Like wingedbeast said, I think the Jedi are worse about it than the Sith. Yoda's iconic line is a good summary of it:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
...leaving exactly zero room for love, for joy, or mourning, or even friendship. Jedi aren't supposed to have attachments* at all - not love for family. Not friendship. Only the vague bond of a community that forbids bonds.
It's pretty awful and tragic, really, and a nasty perversion of a pretty good Buddhist concept.**
Palpatine's a fine example of a fanatic who twists the minds of the people around him, both through Force use and through being a massive narcissist - and even the garden variety can do a number on one's sense of reality.
But the Sith seem to have something of a problem with defining themselves as "we are not the Jedi, and therefore we are everything the Jedi stand against," because THAT always works so well. *sigh*
The Jedi are just as happy to help with that, by ramping the "with us or against us" rhetoric up like George Bush.
*except for the ones who decided that was pants, and bugged out early, but they're EU and I don't know if Disney is keeping them.
**Which, if I understand correctly, is more normally interpreted as, you feel how you feel; you experience what you experience; and that's fine but don't build your identity on the feeling, please.
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mmmag
no subject
Date: 2015-11-05 06:44 pm (UTC)“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
...leaving exactly zero room for love, for joy, or mourning, or even friendship. Jedi aren't supposed to have attachments* at all - not love for family. Not friendship. Only the vague bond of a community that forbids bonds.
It's pretty awful and tragic, really, and a nasty perversion of a pretty good Buddhist concept.**
Palpatine's a fine example of a fanatic who twists the minds of the people around him, both through Force use and through being a massive narcissist - and even the garden variety can do a number on one's sense of reality.
But the Sith seem to have something of a problem with defining themselves as "we are not the Jedi, and therefore we are everything the Jedi stand against," because THAT always works so well. *sigh*
The Jedi are just as happy to help with that, by ramping the "with us or against us" rhetoric up like George Bush.
*except for the ones who decided that was pants, and bugged out early, but they're EU and I don't know if Disney is keeping them.
**Which, if I understand correctly, is more normally interpreted as, you feel how you feel; you experience what you experience; and that's fine but don't build your identity on the feeling, please.