1872 Two Ways.

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People hate gray areas, but in reality things aren’t always cut and dried. Jo often expresses the idea that she lives in the areas between. She may not phrase it n a way that spells it out the way I am, but she does. Ambiguity makes people uncomfortable, but the older I get the more it seems like ambiguity is something everyone has to come to terms with eventually. Some people fight it like mad, others accept it. I do a bit of both, which is basically how I do everything. Whatever works in the moment.

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Always loved that quote… “Only a Sith deals in Absolutes”…. And Obi-Wan never realizes that’s an Absolute? The absolute epitome of Irony, spoken with a straight face.

Star Wars is full of deep sounding nonsense. “Do, or do not, there is no try.” It means fucking NOTHING.

I used to Bulls-Eye womp-rats in my t36 back home they’re not much bigger than 2 meters.

“Do you judge me by my SIZE?” —Yoda’s pickup line.

I’m getting flashbacks to the Ani Star Wars musical with all these quotes

Heh, heh!
That makes me think- there’s a cartoon from the 1978, Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s on youtube.
Please watch this cartoon, before some youtube goob takes it down-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC2Q6ANLXQ0

In this cartoon, Boba Fett has a voice, + he sounds like the, “we don’t need to see their identification”-stormtrooper, in the 1977…Star Wars film.

I was under the impression that “Do, or do not, there is no try” meant that there is no such thing as trying. You’re either doing something or you’re not.

You either epic win, or fail like Starscream. The choice is yours. I don’t know about that though. You only succeed if you’ve failed a few times.

There is no failure – only a learning experience.

~ pretty much any science instructor or prof who actually knows what science is.

My understanding of the advice there is that Luke already knows this stuff, he has the skill and the training, so he should be able to do it and the failure would be either on him or enemy action. It’s useful eastern philosophy advice, if you’re trained. Useful for many fields actually, and doesn’t require that the teacher be wizened or to look Asian.

Unfortunately, it’s used incorrectly by people who like Star Wars but don’t really understand. Used on a neophyte, it can lead to paralysis as they CAN’T succeed without trying and likely failing, and so don’t try.

Exactly. “Do or do not,” is actually an old adage of early China in the vein of Confucius type sayings. It means you are either doing it or you aren’t, and if you do nothing, it’s as good as failing.

The more modern saying is it is better to try and fail than to do nothing and never know.

Well, technically that’s the essence of Zen. Living in the Now means whatever you are doing, you’re DOING. “Trying” implies an awareness of the future that Zen tries to eliminate. Anybody who’s read even a little about Zen Buddhism should recognize that what Yoda is really saying is, “Concentrate on what you’re doing, not on “trying” to do it”

But, as Jackie said above, Star Wars is full of misplaced and out-of-context snippets like that.

You can lay the blame firmly and squarely on Lucas who never was much for doing research outside of “this sounds cool”, “”I” like it” and to heck with getting it right because that takes time, effort and understanding which I have no time for.

Context is everything. In the scene, Luke’s being a whiny defeatist(“Always with you it cannot be done”) about his space-truck that he got stuck in the mud.

Yoda’s telling Luke that if he goes in there believing that he can’t do it, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. He’ll “try” and fail, because he didn’t put in his best effort.
Luke needs to trust in his power and skill, go in there with his head held high, and give it his all if he wants to get his space-truck out of the mud/defeat the empire and restore peace to the galaxy/get what he wants out of life.

The message is a little muddled through the “crazy hermit” act*, but not THAT muddled.
Even clearer a little later with the exchange: “I don’t believe it.” “THAT is why you fail.”

ALL THAT SAID, he’s the wizened monk teacher, he knows it, and he plays his cliche to the hilt just as Obi-Wan did before him. Cryptic advice and keeping your cards close to your chest is key to the role, even if it makes you a terrible teacher in reality.

*Speaks like this he does, yes! Until he decides to drop it and start talking like a jedi again. Suddenly his voice shifts down an octave and his grammar is impeccable. That people forget it was an act to conceal his identity bothers me somewhat.

It wasn’t just an act. He kept talking that way well after Luke knew who he was. “Your father he is.” “Last of the Jedi will you be.” Etc., etc.

Well, he’s a bit senile being so old, but when Yoda gets serious, it’s exactly as ME says. His voice drops an octave and he speaks just like everyone else.

Luke: “I’m not afraid.”

Yoda: “You will be. You. Will. Be.”

OR

Yoda: “Control! You must learn control!”

IIRC from some earlier expositions and analysis of the movies, Yoda was translating on the fly so he was using his native speech pattern. A number of modern languages have a similar sentence structure – early versions of Babelfish and such fell victim this incompatibility between grammars.

When he was serious he put effort and conscious though into conveying exactly what he wanted to say without ambiguity.

I see this with some of my multi-lingual friends and relatives who picked up English latter on in life. Mind you when the words fly some words do not get translated and you have to either know the other language, make a best guess or be quickly lost in the conversation.

I actually really like this take. It’s more interesting than mine, which was just that he’s been playing the role for so long that he slips back into it easily.

“Do or do not, there is no try”

“So how come if you’re so strong with the force you never tried to stop the Emperor from taking over the republic?”

“…..more rocks, you must lift…..prick”

Hee hee hee!

“The PLOT was not on my side, you freakin’, young, smart-Alek, twerp, of a Skywalker!
So, keep doing what I say!…or I MAKE you watch…CORVETTE SUMMER…again, and again!”
:)

“Established military I was. Guerilla resistance you are. Predictable I am. The unseen snake is deadliest, yes! ”

“I’ve seen nothing BUT snakes since I landed on this slimy mudhole. Look, I’m just gonna leave you and R2 alone for a while. I told him to trim your ear hair. Thank me later.”

Tell that to my father. (You’ll need a time machine.) “MUSS NO TRY!!! ***!!!DO!!!***” And he really, absolutely, 100% meant it. I don’t think he ever even saw Star Wars.

*sigh* Idiot cousin of *Yoda*, my father he was. The same syntax, more or less, although somewhat more consistent.# The same… *twitch*… teaching methods. As he got into his 80s, he was even getting on for the same height! And shape! XD But… BUT… much anger, this one he has! And he was completely, utterly, immune to wisdom! Well no, he did say some good thing sometimes, but his choices were horrifying!

#: It’s my theory that after years of isolation in the Dagobah swamp, it took a bit of conversation for Yoda to remember the right grammar for the language not native to him. I guess my father had complicated problems with right and wrong. It wasn’t just grammer or important choices, on returning from shopping he would often confidently and loudly announce, “I am going to put the kitchen in the chicken.” The mental picture was always amusing! :D

I always thought that line was hypocritical, myself.

I think it comes from two things. 1: The problem of failing because you’re not trying in the right way. 2: Harsh power structures at every level of society, where a father MUST get his sons to do certain things, but doesn’t know how because nobody knows how in his culture and era. Oh and 2a: Masters getting what they want out of their servants and slaves. In the latter case, whether the master is callous or desperately in need of supplying the local ruler’s demands makes little difference.

For a moment, I was surprised Brits don’t do it too, but then I realise they do; they did it to me when I was young. They just word it differently. It’s all a need to get results without sufficient ability to communicate and teach. There’s never guaranteed to be sufficiently adequate communication methods with any given student at any given time, human brains don’t work that way. So, this phantom of succeeding without first making an effort appears out of pure desperation, or in some cases greed. As for the different wording, foreigners could be excused for misunderstanding/misusing the word “try”. IMO, both Yoda and my father misused the word.

Not to mention, in New Hope, Obi-wan described Vader as “only a master of evil”, which sounds pretty absolute.
Oh, well, Jedi philosophy never struck me as particularly coherent.

I honestly thought Jo would be more upset with this turn of events. She’s full of surprises…

Jo like/loves most if not all the people she works with despite some obvious flaws.
She can still be disappointed in them though.

What Jo hasn’t considered is the possibility that the exaggeration was, in itself, an attempt at manipulation–of her, rather than of the friend. By setting Jo up to expect Jess playing active headgames and making strong implied promises of sexual favors, and then revealing that no, she’s mostly just not actively shutting him down, she winds up downgrading the actual offense that Jo might feel.

I always found the phrase ‘only a Sith deals in absolutes’ to be ludicrously hypocritical, considering how absolute the entire Jedi Council was, which was the primary reason they fell so hard. The Jedi Council hemmed themselves in with absolutes left and right. And it was their absolute view on emotion that gave Palpatine the opening he needed to turn Skywalker.

Jedi vs Sith isn’t Good vs Evil, it’s Law vs Chaos, ultimate discipline vs ultimate anarchy, and both paths are inherently flawed. It was like early philosophy in India, you had Asceticism and you had the Hedonists imported from Greece (which didn’t exactly mean what it does now, to be fair), and there was no middle ground. Purportedly, it took Buddha to find the Middle Path. Which is why Buddhism is so popular, and so heavily influenced other cultures around India, most notably China.

The Jedi Path is too rigid, too inflexible, and so it broke. The Sith Path, however, goes too far the other way. As the saying goes: if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And because of the Sith’s chaotic nature, they can’t afford to spread their teachings because they will rapidly be overthrown by their students.

In the original books, Luke was supposed to be some kind of Buddha figure, discovering the Middle Way, neither Light nor Dark, but taking into consideration that both sides had their merits and flaws, and creating from the Thesis and the Antithesis the Synthesis which leads Force users into a new age. Obviously, they’re going a slightly different direction with their movies.

An age of peace and tranquility does not a rip roaring space opera make.

Then again a live action serial of something like Cowboy Beebop with its cross admixture of gritty and antiseptic, lowbrow thuggery and high stakes espionage etc etc …
Oh and awesome Jazz.

Cowboy Bebop has a great aesthetic and the music is fabulous! It’s my favorite anime series (with Samurai Champloo a close second – Shinichiro Watanabe knows what he’s doing) and one of my favorite series all around. I just wish the soundtrack CDs weren’t so friggin’ expensive so I could collect them.

This is a great take on the Force.

According to the old books (no longer completely canon), the Force is not good or evil. It’s the intent of the user that invokes the Light or the Dark. Like all living things, the Force suffers from a type of corruption if the users in a location continue to use it in a certain way. There are “pools” of Light and Dark due to centuries of specific use in various locations.

The interesting thing about the movies is that on the island where the first Jedi studied the Force there’s a large pit where the Dark side of the Force resides. Which means that for some reason, the first Jedi did participate in actions that tainted the Force in that location. Same thing for the tree in Yoda’s jungle – enough malicious intent was focused in that location that the Dark side took root there.

So the Jedi seem to try to … purge their own Dark sides and quarantine it in a specific location. Or some great evil was done there, and they are attracted to it like flies.

I believe we do ourselves a disservice when we confine our thoughts to right/wrong, good/evil, true/false etc. Life is layered and complex.

There are obvious norms with most of us. Like believing that murdering an innocent is wrong. While I feel correct in believing it’s wrong it doesn’t mean someone else agrees. All I can say is my own opinion on it.

There could be a good reason for the murder. Say the person got bit by a zombie or had an airborne virus.Them dying could serve the greater good or some such thing.

My rambling point with overly extreme examples is its good to stay open minded. Gray areas should be looked at as opportunities to learn. I like that Jo takes in information that way.

Be that as it may, unless there is an absolute threat to the rest of the pack, murdering someone just because of an arbitrary difference in opinion is still the quintessential definition of selfishness. Remember, when a life is gone, IT’S GONE and those close to them will never see that person again. You have to weigh all your options here before you can enact a decision that can permanently affect the circumstance.

And please don’t use the zombie apocalypse scenario anymore. It’s just a cheap way to strip people of their moral fiber plus it’s not grounded in reality.

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