meta-fic: [paths we never looked to tread] Obi-Wan Kenobi
Disclaimer: Star Wars and associated concepts and characters are property of George Lucas. This story is purely a work of fanfiction, and I am not making any profit from it.
paths we never looked to tread
Obi-Wan Kenobi is like this: thoughtful, intelligent, composed. Ready to debate the finer points of swordplay or poetry or intragalactic commerce at a moment’s notice. He is centered, compassionate, carefully moderated in voice and action. He is the epitome of a Jedi Knight.
He is also a general in a war that shows no signs of stopping.
I asked him about the seeming conflict between his commitment to peace as a Jedi and his role as a leader in what has become a very violent and bloody conflict.
He said, “It is always a Jedi’s duty to protect the innocent and minimize bloodshed.”
Kenobi certainly works hard at protecting those the Senate designates as innocent, but the minimization of bloodshed is less evident. When I press the issue, he acknowledges that wartime calls for a difficult balance.
“The Jedi are first and foremost defenders of the Republic,” he says. “No other government has come to mean peace for so many beings, or for so long. Without the Republic to maintain the order of our civilization, we will be at the mercy of every cutthroat pirate and crime lord who wants to see how much of the galaxy he can carve out for his own.”
The ongoing tension in Kenobi’s conversation -- between peaceful resolution and armed protection, between negotiation and defense -- is not an idiosyncratic flaw. Rather, it represents a wider problem confronting the Jedi Order (and the Senate) today.
In the past thousand years of Republic history, we have come to think of the Jedi as arbiters of peace and justice for our civilization -- much as Kenobi suggests. We have called them to settle our conflicts and trusted them to remain passive observers -- acting at the behest of the Senate, but standing outside its corruption and prejudices. With the eruption of full-blown warfare, however, the Jedi’s position of neutrality is not so much endangered as demolished.
In another era, a man like Obi-Wan Kenobi might have expected to send most of his life in peaceful contemplation, either within the precincts of the Jedi Temple, on Coruscant, or elsewhere in any of a myriad quiet sites throughout the galaxy, on retreat. These days, General Kenobi and others like him face the prospect of spending their lives (which are at risk of ending all too early) not only arbitrating increasingly vicious trade and territory disputes, but actually fighting for the lives of the Republic’s citizens -- and, crucially, against the inhabitants, willing or not, of Separatist-aligned worlds.
I said as much to Master Kenobi. “How do the Jedi deal with the reality of being forced to fight other living beings as part of their duty to the Republic?”
Obi-Wan Kenobi sighed, and looked for a moment much older than I thought he was when I met him: the war is aging even young Jedi far too soon. “Anticipation is distraction,” he told me quietly. “As Jedi, we take each new crisis as it arises -- and let the Force show us the way.”
This entry was originally posted at http://wyncatastrophe.dreamwidth.org/118195.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
paths we never looked to tread
Obi-Wan Kenobi is like this: thoughtful, intelligent, composed. Ready to debate the finer points of swordplay or poetry or intragalactic commerce at a moment’s notice. He is centered, compassionate, carefully moderated in voice and action. He is the epitome of a Jedi Knight.
He is also a general in a war that shows no signs of stopping.
I asked him about the seeming conflict between his commitment to peace as a Jedi and his role as a leader in what has become a very violent and bloody conflict.
He said, “It is always a Jedi’s duty to protect the innocent and minimize bloodshed.”
Kenobi certainly works hard at protecting those the Senate designates as innocent, but the minimization of bloodshed is less evident. When I press the issue, he acknowledges that wartime calls for a difficult balance.
“The Jedi are first and foremost defenders of the Republic,” he says. “No other government has come to mean peace for so many beings, or for so long. Without the Republic to maintain the order of our civilization, we will be at the mercy of every cutthroat pirate and crime lord who wants to see how much of the galaxy he can carve out for his own.”
The ongoing tension in Kenobi’s conversation -- between peaceful resolution and armed protection, between negotiation and defense -- is not an idiosyncratic flaw. Rather, it represents a wider problem confronting the Jedi Order (and the Senate) today.
In the past thousand years of Republic history, we have come to think of the Jedi as arbiters of peace and justice for our civilization -- much as Kenobi suggests. We have called them to settle our conflicts and trusted them to remain passive observers -- acting at the behest of the Senate, but standing outside its corruption and prejudices. With the eruption of full-blown warfare, however, the Jedi’s position of neutrality is not so much endangered as demolished.
In another era, a man like Obi-Wan Kenobi might have expected to send most of his life in peaceful contemplation, either within the precincts of the Jedi Temple, on Coruscant, or elsewhere in any of a myriad quiet sites throughout the galaxy, on retreat. These days, General Kenobi and others like him face the prospect of spending their lives (which are at risk of ending all too early) not only arbitrating increasingly vicious trade and territory disputes, but actually fighting for the lives of the Republic’s citizens -- and, crucially, against the inhabitants, willing or not, of Separatist-aligned worlds.
I said as much to Master Kenobi. “How do the Jedi deal with the reality of being forced to fight other living beings as part of their duty to the Republic?”
Obi-Wan Kenobi sighed, and looked for a moment much older than I thought he was when I met him: the war is aging even young Jedi far too soon. “Anticipation is distraction,” he told me quietly. “As Jedi, we take each new crisis as it arises -- and let the Force show us the way.”
This entry was originally posted at http://wyncatastrophe.dreamwidth.org/118195.html. Please comment there using OpenID.