Is Yoda a Boomer? His Bad Advice to Anakin

Analysing the scene where he refuses to help Anakin in Ep 3

Yeah a bit of an overdone topic as of late, but it is still worth analysing as it is an important philosophical one not just within the context of Star Wars but in real life. Now that said, the title is just click-bait honestly, I don’t mind baby-boomers, I find much of the drama around them strange especially since each nation’s baby-boomers are different. Those of Canada are hippies, those of France & Quebec are no-nonsense, terrifying when angered and warm cuddly bears when in a good mood (if somewhat haughty), Japan’s are the very definition of kindness, warmth and geniality, where American ones are either weird lefties or basically no different from the French or Japanese ones. Don’t get me started on those from England or Poland who are rather interesting fellows who are typically a little pompous, and suspicious of all.

Yoda is by no means the SW equivalent of a boomer, since if one was to put it in real life terms, the Clone Wars is roughly synonymous with WWI. In that regard, Yoda would belong to the equivalent of Bismark or Wilhelm I’s generation in some ways, in his ideology and thinking in comparison to his younger, more testosterone filled counterparts. Though arguably he lacks the brilliance of Bismark, or of the likes of Napoleon III, or Meiji.

The trouble with Yoda is that he has lived a comfortable life. One where he is pampered and need not ever venture forth into the galaxy, rather unlike Odan-Urr of the ancient era, or those Jedi who fought in the New Sith Wars. Though, he came after that era, Yoda was handed an intact Jedi Order, and then proceeded to sign away its independence and simply sit enjoying the boons of victory, believing that he was at the end of history rather than part of it.

In a lot of ways, the end of the Republic in his era is no different from that when Darth Ruin turned to the Dark Side and smashed the stability of the Order and the Republic to pieces, ushering in a feudalistic/warring states period (the New Sith Wars).

Yoda is ill-accustomed to events happening outside his control, as he has centralised the Jedi to an obscene level and degree, so that they are truly hampered. The trouble is that this was never how the Jedi were meant to operate, as each Jedi is supposed to be able to make value judgements and decide his own path, yet they can’t. What is more is that he has forbidden attachments, despite this not being very common in most Jedi Orders over the centuries, as Odan-Urr allowed it (though you needed permission from your Master and sometimes also the Council), the next Order allowed it, as did those during the New Sith Wars.

The trouble for Yoda was that he derived the wrong lesson from previous eras. Believing that Dark Siders fall because they have attachments (even though every case of attachment led to the Dark Sider turning away from the Dark Side, well okay out of about 6 examples (Bastila, Revan, Atris, Nayama Bindo, Kreia, Ulic Quel-Droma) 4 turned back to the Light (Bastila, Revan, Kreia & Ulic), or something vaguely resembling Light.

What is more is that within his own Order, he had Jedi breaking the oath of ‘No Attachment’ willy-nilly, most notably Qui-Gon Jinn who broke it with Tahl more than once (during his adolescence and then as a full-grown man several times), yet Yoda overlooked this. In regards to Obi-Wan he did not, so that Obi got the crook.

So Yoda’s not against all attachments, just some(?), he also knew about Padme yet tolerated it (everybody knew, save maybe Barriss Offee). The reason being that Anakin was crap at hiding it, it is thus this situation into which Anakin trod his way into.

He did not fully realise it but he was stepping into a land-mine infested zone. Other Jedi were not allowed marriage and kids under Yoda’s supervision. Annie was, because ‘Chosen One’ and all, heck in some comics there’s something going on between Skywalker and his former classmate Barris, so he got more than a little bit of a blind eye/carte-blanche to do as he pleased. There is also the fact that Anakin’s obsession with pleasing Obi-Wan, and having Obi-Wan around and alive at all times could be construed as dangerous also.

To those unaware, Anakin’s dream when he turned was to kill Palps for lying to him, usurping him as Emperor and having Padme AND Obi-Wan at his side (this is why he is pretty unhinged on Mustafar as neither of them reacted the way he had hoped).

But back to Yoda. He knows about Padme. Knows about Anakin’s terror of losing Obi-Wan the way he did Shmi (trust me on that one).

Skywalker is someone who lost Shmi, and where Obi-Wan sought to comfort Anakin, reaching out as a father might to his son, and with the two also still grieving the loss of Obi-Wan’s lover Siri Tachi, Yoda gives non-advice.

Anakin has in the space of 3 years, lost 2 mothers, countless friends, nearly lost his father-figure and feels out of place in the Order. He is going through a lot, and came crying (sorta’ve) to Yoda for the first time in his life.

And all Yoda has to say is, ‘train yourself to let go of that which you fear to lose’? This comes down to telling him, ‘stop caring’ and ‘just work harder’. Yes at times the latter two pieces of advice can work in certain situations (there’s nuance to be had there), but Yoda’s advice here is inexcusable.

Anakin is a terrified child in some ways, needing genuine advice. He needs philosophy, he needs strength and he needs compassion. What is more is that he’s earned it.

Anakin did not wish to turn to Palpatine, nor did he thematically wish to turn to the Dark Side. In the novel it is clear that he is open to things like Stoic philosophy, and other such ideas, he is. He’s even kind of expecting it, as the notion of ‘Do not live as though you will live 1000 years’ is something that might have helped (so Yoda should have given him a copy of the Meditations), yet what Yoda tells him is to just not care.

This is easy for Yoda who has been attachment-free for 900 years, and is later quoted in the EU as blaming the whole of the fall of the Order on Mace & Dooku along with Anakin. But truth is; Mace Windu was Yoda’s son/former Padawan, and was seeking to protect those he loved, Dooku was a Dark-Sider true but Yoda raised him (badly) and Anakin wished for pity and sympathy, not a lesson in becoming heartless.

Now what is so interesting about the advice is that it is a lesson that Dooku taught himself at 13 years old, to ‘stop caring for others’. It is a lesson that horrified Qui-Gon when Dooku tried to pass it to him, with Jinn pulling back and severing the bond between him and Dooku (the two of them already hated each other by the time he passed the Trials). So what Yoda is advising is that Anakin become like Dooku.

Well, we all know what that looked like, I mean Dooku attempted murder at 13 years old. In all, the advice ‘stop caring’ is something that Qui-Gon rejected, Obi-Wan rejected and Anakin rejected. The trouble is that this was Anakin’s greatest moment of weakness.

I’ll be the first to say that Anakin should NEVER have gone to Yoda for advice. His thinking was that all other Jedi go to Yoda for advice, so why not him too? The trouble is that his particular problem was not something Yoda could understand. Actually Yoda had contempt for it. Not caring for others, is the problem as Yoda had come to exist and not live.

So where Odan-Urr loved all the children in his Order, loved his fellow Jedi and was in constant grief, as he hated to lose a single Jedi, Yoda was the opposite. Oh, a certain place in the Room of a Thousand Fountains reminds him of Tahl? Just move to the Meditation Chambers until he’s numb to the loss, then go back to his favoured ‘Rock’ (this is in reference to a Jude Watson novel). This isn’t actually dealing with loss, this is simply washing it away like a small cut.

Grief is like an open wound, it bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. But the ability to care and to feel that loss can lead to strength. It is by the overcoming, and the accepting of the loss that we grow not by suppressing it.

It is also interesting that Yoda happily beheads his Clone Commanders, while the other Jedi could not bring themselves to. Obi-Wan refuses to kill Cody, and there are other Jedi who prefer to flee from their commanders than fight them. Why? They were in the frontlines together and can’t quite bring themselves to kill their comrades.

Anakin struggles with grief (can you blame him, after he lost his mother so brutally?), he is afraid. He needs and deserves reassurance. Not indifference.

A case can be made that at least Palpatine pretended to care. Sure, Anakin knew on some level he didn’t. But pretending is better than nothing.

What should Anakin have done? Gone to Windu, Plo Koon or Obi-Wan.

What might they have done? Hard to say. Windu would have had Anakin dispatched back to the war and had Padme moved secretly elsewhere and then put Anakin on trial after the war was concluded for breaking the Jedi oaths. Koon would have given him paternal advice (he was Qui-Gon’s best friend) and would have likely tried to steer Skywalker towards Kenobi. Obi-Wan? He would have probably moved Padme to Alderaan, and proposed Anakin accompany him or recommended him for another Mid-Rim mission, or likely suggested that Padme need a body-guard or slip away with her for a certain period of time. This after he had talked to Amidala (who tended to not like him most of the time but was desperate enough to listen now), with Obi-Wan doing what he always did; kept the secret relationship of his peers to himself.

The truth is; they would have helped. Yoda didn’t. He had no interest. He liked the present status-quo, and could not understand why Anakin would rock the boat now. Truth was that someone’s life was on the line, and though visions ought not to have been trusted (given the tendency in SW of bringing about the vision if one tries to resist it) there were ways around it.

What is more is that he himself thought that Palps had too much influence over Skywalker. Yet he didn’t try to change this situation.

Tolkien once wrote that ‘advice is dangerous’, true but he also wrote that if you can help another you should. And so it was that Yoda was duty-bound to help Anakin. True we all speak of ‘filial piety’ from child to parent, but there is an equal duty; that of a parent to their children.

So should Anakin have stopped caring about Padme? This might sound weird but absolutely not. She would have miscarried, had that happened. As an individual she was weak-willed. Offee her rival was stronger, her bodyguard Sabe was stronger, Padme did not have much strength of will. But she was deep down a good person. She was also carrying twins, and aborting a child would not be right nor was it an option.

Likely had Windu, Koon or Kenobi known about Yoda’s bad advice they would have disagreed. Had Siri been around Anakin would have likely consulted with her, and she would have gone to Obi-Wan, and she would have pressed Anakin’s suit and would have resolved the problem.

But Yoda was not Windu, Koon, Kenobi or Tachi. Instead he handed the Chosen One to the Dark Side on a silver-platter.

Now, while I’m an avowed fan of Yoda (I think he’s complex as a character), and didn’t want to write an article disapproving of his decisions for quite some time, the trouble is that I’ve noticed elsewhere people either blaming Windu for what Anakin did (nonsense), Obi-Wan (stupid of them), Anakin (not at fault) or commenting on the wrongness of Yoda’s decision to give non-advice. But few cared to elaborate why they disagreed with Yoda, whereas I wanted to.

My view is that it was philosophical sloth, it was intellectual and spiritual laziness that led Yoda to turn Anakin away. The reason Yoda did not help is that he could not. Sadly, Yoda was broken. He had spent centuries hardening himself against others, making it so that he did not care about them, and had turned away from the universe, in a lot of ways he had transformed himself into Madame Tremaine from Ever After, or Denethor from LOTR, he had cut himself off from the outside world and had put up too many walls between others and him.

Look how Mace is horrified by the thought of the Order falling and Palpatine scheming against it and the Republic, and Yoda’s dislike for making a move. Look at Yoda’s claims to like Obi, but how he outright destroys him in Secrets of the Jedi (the first part) and refuses to help Obi-Wan with his sense of survivor’s guilt from the Bruck Chun incident in Jedi Apprentice (strangely Mace tried to help, as did Qui-Gon).

It might sound harsh, but Yoda did not care. He would not allow himself to, heck look how quickly he says, ‘welp that sucks that your son is now a child-murderer Obi, time to kill him’, hardly allowing Obi-Wan even seconds to grieve. Yes, he himself is traumatised by what has happened but he doesn’t spare even a minute to help alleviate Obi-Wan’s pain and grief despite his obligations towards Kenobi.

His reaction to Luke leaving to help Han & Leia is, ‘shrug’ ‘oh well, guess we’ll have to hope for Leia and train her now’. That said, does Yoda get an arc? Yes, he is clearly changed by the time Anakin appears alongside him and Obi-Wan in Return of the Jedi at the end of the Saga.

But before that, the reason he could not help Anakin was that he did not know how. He honestly has no understanding of love, viewing it from an intellectual standpoint and not a personal one.

Weirdly, the most tragic thing here is that Yoda has lived 900 years, without EVER connecting with anyone. Without ever loving someone like a son or a grandson, or properly stepping out of the Temple as all other Jedi had, to go mingle with the commoners, instead he wrapped himself up in armour, and hid from the Galaxy. Ultimately, he is no less a terrified and distant figure than Owen Lars in New Hope, and no less trapped in a kind of torturous suit of armour than Darth Vader is.