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Light Side Corruption?


Hirilonde

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I've been playing through my Sith Warrior, and an event on Hoth got me thinking on something. Spoilers below.

 

 

You are there to eliminate an enemy of Darth Baras, a Jedi Master who is normally quite elusive. However, he's on Hoth with a vengeance, seeking something... His old Master, who was aboard the Star of Coruscant when it crashlanded during the war decades ago. Baras suspects the old Jedi has been using the Force to sustain himself, in the absence of food or water.

 

When you arrive, and defeat the Jedi you are after, his Master tells you that in his time there, he has fed on the Force, and communed with it to a previously unheard of degree. He doesn't WANT to be rescued. He has no interest in the war, or the plight of others. His whole reason for reaching out to his former pupil was to draw him there to share this experience with him... By re-collapsing the cave on them both, and forcing his former padawan to rely on the Force as he did. He does not give his former Padawan a CHOICE in the matter, nor does it seem he ever considered doing so.

 

 

So, we have a Jedi master who has delved so deeply into the light side that he has become lethargic, apathetic, interested in nothing but communing with the Force to exclusion of all else. He has no compassion, cares not for the plight of the galaxy or his fellow man, that he once cared for so much. He emotionlessly dooms the one closest to him in the universe, the one who exposed himself to danger to save him.

 

I have to wonder... the common issues that plague the Jedi council seem always to be indecisiveness, and reluctance to involve themselves even when clear action is called for (Hello? The Mandalorians are conquering the Republic, and you have to be strong-armed by one of your own to provide even a minimal response!). Is it possible that, as there is Sith Corruption for those who delve too deeply into the Dark Side, might there not also be Light Side corruption?

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Or bad writing!

 

That really doesn't sound like lightside at all, but rather BW's attempt at trying to show a bad side to being fully lightside.

 

This is not the lightside, nor is it the darkside, it is just complete detachment from reality, the lightside is more than serenity and harmony, it is serving the greater good, this guy isn't doing this.

 

I do think that Bioware has a problem with writing for the Jedi, the council's position with the mandaloreans prior to Revan, the evidence that corrupted Jedi were teaching new Jedi (including Revans teachers), various Master Jedi becoming increasingly hesitant and essentially inert, these seem to stem from the view that Sith act and Jedi react, which isn't right.

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This is not the lightside, nor is it the darkside, it is just complete detachment from reality, the lightside is more than serenity and harmony, it is serving the greater good, this guy isn't doing this.

 

I do think that Bioware has a problem with writing for the Jedi, the council's position with the mandaloreans prior to Revan, the evidence that corrupted Jedi were teaching new Jedi (including Revans teachers), various Master Jedi becoming increasingly hesitant and essentially inert, these seem to stem from the view that Sith act and Jedi react, which isn't right.

 

Which goes back to what I was said. Bad writing.

 

The writers are all very likely pro-Sith. Because they're edgy, and darker, and not trying to be the hero. It's the return of 90's comics, where it's all about gritty anti-heroes (btw, nothing wrong with gritty anti-heroes, it's just that there is more than just that :p)

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Hard to say whether this is bias, writing issues, or just hitting a theme. Throughout the stories the Jedi have had problems in their handling of the dark side and the Empire, much to the Republic's detriment. The Empire and Sith are a single political and military entity (in a general sense anyway), while all too often the Republic is dealing with some nasty problem and the Jedi are sitting on the sidelines languorously debating whether they should even get officially involved. This isn't just Bioware, but comes up often enough in the other materials as well.

 

Mitigating this perception is the constant involvement of individual Jedi, this make the council seem more involved than it is. In most cases the Jedi are either operating on their own or greatly expanding on the much more restrained mission the council had sent them on ("Go look into the events on this planet..." turns into "Start a slave rebellion and overthrow everyone in charge"). Individual Jedi (usually the worldly, and sometimes rebellious ones that pop up in the fiction all the time) take action, but the council usually just blathers on about "peace and balance".

 

Interestingly, it's these independent Jedi that are always the most susceptible to the dark side, lending credence to the OP's theory. The safest one's always seem to be those least willing to commit and those constantly concealing people to remain uninvolved. Whether this is actually "corruption" or just a natural consequence of avoiding anything that might be a "moral hazard" is the only question in my mind.

 

You'll see this in the real world if you dig around a bit. People so terrified of losing their way or being taken in by some temptation structure their lives so they never have to so much as see anything outside their narrow idea of a "pure life". When something *does* intrude that smacks of even *potential* corruption they freak out. This is what I think we are seeing, Jedi who've been trained well but lack the strength of character to face their own dark-side or the realities of the outside world, and become unable to engage with the world effectively as a consequence.

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Interestingly, it's these independent Jedi that are always the most susceptible to the dark side, lending credence to the OP's theory. The safest one's always seem to be those least willing to commit and those constantly concealing people to remain uninvolved. Whether this is actually "corruption" or just a natural consequence of avoiding anything that might be a "moral hazard" is the only question in my mind.

 

I'm inclined to think the latter. Yes, the Jedi who ensconce themselves in their Ivory Temple are less prone to falling to the Dark Side, but they're also less prone (a la the Mandalorian Wars) to do anything useful for anybody, or carry out that whole 'guardians and protectors' thing they're always going on about. Even in game, there's a village of innocents within spitting distance of the seat of the Jedi Order that is under constant threat by Fleshraiders, but the Council doesn't want to intervene because the villagers don't have the proper paperwork.

 

The Dark Side is fuelled by excessive emotion, particularly of a negative sort, so it makes sense that the Jedi who are actually out fighting and being exposed to the assorted Bad Stuff going on the wider galaxy are more susceptible to those emotion, and therefore to corruption by the Dark Side.

 

Though I think the Jedi, at least the more hidebound Councillors, make the problem worse, by effectively denying the Jedi most in danger of corruption their support. Revan and company were fighting to save the Republic, but in order to do so they had to go 'renegade', Anakin couldn't go to the Council for help because he was forbidden to have a relationship etc.

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The light side also denies inter-personal relationships, meaning that its trust based on a paper history rather than deep history.

 

That's not actually true. The Jedi order denies interpersonal relationships, the light side simply requires that you don't give into your passions -- which is harder but not impossible when you have strong personal ties. So it's a risk factor but not directly tied into light or dark. The council has simply taken that route as a precaution because they deal with a large group of people and know that a lot of their charges would fail to keep their balance if they allowed deep personal connections to flourish.

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