith philosophy are valid, and *some* traditions are counterproductive. Stifling emotions and forbidding living connections, essentially preventing the guardians of humanity from *being human* or living human lives, seems like a terrible way for the Jedi to be running things, and the Sith are just chock full of terrible ideas.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sutekh View Post
    But seriously, I do think both *some* bits of Jedi and Sith philosophy are valid, and *some* traditions are counterproductive. Stifling emotions and forbidding living connections, essentially preventing the guardians of humanity from *being human* or living human lives, seems like a terrible way for the Jedi to be running things, and the Sith are just chock full of terrible ideas.
    I think, to put a more nuanced perspective on it, itks not so much that the Sith philosophy as presented and acted on has any valid aspects, but rather that sometimes the Jedi traditions and philosophy, at least when stated and applied in a dramatically targeted way, opens them up to clearly counterproductive statements or actions…

    …albeit I think it’s important to note those seemingly counterproductive traditions and philosophies seem to *only* get emphasized or even applied at all whenever it’s dramatically desirable for the creator - which is where I really have an issue with them.


    Like, in general, the Jedi act fine with emotions primarily because they’re characters in a story very much built with Romanticism - Obi-Wan is clearly attached to Qui-Gon as a father figure, Mace is traditionally written as having learned to use his emotions to fuel his usage of the Force yet isn’t a dark sider, Yoda is fond of acting like a grandfather towards Younglings, etc. And of course, we all know that George Lucas, Dave Filoni, and Rian Johnson (ugh) all love to ignore any anti-romantic thesis they may use elsewhere when they have a story idea for it - Lucas and Filoni both backed the Quinlan Vos and Assaj Ventress romance as a positive thing, Filoni wrote a healthy pseudo-marriage between Kanan and Hera, and Johnson enforced an abusive and shallow romance on Rey to favor his favorite man child in Kylo.

    And on top of that, whenever they do want to create conflict drama with the Jedi Code, they always tend to go too hard, pretty much ever since AOTC and it’s marketing made it pretty clear we were getting the “no attachments” rule so we could play with the “forbidden love” trope. Which is probably also why the Jedi code goes “there is no emotion” when it could instead go something like “my emotions don’t control me”; even when Lucas or others may enjoy the idea, and even think they can enforce a more esoteric and enlightened philosophy on the Jedi, it always ends up being applied only for either dramatic purposes or as an excuse for their own creative desires.

    …which creates that inconsistency in execution that could use some acknowledgement and debate in the lore, where a “Grey Jedi” in an orthodox sense can be used for dramatic material and some lore discussion, while a “Grey Jedi” in a moral sense still doesn’t really work.
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    …which creates that inconsistency in execution that could use some acknowledgement and debate in the lore, where a “Grey Jedi” in an orthodox sense can be used for dramatic material and some lore discussion, while a “Grey Jedi” in a moral sense still doesn’t really work.
    I'd very much like to see the ethical and philosophical debate in the actual lore. I find it hard to believe that, once the dust settled, nobody sat down and tried to figure out where things went wrong. Did no one try to understand why the Jedi Order, as an orthodox organization, fell? Did nobody think that maybe the same orthodoxy would create the same result?

    The Force might be a binary of absolutes, but people and the organizations they build aren't. Whatever rises from the ash of the sequels would do well, I think, to seriously consider the next logical step and make any changes necessary. Better than pretending the old ways were working fine and needed no adjustment. Hell, the failure of Luke's academy should be seen as proof that the old ways truly are dead, and should remain so.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
    I'd very much like to see the ethical and philosophical debate in the actual lore. I find it hard to believe that, once the dust settled, nobody sat down and tried to figure out where things went wrong. Did no one try to understand why the Jedi Order, as an orthodox organization, fell? Did nobody think that maybe the same orthodoxy would create the same result?

    The Force might be a binary of absolutes, but people and the organizations they build aren't. Whatever rises from the ash of the sequels would do well, I think, to seriously consider the next logical step and make any changes necessary. Better than pretending the old ways were working fine and needed no adjustment. Hell, the failure of Luke's academy should be seen as proof that the old ways truly are dead, and should remain so.
    Two great moments from the old Legends EU that’s no longer canon we’re a period in the New Jedi Order books where a highly unorthodox Old Jedi Order member named Vergere got into a debate with Jedi Master Luke - because Vergere was arguing for some unorthodox stuff while *also* arguing for other orthodox stuff - and a brief bit of “canon welding” in the Knights Of The Old Republic addressing why older comics had married Jedi with families while Lucas’s Jedi didn’t - with apparently opposing schools of doctrinal thought debating the point in-universe themselves.

    Now, since Vergere had the arguably more interesting, all-encompassing debate about morality, emotions, etc., it bares mentioning that later writers decided to retcon her into one of Palpatine’s Sith students, and given the lore experts of modern LFL were around for the Knights Of The Old Republic comic but still today argue firmly for a no attachments policy with an almost dogmatic zeal (…whenever it doesn’t get in the way of a romance they themselves want), we’re probably unlikely to see LFL get that daring and circumspect for a while.
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