#and we always have a strict code to never be rude and always be considerate

[permasleepberdie]

If you were to ask me what my dream occupation is I think it'd be team rocket.

Not as in like, a fairly effective group of gangsters that use animals to fight.

I mean a couple of middle aged gays with matching uniforms and their own theme song just running around and terrorizing the local populous of 10 year olds (or maybe just other middle aged gays idk). We'd be practically pretty harmless, either doing light vandalism or stealing stuff that never amounts to over $100, and even then we'd eventually get foiled in our plans and be blasted off back to base.

We'd have our own boss, team mascot, rival that we terrorize more than usual, it'd be a blast.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Do you think the Jedi had any flaws that you think should have been fixed? People like to say that the Jedi order should have been more loving and should have shown more emotion. And I also heard someone say that they were kinda flawed in a way at the time of the Clone Wars. Some I'm just wondering what do you think? Should the Jedi have changed things a little bit, or were they perfect the way they were? (Fyi I love the Jedi so please don't take this the wrong way)

This is gonna be a little repetitive because I have several asks along those lines, but if I started sorting them out I'd never get to answering them. (And don't worry, I'm not taking it the wrong way at all! Even if we disagreed, you'd have to be downright rude for me to be annoyed by an ask.) I kind of already stated my position on this a while back but it doesn't hurt to clarify again, so here:

I don't think the Jedi were 'perfect' the way they were, because there's no such thing as perfection in nature. I can make a list of flaws that individual Jedi had, if you want (Quinlan is rude, loves to show off, is a pain to work with; Ki-Adi comes off as haughty, he can be ruthless; Qui-Gon is impatient, stubborn, somewhat short-sighted; Jocasta is proud; Obi-Wan has a blind spot the size of Anakin and can be a bastard; Yoda can be too vague, Ahsoka too caught up in her own emotions, Mace and Adi too serious - etc. etc.) but that really wouldn't be the point, because the question is more regarding the Order's flaws.

"And I also heard someone say that they were kinda flawed in a way at the time of the Clone Wars"

Lucky you if that's all you've heard, ah ah, because the criticism is usually much more specific and often in terrible faith. But 'kinda flawed'? Sure the Jedi were. Everybody is kinda flawed, and every culture is kinda flawed, that's never up for discussion. But what those specific flaws are and how you fix them in a society is really the question when dealing with large groups, and we don't have the answer.

My own take is: no, I don't really think they should have 'changed things a bit.' As in: I don't see one or more big specific problems within the Order that are easily identified and fixed, and that, if fixed, would have made the Galaxy an unquestionably better place with no drawbacks.

Were they 'too cold' and needed to show more warmth? That's horribly subjective, but here's my (very outdated) masterlist where I delve a lot into Jedi culture in general, and here is a series specifically showing how free they are with physical displays of emotions, for example. Not loving enough is definitely not a Jedi problem!

Is it bad to take children away? It probably creates a lot of messy situations that I'm happy to explore, but it is ultimately the parents' choice + there is plenty of indication that the children are not entirely cut off from their birth heritage, and Lucas explicitly said that being raised communally was the best thing for anyone aspiring to the Jedi path. We have no indication that making the Order into a sort of boarding school would have been better.

Should they have been less involved in politics? They seem to get shut down more often than not. Should they have been more involved in politics? There's not even a consensus on that.

Should they have been spending all their time freeing slaves? Now that's not fair, because there is no realistic way for them to be doing that.

Were they too strict on Anakin, or not enough?

Should they allow for open romantic relationships? (which they more or less already do, because we have no indication that they explicitly forbid romantic connections and enforce that ban, just that they highly encourage their Knights not to commit to a relationship when they're already committed to the Order - can't be married to two different things, essentially) We have absolutely no indication that this would have a positive effect on the Order, or even that it's what most Jedi would want.

For the most part we don't even know the exact policies, Code, traditions and rules of the Order, so we have very little to go on from for practical things they could 'fix.'

Sure I'll admit that it was messed up to have Padawans fight a war, or to essentially torture Bane to get him to tell where he had hidden the holocron with the list of Force-sensitives kids, ignoring the irl and in-universe context around these things. Sure the war wasn't as clear cut as the good Republic and the bad Separatists. Sure the Jedi did unethical things throughout canon (little known tidbit: as did every single character in Star Wars, which isn't to say that criticism is meaningless, but that it always need to take context into account).

Maybe the Council should be bigger. Maybe they should have worked with non-Jedi more.

But I don't see big systemic issues in the workings or the culture Order that directly stem from malice, incompetence or unforgivable ignorance, and that could or should have been 'fixed' for the Jedi to be 'less flawed' as a group, because that's a big claim to make about any culture, even a fictional one.

People get to tear Satine to shreds for removing violence from Mandalorian culture after a civil war that shattered a planet, glassed their homeworld and decimated them, because she dared to go against the Mando beliefs and traditions, so I similarly reserve the right to defend that the Jedi's lifestyle seems to work well for them, and that we are never shown or told what precisely it is that they should have done better, and how they should have done that. I don't see that there are any drastic changes they would have needed to make to deserve to be recognized as good. As for changing just a little bit, there would be no consensus on what those little changes should be, because little problems are subjective, hard to determine, and every time you fix one little problem, you create a new little problem, and there'll never be a way around that.

tldr; Sure, the Jedi are plenty flawed, y'know, like people, but I don't think we can pinpoint one or more precise things they should have changed to be 'better,' being flawed doesn't in any way negate all the considerable good they did, and it's kind of a moot point anyway, because they all died through no fault of their own (Palpatine couldn't have given have a kriff about their philosophy, beyond the part where they were against murder and wouldn't let him be king of the whole universe, the bastards - Order 66 would have happened regardless of the rules about attachment). Basically, I can make a list of shitty things individual Jedi did or said, but nah, I wouldn't change the Order.