#but systematic corruption that was going on in the GFFA for most of his life

[gch1995]

Anakin killed the kids because he was ordered to and was too lost on the dark side and his fear to lose Padme to think rationally at this point. Not because of the environment he was raised in.

Your ‘friend’ went on a weird off topic rant, probably to deflect because they couldn’t answer my question as well. I was just asking if you had any evidence to what you were claiming to be true, which you don’t seem to have.. I mean, of course you can’t give an actual headcount (not was I was asking at all), but do you have an example? A mission that went wrong where a Jedi murdered a kid?? A reference? Something other than “I know it’s likely to have happened”.

Also Anakin was 22 when he became Vader, how can he have “spent over 30 years of his life in environments in which children soldiers of 6 (once again, proof? Why 6??) and older were treated no differently from the adult soldiers/Jedi” ? That doesn’t make sense

And once again, where/when exactly has Anakin been taught that children/padawans are “expendable collateral damage”?

You keep saying factually false things and expect people to jump in your “actuality it’s the Jedi fault” bandwagon. I mean, you thought Maul was Yoda’s apprentice…

No, Anakin was not taught to kill kids personally by the Jedi. I’ll grant that, while he does struggle to believe he can just say no to Sidious with a slave mindset, lack faith in his own already compromised agency, and lack of faith in his own morality under a lifetime of conditioning to take orders and back up the beliefs of abusive, corrupt, oppressive, and manipulative authority figures, seeing human rights violations, child abuse, child endangerment, child conscription for weaponry, child abandonment, child sacrifice, and endangerment and/or murder for that purported “greater good” after being recruited by the Jedi to the end of his life, there also was a personal selfishness when he took those orders and/or carried out what he was taught to do with the dark side by Sidious in the Empire. He also committed those horrible crimes to deal with his anger, paranoia, self-loathing, fear of being hurt, fear of being defied, fear of having no one, and/or fear of losing loved ones in the heat of the moment with his troops, innocent families, and/or kids, too. He didn’t revel in committing those crimes. Ultimately, he hated himself for committing them. However he still committed them anyway because he didn’t think he could stop after being groomed to view these atrocious deeds as “necessary evils” for “the greater good” throughout most of his life, he’d spent most of his life being conditioned to serve, and after going dark and losing Padme he became too deeply entrenched in his own anger, fear, and self-loathing to even try. He felt he deserved this fate after pushing away Padme, and contributing to her death when he choked her in a blind rage, even if inadvertently.

Anakin was a lifelong victim with deeply compromised agency, but he also did become a villain with an atonement arc at the end that was possible because deep down he always knew the means he’d taken to justify the ends for these authority figures and/or out of his own anger and paranoia were reprehensible. He did become a coward, regardless of the severely compromised agency of learned helplessness, grooming, and limited options under abusive and corrupt authority and PTSD symptoms. Therefore, he does hold at least diminished responsibility.

The point is that from a psychological standpoint it makes sense that Anakin could learn to justify killing kids with that whole “greater good” excuse in mind because he spent a lot of time being endangered as a child himself on missions with the Jedi, saw other kids he grew up with being life-threateningly endangered in the Jedi, saw other padawan being left behind got trained to be a weapon himself as a child, saw the Jedi Council was willing to execute his 16 year old padawan for a war crime they had limited evidence of her committing, then exiled her with nothing, and/or saw kids being used as combatants or left behind in missions and/or war “for the greater good” in not just the Sith/Empire but the Jedi Order/Republic, too.

The point is that Darth Vader is not just a creation of Anakin’s own bad decisions. He’s also a product of decades of systematic abuse, crime, grooming, and human rights violations against both children and adults, regardless of their guilt or innocence, “for the greater good,” that was enabled and/or perpetuated in both the Jedi Order/Republic and the Sith/Empire for much of his life.

Anakin’s not innocent, far from it, but it is not as simple as him being evil incarnate who had this darkness in him all along, nonny. He had to learn it from somewhere, which is the case with a lot of people who become abusers and criminals as adults in real life, too. Yes, they had a choice to be better and do better, even if they weren’t fully aware of it under shitty circumstances with limited to nonexistent healthy support and safe options, which is the case with Anakin. They knew what they were doing felt wrong, so in that sense, they are guilty of their crimes. However, they also often weren’t just born inherently corrupt and evil who had it in them to become that way all along, no matter what. Many adults who become perpetrators of abuse, crime, and injustice often had to learn how to be that way themselves, and how to normalize committing those atrocities and injustices because they are/were often victims of abuse and injustices themselves under authority figures who conditioned them to normalize enabling and/or perpetuating those sort of toxic behaviors and/or mindsets, whether intentionally or not.

You certainly wanted a story that simple, though, considering how much you want to see the other Jedi adults of his time as “blameless.”

The point I was making is that we hold responsibility for our own choices as adults, for better or worse, so long as we can sense right from wrong, regardless of horrible circumstances, but we’re also often influenced and shaped by our environments and relationships with other people in adulthood, for better or worse, too, so those who have/had power and influence over us are also responsible for helping shape our beliefs, our emotional/mental health, and making sure we’re safe. Aside from his mother, none of the authority figures who held power over him throughout Anakin’s life used that power kindly, mindfully, and wisely, so they have a hand in helping create Vader, whether intentionally or not, which means Palpatine’s not the only one at fault. Obi Wan and the Jedi Council are too, even if they never intended to help create a monster.

Yes, Anakin made very bad decisions that hurt a lot of innocent people who didn’t deserve it, including children, which he knew felt wrong, regardless of the hell of a life he had of deeply compromised agency under abusive, hypocritical, manipulative, and oppressive authority, limited to nonexistent healthy support options, limited to nonexistent safe escape options, and very poorly treated/neglected emotional/mental health PTSD symptoms. He did stop trying after going dark, and, while sympathetic, his motives for going dark were also partially personally selfish, too.

However, you also can’t deny that he’d probably have become more like the ideal hero his son Luke was in the OT movies if he’d been able to grow up with that healthy and stable family and home life for his first 18 years of life before getting involved with the Jedi, and hadn’t had such a horrible life of constantly compromised agency under abusive, corrupt, hypocritical, manipulative, and oppressive authority figures who conditioned him to serve as a powerful weapon or tool “for the greater good” instead.

[gch1995]

I know I don’t follow GFFA’s blog anymore, and we both have each other blocked, so it doesn’t matter.

I’m not denying that Anakin was a very bad father to Luke and Leia throughout most of the OT until the end of Return of the Jedi. They would have had every right to hate him for what he did to them as some of the people he victimized, regardless of his mitigating circumstances of his entire life being a hell of compromised agency under systematic abuse, increasingly terrible emotional/mental health, isolation, manipulation, oppression, and neglect under corrupt authority. I don’t think it’s fair to place the blame on just Anakin, but he also did have enough sense to still recognize right from wrong, regardless of the circumstances. He kept picking wrong because it became safer than doing the right thing.

However, the idea that Obi-Wan Kenobi was somehow a “good” father figure to Luke and Leia just because his mistreatment of them was less outright terrible than Anakin’s was by comparison at his worst as Darth Vader, is just absurd.

Excuse me, but the only reason why Obi-Wan is taking any personal interest in either Luke or Leia is because he feels guilty over his part in Anakin’s fall to the dark side and their mother’s death, and is trying to groom them to be weapons to take their father’s place so he can absolve himself.

For Obi-Wan, every interaction with little Luke and Leia is just about him trying to redeem himself and alleviate his own guilt over his part in Anakin’s ultimate downfall and Padme’s death. In another life where Anakin didn’t go dark, the Empire didn’t rise, and the Republic didn’t fall, Obi-Wan would probably be one of the people who pushed Luke and Leia to be taken in by the Jedi as infants.

Additionally, did GFFA and these Kenobists even watch the OT and PT movies at all? Technically, Vader did worse to Luke and Leia than Obi-Wan ever did, but that doesn’t mean that Obi-Wan was a good father figure either. In a way, he was actually worse. At least Anakin could admit that he fucked up with Luke by trying to use him to gain freedom from Sidious and turn him to the dark side, and selflessly saved him from Sidious, in spite of knowing he would die and get nothing in return as a reward.

For three movies, Obi-Wan spent his time deceiving, endangering, gaslighting, and manipulating an innocent Luke Skywalker, so he and Yoda could use him to kill off the monster attack dog/murder slave of a man they helped turn his biological father into for Sidious twenty three years earlier, even if unintentionally. Never once did he express any remorse for it, or try to save either Luke or Leia because he really cared about Luke or Leia as a person for their own sake. It was all about using him and/or Leia as pawns to try to absolve himself for his mistakes with their father.

[gch1995]

I’m still getting these anons! I don’t know how many times I have to explain that I was not justifying child murder or saying that Anakin/Vader committing it was unworthy of punishment for it. However, he’s certainly not the only one in the Jedi and/or Sith who committed and/or enabled the life endangerment and/or murder of children “for the greater good,” nor was that a justification he created himself out of nowhere. It was a mindset that was continually reinforced for enabling and/or perpetuating any “necessary” atrocities and/or crimes “for the greater good” by those with power over him in both the Jedi and Sith/Empire.

Yes, the atrocities committed against children and innocent civilians in the Sith/Empire were far worse than the ones committed against them in the old Jedi/Republic, but I don’t know how anyone with half a brain can honestly say that CPS wouldn’t have serious problems with the way the Jedi were running things in the prequels with those kids if this were real life? They were conscripting children from families without fully informed consent (Qui Gonn tells Anakin and his mom being a Jedi will be a “hard life,” but he never explicitly mentions that Anakin’s life will be getting regularly endangered on missions, they’ll be training him to defend himself with a lightsaber, and he may never see his mother again), using them as combatants in the clone wars, training kids well under 18 years old to use lethal weapons, abandoning them in warzones if they deemed it “necessary,” putting them in Citadel prisons if they deemed it “necessary,” isolating them from family and friends, throwing them to the wolves and shaming them if they decided to “just leave,” regardless of their age, and even were getting ready to execute a 16 year old padawan of Anakin’s for charges of a crime they had no concrete evidence she committed.

At least before he went dark, Anakin usually was one of the few people who gave a fuck about trying to rescue individual kids in the Jedi or on the streets whenever he saw it was possible, and occasionally tried to disregard that “greater good” mindset. I’m not excusing his murder of any of them either, but how many of the other Jedi of his time ever seemed to give any fucks about “having” to endanger, end, and/or risk the lives, safety, and well-beings of any individual kids under their care or out there on the streets when keeping them safe or alive wasn’t contributing to their “greater good.”

I’m not saying murdering them was justified on Amakin’s part at all, that he holds no responsibility for doing that, that he’s entirely unworthy of punishment for doing that, or that the Jedi Council or even Sidious are entirely responsible for every crime he ever committed. However, they contributed to the creation of that “greater good” justification for committing atrocities that helped Anakin fit into the role of Darth Vader by pushing down his conscience to obediently serve his master’s commands or eliminate any potential threats to himself and/or that cause he served.

It’s like so many Jedi apologist fans are pissed off that the Jedi as an organization weren’t completely blamed and Vader never was just pure evil, even though we were seeing that pretty clearly throughout the OT movies, too.

@tragicfantasy-girl

@mynameisanakin

@the-chosen-anakin

@riana-one

Anakin killed the kids because he was ordered to and was too lost on the dark side and his fear to lose Padme to think rationally at this point. Not because of the environment he was raised in.

Your ‘friend’ went on a weird off topic rant, probably to deflect because they couldn’t answer my question as well. I was just asking if you had any evidence to what you were claiming to be true, which you don’t seem to have.. I mean, of course you can’t give an actual headcount (not was I was asking at all), but do you have an example? A mission that went wrong where a Jedi murdered a kid?? A reference? Something other than “I know it’s likely to have happened”.

Also Anakin was 22 when he became Vader, how can he have “spent over 30 years of his life in environments in which children soldiers of 6 (once again, proof? Why 6??) and older were treated no differently from the adult soldiers/Jedi” ? That doesn’t make sense

And once again, where/when exactly has Anakin been taught that children/padawans are “expendable collateral damage”?

You keep saying factually false things and expect people to jump in your “actuality it’s the Jedi fault” bandwagon. I mean, you thought Maul was Yoda’s apprentice…

No, Anakin was not taught to kill kids personally by the Jedi. I’ll grant that, while he does struggle to believe he can just say no to Sidious with a slave mindset, lack of faith in his own already compromised agency, and lack of faith in his own morality (C-PTSD symptoms) under a lifetime of conditioning to take orders from abusive, corrupt, oppressive, and manipulative authority, and seeing human rights violations, child abuse, child endangerment, child conscription for weaponry, abandonment, sacrifice, and/or murder of anyone necessary for that purported “greater good” after being recruited by the Jedi to the end of his life, there also was a personal selfishness when he took those orders and/or carried out what he was taught to do with the dark side by Sidious in regards to dealing with his anger, paranoia, self-loathing, fear of being hurt, fear of being defied, fear of having no one, and/or fear of losing loved ones in the heat of the moment with his troops, innocent families, and/or kids on conquests, too.

Anakin was a lifelong victim with deeply compromised agency, but he also did become a villain with an atonement arc at the end that was possible because deep down he always knew the means he’d taken to justify the ends for these authority figures and/or out of his own anger and paranoia were reprehensible. He did become a coward, regardless of the severely compromised agency of learned helplessness, grooming, and limited options under abusive and corrupt authority and PTSD symptoms. Therefore, he does hold at least diminished responsibility.

The point is that from a psychological standpoint it makes sense that Anakin could learn to justify killing kids with that whole “greater good” excuse in mind because he spent a lot of time being endangered as a child himself on missions with the Jedi, saw other kids he grew up with being life-threateningly endangered in the Jedi, got trained to be a weapon himself as a child, saw the Jedi Council was willing to execute his 16 year old padawan for a war crime they had limited evidence of her committing, then exiled her with nothing, and/or saw kids being used as combatants or left behind in missions and/or war “for the greater good” in not just the Sith/Empire but the Jedi Order/Republic, too.

The point is that Darth Vader is not just a creation of Anakin’s own bad decisions. He’s also a product of decades of systematic abuse, crime, grooming, and human rights violations against both children and adults, regardless of their guilt or innocence, “for the greater good,” that was enabled and/or perpetuated in both the Jedi Order/Republic and the Sith/Empire for much of his life.

Anakin’s not innocent, far from it, but it is not as simple as him being evil incarnate who had this darkness in him all along, nonny. He had to learn it from somewhere, which is the case with a lot of people who become abusers and criminals as adults in real life, too. Yes, they had a choice to be better and do better, even if they weren’t fully aware of it under shitty circumstances with limited to nonexistent healthy support and safe options, which is the case with Anakin. They knew what they were doing felt wrong, so in that sense, they are guilty of their crimes. However, they also often weren’t just born inherently corrupt and evil who had it in them to become that way all along, no matter what. Many adults who become perpetrators of abuse, crime, and injustice often had to learn how to be that way themselves, and how to normalize committing those atrocities and injustices because they are/were often victims of abuse and injustices themselves under authority figures who conditioned them to normalize enabling and/or perpetuating those sort of toxic behaviors and/or mindsets, whether intentionally or not.

You certainly wanted a story that simple, though, considering how much you want to see the other Jedi adults of his time as “blameless.”

The point I was making is that we hold responsibility for our own choices as adults, for better or worse, so long as we can sense right from wrong, regardless of horrible circumstances, but we’re also often influenced and shaped by our environments and relationships with other people in adulthood, for better or worse, too, so those who have/had power and influence over us are also responsible for helping shape our beliefs, our emotional/mental health, and making sure we’re safe. Aside from his mother, none of the authority figures who held power over him throughout Anakin’s life used that power over him kindly, mindfully, and wisely, so they have a hand in helping create Vader, whether intentionally or not, which means Palpatine’s not the only one at fault. Obi Wan and the Jedi Council are too, even if they never intended to help create a monster.

Yes, Anakin made very bad decisions that hurt a lot of innocent people who didn’t deserve it, including children, which he knew felt wrong, regardless of the hell of a life he had of deeply compromised agency under abusive, hypocritical, manipulative, and oppressive authority, limited to nonexistent healthy support options, limited to nonexistent safe escape options, and very poorly treated/neglected emotional/mental health PTSD symptoms. He did stop trying after going dark, and, while sympathetic, his motives for going dark were also partially personally selfish, too.

However, you also can’t deny that he’d probably have become more like the hero his son Luke was in the OT movies if he’d been able to grow up with that healthy and stable family and home life for his first 18 years of life before getting involved with the Jedi, and hadn’t had such a horrible life of constantly compromised agency under abusive, corrupt, hypocritical, manipulative, and oppressive authority figures who conditioned him to serve as a powerful weapon or tool “for the greater good” instead.