[Star Wars] how much fault lies in Master Yoda?

[CILinkz]

it is often depicted that the Republic wasnt the only one full of Corruption, but the Jedi Order aswell. festering Cracks that noone knew where they came from, Rot and Pride that they either never saw the Darkness infesting the Republic or too Prideful to see the cracks that happened under their own Noses. turning more into Politicians then Monks.

but i never saw a Story where Master Yoda was directly confronted with problems his decisions caused. he always was a Fan-favorite so i never saw any Bashing or personal failure which is kinda weird. he was the Grandmaster, everything was open to him, he was the highest Authority from the Jedi. but he never made any mistakes we saw? it was always either "i didnt see it" or some other Master was behind it and it never blew back to Yoda. maybe because he never made any decisions at all and let everyone else do as they pleased? and at the end when everything came out he always talked how regretful it was and that everything was his fault. what was his fault? which part as we never saw a decision or Mission that came back to bite him in the Ass or where he made a blatantly wrong call ( if we ever saw him doing anything ofc)

what you guys think?

 

[Kalem_Lee]

I kinda wonder about it thanks to rewatching the OT and some youtubers talkin about it. But while Luke was the only way(ignoring the living jedi) to kill the Emps despite his lack of training or at least the core value of what Yoda assumes is Jedi training, it's literally one dude against two of the most powerful sith lords around.

Crazy ass gambling there Yoda.

 

[Savinkov]

I think it was his wait and see approach that cost the Jedi order a lot. Not too mention his decision to not investigate further on certain matters.
Also, I would blame myself too if an organization that has stood for thousands years came to an end under my watch.

 

[Xintax]

Yoda was the origin of quite a bit of the rot perpetuating within the order, he held far too much personal influence due to the longevity of his species being what around 800 year old during the clone wars. That is to say that, around half of the high council were made up of his apprentices or their direct apprentices indicating that he had tremendous soft power to shape events/views for the order as a whole at the highest level. Add in the fact that he spent time mentoring the younglings and you can't point at someone with more fault for the fall of the order than Yoda.

It was ultimately his fear of the darkside and having jedi actually experience the temptation that the darkside promises that directly led to the collapse of the order. He also lacked in understanding the priorities of the younger generations within species that have far shorter lifespans making him Inherently ill suited for his role in the order, had he only occasionally given sage council but otherwise fucked off Ala Master Fey, the order itself wouldn't have had as many issues as it did.

 

[Soupervan]

The sith clouded their senses starting from Palpatine's Master, the plan was a long one of slowly increasing corruption so it would be even harder to see until it broke out into the clone wars by then everyone would be too busy.
Yoda was in charge of the Jedi so a lot of the blame is on him but.. we're used to seeing with our eyes, that's why it's so devestating when we go blind and why we have to get used to walking sticks and guide dogs and all the inconviences. Likewise the jedi are used to seeing with the force, they can't be entirely blamed when they're blinded by the dark side, though it is a major flaw in their training not to take the force with a grain of salt.

Yoda's worst failing was probably allowing and not fighting the updated code, the old code worked well for the Jedi since it was founded but then they changed it up into something that made them repress their feelings until they turned dark, with the old code Vader might have been less likely.

That they didn't allow jedi to marry also reduced the number of force sensitives- read future jedi- meaning they had a lot less jedi than they would have, maybe if they went by the old code even if Vader came to be and everything there would have been a lot more jedi that managed to escape or fight off the clone troopers, perhaps multiple jedi conclaves so Vader couldn't have slayed all the younglings instead causing the emperor to rely on less capable beings like droids or clones allowing a chance for even more future jedi's survival.
The rebellion could have then been over in a single movie instead of a trilogy if that happened... which probably is a good reason Lucas didn't go with the old code.

 

[CILinkz]

If yoda is so old and as grandmaster, isnt he the one who WROTE the new code? Who wrote it if not him or he atleast should have had a heavy hand in its conception. Is it really "allowing" something if your in charge of the whole thing?

 

[humon]

I'm coming into this fairly ignorant of SW lore, but it struck me to read someone say that Yoda was grand master for so long. I remember the old saying that science advances one funeral at a time. If you get someone at the top who can live 800 years, then that means no new ideas for 800 years... except for ideas of the subversive kind that take advantage of whatever particular weaknesses Yoda develops (the same way a virus adapts itself to better infect a chosen host). Nobody is perfect, and 800 years is a long time for the game theory of the natural world to test and probe at one individual. That's why we humans are supposed to die a lot sooner than that (and why AI could become a big problem for us -- imagine an intelligence that controls everything, can't see its own mistakes, and never ages out).

So I'd say the fault isn't with Yoda directly, but with the institutional stagnation that his long life resulted in. He is the embodiment of Osiris. And of course, like someone else suggested, his instinct after it all crashes down is to take radical ownership and ask himself what he could have done differently. After a failure like that, hiding on a swamp planet and refusing to train anyone else sounds about the right course of action, for someone who can no longer trust his own judgement.

I don't know exactly what his position on the dark side was (aside from his brief lectures in Empire Strikes Back), but from what people are saying in this thread, it sounds like he failed in the anti-fragility department. If he had coddled his students so that they never experienced the temptation of the dark side, then naturally they would be weak and fold easily when Palpatine comes knocking. But I don't know if that's what he did. It may just have been a case of good times creating weak men no matter who's in charge, and not even Jedi principles can stop Polybius from being proven right in the end, every time.

 

[Xintax]

I don't know exactly what his position on the dark side was (aside from his brief lectures in Empire Strikes Back), but from what people are saying in this thread, it sounds like he failed in the anti-fragility department. If he had coddled his students so that they never experienced the temptation of the dark side, then naturally they would be weak and fold easily when Palpatine comes knocking. But I don't know if that's what he did. It may just have been a case of good times creating weak men no matter who's in charge, and not even Jedi principles can stop Polybius from being proven right in the end, every time.

Click to shrink...

This is a good summation and is why the Courasant Jedi were so weak/bad when it actually came to getting things done and being productive elsewhere in the galaxy, they feared the temptation of the darkside far too greatly it wasn't only Yoda, however Yoda was the figure most at blame given his personal influence and word outright dictated most policies on the high council for more than 7 centuries growing his influence like a cancer over that time as the younger generations of jedi came and went. There is no denying that Yoda perhaps moreso than any other figure in jedi history had the most influence on dictating and guiding the order itself in part due to his lifespan and in part due to his power level within the force making him 'more right' when it came to listening to the will of the force.

There was quite frankly a lot wrong within the order that Yoda took part in seeing the effects of and never fought against, the fact that the order went from accepting people of all walks of life and backgrounds to being a cult which only accepted malleable children should have been a tremendous red flag. Only the core itself really has the resources to tag/test people for force potential basing the order away from the encounter trillions residing within the outer rim in favor of core. The outer rim mind that has had a consistent issue of being exploited by the inner rim, contents with constant slavery, piracy, smuggling and so many other issues that the jedi are nominally supposed to take care of should have been a tremendous red flag for anyone that had left the temple and been out that way at least once in their lifetimes.

The very notion that the jedi feared that the darkside would be too much of a temptation for the literal adults/teenager and slaves had some merit, but they wouldn't have had to fear such maladjusted people if they had been doing their job in the first place. Which in my mind shows how I'll suited Yoda and others were within the order were by the time of the clone wars in canon.

In essence the order went from a group of warrior monks that got shit done that was largely beneficial for people all over the galaxy into a cult, that dogmatically followed the will of the Core to the detriment of the wider galaxy.

This should have been widely apparent for just about anyone with 2 braincells to rub together which is why Qui Gon's death was such a tragedy, he was the only one calling the order out on it by the time of the first prequel movie and was why they labeled him a 'troublemaker' with some implications that it was only the fact that he was Dooku's padwan and thus Yoda's grandpadwan that prevented him from being booted from the council.

You can see this innate level of arrogance and general apathy within Obi Wan's dialog on Tatooine, someone who was raised from birth Basically within the order and was attached to the most 'radical' council member someone that actually called Yoda out on his shit leadership, yet he felt disdain for the way of life within the outer rim and to a lesser extent the inhabitants of the outer rim....his belief that the Lightsaber was a dignified/civilized weapon is also low key a give away for this organizational arrogance, we see in the actual era of the Old Republic, that jedi had no issues using blasters to get the job done and get it done fast should it be needed.

The battle between Qui Gon and Maul was called Duel of the Fates for a pretty blatant reason. Had Qui Gon survived the Anakin would have never fallen, and Dooku likely wouldn't have pulled away fully from the order and the plot to bring down the order would have faced far more competent opposition than it did in canon.

 

[CanYouMeme]

Two of the reasons why I don't hold much truck with the "Yoda caused the fall of the Jedi" theory are as follows.

1) A MASSIVE amount of Star Wars lore, canon and otherwise, is poorly constructed and illogical because people keep making shit up to try and cover the massive plot hole of "Lucas and co. never actually put much thought into it, so a bunch of the details are contradictory".

Example A; literally the entirety of the fight scenes. Jedi use cool laser swords because it's a throwback to the samurai action movies of Akira Kurosawa and the classical image of Sword and Sorcery that Tolkein inspired (and Lester del Ray - accursed be that rat bastard's name - bastardized). Capital ships have giant, stupid weak points like massive towers because it reminds the WW2 crowd of WW2 battleships and carriers. Fighters fly around the way they do to mimic WW2 and Korean/Vietnam War dogfights.

Almost all of the justifications for whatever is being justified in Star Wars run into this problem - George didn't care about what made sense, he cared about what looked cool and would put butts in movie seats. Which wouldn't be an actual problem...if folks consistently did actual research and work to mesh different ideas together.

What does this have to do with Yoda?

Simple - Episodes 1-3 are prequels, and therefor the Jedi must die to fulfill Episodes 4-6. Why put in effort to make the characters competent, cool, and competent-cool when you know they're just going to die like bitches anyway?

George decided the answer was - he wouldn't bother. So in EP 1-3, all the Jedi, from Anakin to Obi-wan to Yoda, are kind of fucking stupid. Mace Windu very narrowly avoided this because Samuel Jackson is a badass, and even he wasn't all that smart. And Clone Wars mostly took its cues from that.

2) There is nothing about the Jedi Code that says it must play out the way critics say it does.

Has it occurred to you that this code;

There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no chaos; there is harmony.
There is no death; there is the Force;

Could just as easily be used to make a group of badass mercenaries a la the Expendables? Templar Knight expies? Ottoman Janissaries? Batman/Superman cultists? Charity medical workers?

Why aren't there more stories about the Agricorps trying to terraform a hostile world while fighting against bandits? The Medicorps replicating the story of Seppala and Togo? So on and so forth.

But the Jedi had to die. The anti-del-Ray counterculture (mistakenly calling itself the anti-Tolkein counterculture) demanded it, the nature of 1-3 as prequels demanded it, and George in his desperate need to bitch about Bush and Iraq couldn't be arsed to end the Jedi properly.

<><><><><><><>

In short, Yoda didn't cause the fall of the Jedi. Because a sequence where Yoda actually, meaningfully caused the fall of the Jedi would look significantly different than what canon says happened.

Plagueis obscurring the Force, stagnation in the Jedi, and so many other ideas are kneecapped from the start by the simple act of attempting to answer questions that were never asked and nobody bothering to make sure their answers matched or made sense.

<><><><><><><>

Now, in the interests of intellectual honesty and not simply shitting on your question, @Xintax , there is one - and only one near as I can tell - thing Yoda could have done to prevent or at least slow the fall of the Jedi, which would have been both consistent with "canon" and would have been sensibly in character;

Giving an ironclad decree as Grandmaster of the Order that no Jedi is allowed to take a command role of any kind without either passing the classes of a respectable military officer program, or having substantial prior experience with command.

And if the Republic raises a bitchfit, tell them very politely to fuck off because an untrained CO is worse than no CO. In the meantime, Jedi will just go do Jedi things to help off the battlefield.

 

[humon]

There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no chaos; there is harmony.
There is no death; there is the Force;

Click to shrink...

I hadn't actually read this code before. Seeing it for the first time, it sounds kind of Buddhist (which wouldn't surprise me, given where Lucas drew his inspiration from). I would expect this to be the code used by a bunch of monks training martial arts in some mountain temple and trying to cope with the fact that the entire country outside their temple has been conquered by a vast army they have no hope of fighting directly. In other words, it sounds well suited to their hopeless situation in the OT, but not so great for an order that has to be in charge of anything.

And yes, I recall the prequels being rather weak. I haven't watched them in 25 years, but I could tell at the time that they weren't any kind of high art, we can safely say that. Still, coming up with fan theories to explain plot holes is a fun exercise in and of itself. And a special exception must be made for Empire Strikes Back, where the screenplay and directing was done by some other guys, which might be the reason it did so well in bringing out the philosophy of the Jedi. So I see that one as the core of the franchise and then everything else orbits it.

 

[CanYouMeme]

I hadn't actually read this code before. Seeing it for the first time, it sounds kind of Buddhist (which wouldn't surprise me, given where Lucas drew his inspiration from). I would expect this to be the code used by a bunch of monks training martial arts in some mountain temple and trying to cope with the fact that the entire country outside their temple has been conquered by a vast army they have no hope of fighting directly. In other words, it sounds well suited to their hopeless situation in the OT, but not so great for an order that has to be in charge of anything.

And yes, I recall the prequels being rather weak. I haven't watched them in 25 years, but I could tell at the time that they weren't any kind of high art, we can safely say that. Still, coming up with fan theories to explain plot holes is a fun exercise in and of itself. And a special exception must be made for Empire Strikes Back, where the screenplay and directing was done by some other guys, which might be the reason it did so well in bringing out the philosophy of the Jedi. So I see that one as the core of the franchise and then everything else orbits it.

Click to shrink...

IIRC - and I might be wrong, so investigate first - George didn't actually come up with the code. It's one of the first instances of someone patching holes George left behind, and generally accepted because it was first and has enough ideological value (derived or otherwise) to be accepted as something fitting for an order of space wizards using the immeasurable power of the force.

People forget that the Jedi Code is a code of conduct. The purpose of a code of conduct is to take the incapable and teach them how to be capable. A code of conduct intended to create aforementioned trustworthy super power space wizards by definition cannot be something easily twisted to other ends.

I don't mind theory crafting for fun. But when it comes to fanfiction and fanfiction writers, it is almost never "for fun".

Yeah, EmStBa is one of my favorites too.

 

[Neo3932156]

No, the blame lies solely on those who started this whole mess and those who let it happen for whatever reason. Yoda and the rest of the Jedi, when they find out, at least tried and sent their best to do something about it; and they didn't stop coming even when they keep dying doing it even when they don't have the numbers for it.

Giving an ironclad decree as Grandmaster of the Order that no Jedi is allowed to take a command role of any kind without either passing the classes of a respectable military officer program, or having substantial prior experience with command.

Click to shrink...

Although I do agree with most of your post, unfortunately this right here is unfeasible. Putting aside their responsibility to the Republic in which they derive their authority from, they know from the onset that the Trade Federation was a sith puppet/plot by the time of the Clone War. Meaning that regardless of the politics, they're gonna have to fight them anyway, might as well do it in a position where they have plenty of bodies as backup.

 

[CanYouMeme]

Although I do agree with most of your post, unfortunately this right here is unfeasible. Putting aside their responsibility to the Republic in which they derive their authority from, they know from the onset that the Trade Federation was a sith puppet/plot by the time of the Clone War. Meaning that regardless of the politics, they're gonna have to fight them anyway, might as well do it in a position where they have plenty of bodies as backup.

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I agree they need bodies, but almost all of the Jedi were unsuited to command a squad much less a legion. It would have been better to give the Jedi strategic command, but all other facets handed over to a Clone Commander. Or something, anything but actual full command.

Hell, have Yoda give an order for the clones to train the Jedi, that would have solved a lot of problems.

 

[Neo3932156]

I agree they need bodies, but almost all of the Jedi were unsuited to command a squad much less a legion. It would have been better to give the Jedi strategic command, but all other facets handed over to a Clone Commander. Or something, anything but actual full command.

Hell, have Yoda give an order for the clones to train the Jedi, that would have solved a lot of problems.

Click to shrink...

With what time? The TF is attacking after Geonosis and the Republic need their Commanders and Generals.

Also reminder that the Sith deliberately made the Clones rely on the Jedi for leadership, to ensure that they really get into the thick of the fighting.

 

[CanYouMeme]

With what time? The TF is attacking after Geonosis and the Republic need their Commanders and Generals.

Also reminder that the Sith deliberately made the Clones rely on the Jedi for leadership, to ensure that they really get into the thick of the fighting.

Click to shrink...

Your latter point honestly sounds like fanon. I wasn't the most hardcore nerd but I did read a majoroty of the work done from that time, and that doesn't strike a bell.

Before I continue, let me be clear - I'm not angry at you, because your question is a pretty good one. I'm trying to place extra emphasis on just how important it is to never be caught in the trap of letting ego masquerade as compassion.

As for what time? The time of "You [the Jedi in this case] dumb motherfuckers are being played like fiddles - sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, stop doing what you think is right, and stop letting the enemy play you like a con man creating a sense of urgency to sell you a timeshare".

In other words, have the humility to recognize when your skills are insufficient for the task you want to do, and don't fucking do it until they are because you are just dead weight - very fucking literally - if you go in half cocked.

 

[Neo3932156]

Your latter point honestly sounds like fanon. I wasn't the most hardcore nerd but I did read a majoroty of the work done from that time, and that doesn't strike a bell.

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I cannot deny the fandom part thing, I got it based from Sifo-Dyas original plan, from canon and wookiepedia, of using the behavorial biochip to safeguard the Clones from being misused by rogue Jedi. I just extrapolated from there.

As for the latter part,

Hate to say this, but practically everyone in the galaxy was played like a fiddle, if the Jedi's was played like that, I very much doubt your average inexperience military officers will be much better in that regard. Not to mention the Sith literally plotted for the Jedi to lead said Clone army.

How would this hypothetical military leader find out about the Jedi and/or the war being played as a fiddle, especially when by all indication they were winning impossible odds and even pushing back?

And even if there were someone else to lead said army, they're more likely to be assassinated or shamed in such a way for the Jedi to be forced to lead.

I stand by my initial position, both Jedi and Yoda did nothing wrong, or at least not enough to be primary blamed for Palpatine and his predecessors millennium of plotting. They're more victims than contributor really when you think about it, and the few faults they do have are mostly focused internally and benign to the rest of the galaxy.

 

[humon]

At this point you guys are doing the same thing that was called out above, which is arguing about plot holes and hypotheticals. So I don't think that's going to go anywhere.

All we have as evidence is what was shown in the movies, which isn't much to go on. Lucas was probably trying to retell (in greatly simplified form) the story of the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire, and to a lesser extent the story of the Austrian painter and the jingoist groupthink of Dubya's regime. So I guess a parallel question might be: Are Cicero and Cato responsible for the fall of the Republic? Is Neville Chamberlain responsible for World War 2? I don't know what the Bush parallel would be, but in all cases I think the answer would be something like: "Maybe to some extent, but it's a lot more complicated than just that, and we certainly can't forget the primary actor these guys were all reacting to, plus I'm not sure that any of us would have done any better in their shoes, with what they knew at the time". Though that isn't to say we shouldn't still ask these questions. The more we understand about the mistakes of history, fictional or otherwise, the better prepared we are to navigate similar crises in the future.

Anyways, as far as jedi leading clone troopers into battle, my guess is that Lucas did this because that was the medieval model, where knights led retainers and conscripts into battle. The knights weren't chosen for their competence, only for their ancestry and their ability to afford the equipment of war (though they did at least gain or lose status based on their prowess at killing), but at the same time the common soldiers were not well trained either, having been levied off a farm and handed a spear and sent to hold a line somewhere.

So to adapt that into sci-fantasy, you might say the clone troopers were trained for all of their short lives to be good at following orders but not so great at giving them, which meant that they had to be led by people the Republic could trust to serve their interests, which had to be the Jedi. Probably some of them were good commanders, others were shit, and maybe they gained or lost status based on how many droids they killed and clones they lost... or maybe their status was purely a function of their Force affinity, so that shitty leaders got promoted to generals if they could lift X-wings out of a swamp. More speculation, and it probably doesn't matter in the end. What happened was what the script said was supposed to happen.

Should the script have been written differently? I don't know. From a cinematic perspective, almost certainly. From a philosophical perspective, I don't know. I find the idea compelling that the prequels show a civilization that's deep in decadence and decline, which Obi'wan remembers with rose-coloured glasses only because that's what he grew up in and he never knew anything else. I might have wanted the fall of the Republic to play out over a longer time period, like 100 years rather than just three years, but then it would have been difficult to make a trilogy about it with a consistent set of characters (although C-3PO could have been the link through it all, if they'd kept his 100-year backstory instead of having Darth fucking Vader build him... whatever). Alternately I might have skipped the question entirely and had episode 1 start with the Empire already in power, and the prequels would only be chronicling the rise of the rebellion, and Leia's entry into it (so that episode 3 ends with Leia's ship on its way to Tatooine, kind of like how Rogue One did it).

 

[TheGrog]

If yoda is so old and as grandmaster, isnt he the one who WROTE the new code? Who wrote it if not him or he atleast should have had a heavy hand in its conception. Is it really "allowing" something if your in charge of the whole thing?

Click to shrink...

Nah, the 'new' code predates/co-dates him if I remember right. The Ruusan Reformation happened ~1000 BBY and the new code was sometime after. Yoda was born about a century after it so he was likely taught under it or was a 'low' level Master when it finished coming into force.

A good part of the whole situation is Yoda's fault since he has the responsibility and the authority. But Plageus and Sidious primarily exploited existing problem in the Republic.

 

[sinereal]

Yoda became a Master ~800BBY.
He's had a hand in influencing every youngling for at least the last 700 years, before canon.
He is also pretty much an exemplar of what the Ruusan Reformation was trying to achieve, in neutering the Jedi: a politician, sage, and someone capable of combat but poor at warfare. A servant of the Republic, not a (Jedi) Lord.
You could say it was Yoda and his beliefs, his teachings, that directly led to the stagnation of the order, once everyone but Fay died--and the fact that she stayed away from the Temple is telling.
Even most of the corruption in the Senate can indirectly be traced back to Yoda: if he had instructed the Jedi under him to not tolerate corruption, to seek it out and expose it where they found it, then it never would have been allowed to fester in the Senate. Except that goes against the Ruusan Reformation and the idea of the Jedi being servants to the Republic (and thus the Senate).

...All things I need to get into in my own story more in depth at some point in the future.

Nah, the 'new' code predates/co-dates him if I remember right.

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It predates Yoda being a Master, but not by much.

 

[TheGrog]

That's a better explanation than I wrote. Yoda was basically the intended product of the Reformation and its new code. I just don't really blame him for being what was he was taught from a very young age to be. The real fault lays more with the Jedi that created and led the Reformation.

Also highlights some of the problems of having very long lived leaders when most of the population is not. Yoda's blind spots had many generations to fester and he in turn had centuries to get used to the situation imperceptibly worsening without the shocks that a short lived Master would have gotten while growing up in recent times..