praetor-canis

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl

Hmmmm….I get your point but I think it’s quite the opposite in the cause/effect of the behavior patterns in the fandoms. These people have a serious case of Don Quixote due to being raised on Hollywood pop culture like Star Wars since childhood. So everything is a moral judgment and wars are somehow won by the side with better morals, the “light”. So they can’t process the geopolitical games behind conflicts. They can’t fathom how horrible war actually is. They can’t accept a rational analysis of historic events. So they take these moral stances in every issue they come across, be it fictional or real-life. And when you try to reason with them, their response is still emotional and resort to name-calling. Not to mention that the moral compass they use is extremely shaky. Even when they cite real-life suffering, it’s an emotional thing and not actual analysis of history. It’s like watching the society in “Brave New World” or “Fahrenheit 451”. I honestly think it’s an issue of fundamental worldviews.

They make these real-life parallels because they don’t know anything else. Also because Hollywood intentionally induces people to draw parallels with documentaries and books like “Star Wars and History”, “Star Wars and Philosophy”, “the world according to Star Wars”.

Again, this emotional response to every issue was intentionally bred by entities like Hollywood. There are books citing evidence to support such claims. It is a cult in my opinion. We even half-jokingly call them a “cult of freedom and democracy”. It’s almost impossible for them to admit that other civilizations have their own philosophy for politics and life.

Case in point, this conflict in Gaza. If you look at the history, you will realize that despite all the propaganda and the claims of caring for Jewish people, the whole thing was for geopolitical gains. War is a racket, as a jaded old general wrote. The Imperialists and weapons industry don’t care about Jewish lives and is fine with using Israel as a pawn in their geopolitical games. Another example is North Korea, how many news piece or documentaries have you seen that actually starts from the beginning? How Western powers used force to open up the markets of Korea and imposed unfair treaties on them? How western powers profited from the annexation of Korea by Japan? How those guerrilla forces in Korea fought the military occupation for decades before finally winning at the end of WW2?

Wow, I have seen pro Jedi people say that the Jedi had no choice, but allow Chancellor Palpatine have unrestricted access to Anakin, but now these pro Jedi people are saying that they have a right to restrict access to certain areas of the temple especially since children live there. If they have enough power to restrict access to certain areas of the temple to people who are not Jedi, they can make sure that Anakin didn’t have to spend time around Palpatine, but I am guessing the people in the picture don’t care about the safety of Anakin, especially the one who calls themself antianakin. It is contradictions like this that make interacting with pro Jedi people like these two unbearable.

[praetor-canis]

Wow, I have seen pro Jedi people say that the Jedi had no choice, but allow Chancellor Palpatine have unrestricted access to Anakin, but now these pro Jedi people are saying that they have a right to restrict access to certain areas of the temple especially since children live there. If they have enough power to restrict access to certain areas of the temple to people who are not Jedi, they can make sure that Anakin didn’t have to spend time around Palpatine, but I am guessing the people in the picture don’t care about the safety of Anakin, especially the one who calls themself antianakin. It is contradictions like this that make interacting with pro Jedi people like these two unbearable.

[praetor-canis]

@otnesse VC was far worse than the American supported Catholic dictator in the South, eh? The side that openly employed former Japanese fascists and used anti-guerrilla tactics developed by the Japanese military during WW2? What would you do to people who cooperated with Fascists to kill your fellow countrymen? When did the Vietnam war end? When did ANH come to theaters? Also, did you see that documentary where GL says he wanted to make a movie that’s different from the morally gray characters of the late 70’s? Hamas has “slaughtered” children, where’d you get that? BBC and other mainstream news outlets? Israel’s UN ambassador literally stood up in a security council session and said that Palestinian children should be killed for throwing stones at tanks. How did Hamas come to be? Isn’t it because of decades of violence? You think going against “leftists” is an admirable trait? You ever ask why those leftists support Putin instead of Ukraine? What does “deliberately withhold information on an upcoming attack” even mean? The carpet bombing of Gaza is constant and those people got nowhere to go beyond refugee camps and hospitals. Couldn’t such claims also be PR, as you called it?

Again, I ask that everyone take a step back and look at how conflict truly arises. Let go of this naive view of war between the good and bad guys. It’s clearly only going to lead to more wars and economic collapse of the West.

@tragicfantasy-girl

Me: Anakin shouldn't have killed Tal Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

Me: there was no danger to keep him alive and he was to relax after taking a life, something a Jedi should never do, because they worship life.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong! And Ki-Adi, Ahsoka, Yoda and Obi-Wan did the same thing!

Me: It wasn't at all the same thing. Their circumstances were completely different. If you continue to say that Anakin did nothing wrong, then you admit he was too incompetent to not kill Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

if you say so

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl 😂 LOL, my friend. Don’t you know that Anti-Semitism has a new “official” definition nowadays? Anyone who doesn’t support Israel’s Zionist campaign is now either anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. If the Jedi are really Jews, they would be Zionists who believes that the children of light must win with any means possible. I guess, the parallels are apt in some way.

Putin’s not so bad compared to the assassination of Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin, whose death was openly called for in public by the Likud Party. Last I checked, Putin never called for the death of his predecessors in this way. Remember, it’s “democratic” Canada that welcomed a 96-year-old Nazi Veteran into its parliament and gave him two standing ovations. It’s the United States coming up all these excuses for Stephon Bandera and his cohorts who committed atrocities across Poland and Ukraine in WW2. It’s the US constantly voting against the UN resolution to ban the glorification of Nazism since 2014 (check voting record: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/820132?ln=en). Not us autocrats in Asia.

This is why I’ve always said bringing the Cold War fantasies of Star Wars into real life is a mistake. This is why I questioned the ‘good intentions’ of characters like Bail Organa and Obi-Wan Kenobi. It seems to only make people more gullible to the lies of neocon schemers. By the way, you do know that most ministers taking care of everyday governance are in fact appointed to those positions and not elected officials, right? Case in point, Secretary of State and all our favorite foreign ministers in the West. Another example would be the people who blew up Nordstream 2. People who seem to have no idea what negotiations and peace talks are.

As to issue of Gaza. A boy watches his uncle get killed by a group of soldiers and decides to join a military group to fight the local government. Is that Luke Skywalker or the founder of Hamas? Unlike in Star Wars, there is no convenient battleground on that patch of land where you could blow up military bases without incurring civilian casualties. Both sides have military infrastructure and civilian residences packed together.

Have you listened or read the works of Jewish psychiatrist Gabor Mate? Perhaps the Israeli general’s son Miko Peled? Look them up on YouTube and take a look at their lectures. Here’s a video of Gabor and his sons on trauma and the Gaza/Palestine issue.

Wow, I have seen pro Jedi people say that the Jedi had no choice, but allow Chancellor Palpatine have unrestricted access to Anakin, but now these pro Jedi people are saying that they have a right to restrict access to certain areas of the temple especially since children live there. If they have enough power to restrict access to certain areas of the temple to people who are not Jedi, they can make sure that Anakin didn’t have to spend time around Palpatine, but I am guessing the people in the picture don’t care about the safety of Anakin, especially the one who calls themself antianakin. It is contradictions like this that make interacting with pro Jedi people like these two unbearable.

#Youtube

[praetor-canis]

Star Wars fandom isn’t toxic, it’s just a true training ground for Western hypocrisy and double-standard morals. These people…..can’t even paraphrase our arguments right. I distinctly remember saying that Anakin simply did what any SWAT team or military personnel would do when faced with a bomb threat. That doesn’t translate to ‘nothing wrong’ 😑. In case the OP don’t know, military personnel are trained to kill and shouldn’t be afraid to kill when the situation calls for it.

I think we should all take a step back and watch how war unfolds in the real world. GL wanted people to be more optimistic about Vietnam by watching Star Wars? Well, he certainly did his job as the country walked straight into a similar situation with Afghanistan and Iraq. But then the supporters would say ‘Iraq is different’, ‘Syria is different’ because of the war on terror, because Saddam and Assad are evil people with weapons of mass destruction. Sounds familiar? Look at the current situation in Gaza. Even Mark Hamill, the big Star Wars doof, put down his name in support of Israel. I’ve lost all faith in these people’s moral compass.

@tragicfantasy-girl

@tragicfantasy-girl

Me: Anakin shouldn't have killed Tal Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

Me: there was no danger to keep him alive and he was to relax after taking a life, something a Jedi should never do, because they worship life.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong! And Ki-Adi, Ahsoka, Yoda and Obi-Wan did the same thing!

Me: It wasn't at all the same thing. Their circumstances were completely different. If you continue to say that Anakin did nothing wrong, then you admit he was too incompetent to not kill Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

if you say so

[praetor-canis]

@jr4cats Your bio says you're Brazilian. Let me talk to you as a fellow citizen of the third world then. You know full well the kind of institutional and geopolitical power that an agency of the First World would have on people of the Third World/Global South. If two people from America take a kid from some war-worn region in Latin America, the mother isn't going to say no. But that doesn't mean the Americans are the "good guys" in this scenario either. The kid may not be facing a war-torn home, but it doesn't mean he feels at home in the U.S. Think about the realities of our world for a second. Put yourself in an imaginary scenario parallel to Anakin's.

So you tell me, how it would feel if the CIA were to bring you over to New York or Washington D.C., introduce you to all the cool people, and tell you that you're destiny is to destroy….I don't know, Communism. They educate you on the advantages of Western civilization, capitalism, and the free market. They tell you about the "victims of communism". Another war starts, and you end up working with the drug-smuggling Contras of Nicaragua. You find out Klaus Barbie, this old Nazi called "butcher of Lyon", is a protected asset of the counterintelligence corps and has been smuggled into South America by the CIA. You not only have to work with him, but protect him as well. You stand by and watch as the economic hitmen of the IMF tear Argentina's currency to shreds. You even have to help them enforce their policies.

At the end of it all. They tell you that your last mission is to kill JFK. Or some other politician of your choice (Luna De Silva perhaps?), someone who had the audacity to want diplomacy with the USSR and kowtow to China. Are you going to do it?

If you go through with it. Doles and Monsanto get to build even more Banana Republics in Latin America. Klaus Barbie gets to die at a ripe old age. You'd be the great hero in D.C., but things won't change for Latin America either. Would you be happy with such an endgame? Is the world saved by such an act?

Whatever choice you make. Let's talk about that moral judgment you made on Anakin and start drawing parallels.

In this imagined scenario, are you a better or worse person than the poor white kid from the Appalachian mountains who was only taught to hate Communism and all left-wing politics? Raised as a KKK prodigy? Are you a better or worse person than the kid in Haiti or Colombia who was raised by drug cartels and became a hitman for hire? Are you a better or worse person than the child soldier in Cambodia or Vietnam? Are you a better or worse person than the kid growing up in the rubble of Palestine, who ends up joining Hamas? Would you think it fair for someone on the outside to make such a comparison of your morals and character?

If you don't go through with it. The tide of Communism sweeps through the American continents. Are you the sole person to blame for such a situation? Or are you just someone caught in the circumstances? A tragic character? Would you say that the CIA and FBI at least had 30~50% responsibility for allowing the entire situation to hinge on your choice in the first place? How would you feel if people worshiped McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover every day, as though they did nothing wrong? If fans of Hoover told cute little stories about his kind words to defected Black Panthers and Cointelpro agents? Would people like me be wrong for pointing out that Hoover isn't the born-again baby Jesus fans make him out to be?

Or turn this around and think about it from the other side. The left-wing politicians of Latin America had high hopes for overturning the Monroe Doctrine and sent you off to the USSR. Only for you to defect and join the warmongers in DC for a seven-figure salary and a mansion on the Potomac River. The folks in D.C. tell you it's for peace and maintaining a rules-based international order.

I only ask that you use your imagination on this and think whether moral judgments can be made so easily. I don't require an answer and you're not obligated to give one. Just stop and think for a moment.

A Thought regarding Darth Maul

Recently i saw this post

https://jr4cats.tumblr.com/post/670958045026811905/beanabouttown-tragicfantasy-girl

And I got to say, I find it really strange to say that Maul was horrible for his choices while also thinking that Anakin was the biggest tragic baby who never had any chance at all.

What i am trying to say is:

Maul had it worse than Anakin, Growin up wise.

Anakin grew up on first with his mother in tatooine, and then later with the Jedi. While living as a slave was definitely a bad life, he still had a loving mother for those nine years, besides also having friends to play with and a home.

Then the Jedi take him to the Order (With the consent and bleesing of his mother by the way.) And now there's a long and complicated discussion to be made about how well Anakin was taken care of, but he still had a roof under his head, food on his plate, and people who genuinely wanted to help him (And let him make questions, contrary to what some may say).

When Palpatine came to try to grom Anakin into the DarkSide, he had to hide his actual intentions and pretend to be just a kindly politician, pretend he actually gave a shit about Anakin.

And that also meant that Anakin had much easier asses to different opinions and philosophies, which is why Palpatine had to butter him up with promises of saving the ones he loved.

Maul, on the other hand didn't have that.

Maul, in Legends, was given by his mother to Sidious because she thought he would give him a good life. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Maul was put into a living hell from day one, from being put in a vat of acid unless he answered questions, being send to a school of assassins were he was then ordered to kill everyone there regardless of they were to him. Left to die in horrific wastelands, starved, and pretty much left to dwindle in his on misery.

Questioning Palpatine was unthinkable, and the only way he was able to express any form of oposition to his master was in the form of murderous intent.

In Canon, we don't have as much information on his growth, but we know that he was stolen from his mother and trained to be an assassin, with promises of becoming his second in command when Palpatine took over.

Now if you know Sidious, you know that that's is a load of crap. Sidious doesn't want to share power. He is a backstabbing bastard that loves to backstab people. At best, Maul would be a useful lapdog, send to do the dirty job, but never given enough power or autonomy to actually challenge his master.

Except that didn't happen, instead, Maul was cut in half and went crazy for the next 20 years or so. Scurring along, surviving only on his hatred. By the time he comes back to "sanity" he doesn't have his legs and had everything that was promised to him taken away.

And is important to understand that, while the choices one makes are ultimately their responsability, how a person makes their choices is often defined a lot by how they grew up. Maul's choices, to me, while wrong and terrible, are way more easy to understand than Anakin's. From a very young age he was feed a violent ideology which told him that the only way to survive was throught hate, that his response to something happening to him was vengeance, that the only form of relationship he could have were that of a master and a underling.

And again, I am not saying that Maul didn't have any choices in his life. He did, and so did Anakin, and I think it's a disservice to both of this characters to ignore their autonomy to bash Obi-Wan.

#thought experiment #character morals

[praetor-canis]

Lmao, can’t ever argue with the racist line.

Luke should have killed Vader in ROTJ. He should have cut off Vader's hand then said "you betrayed your friends, the Jedi who raised you. You broke Obi-Wan's heart and caused him to live in exile. You killed my sister's family and killed my mother and my aunt and uncle. And now you're going to pay the price, Anakin." And then Luke kills him.

First off, every single one of those statements is inaccurate.

Anakin’s “friends” betrayed him first. He never had any real friends, except Kitster, who he left on Tatooine years ago. Obi-Wan betrayed him and turned on him. Obi-Wan did, in fact, turn Padme against him. Ahsoka abandoned him. The moment Yoda heard what happened to Anakin, he orders Obi-Wan to kill him. That was everyone Anakin cared about, except Shmi, who was dead, and Rex, who was gone.

And Obi-Wan broke his own heart by being a dumb*** and not helping Anakin or even trying to talk him down when he had the chance. And he lived in exile because of Sidious. Look up who the Emperor was, please..

None of what happened to Leia had anything to do with Vader. That all had to with Tarkin. Padme died from childbirth, literally nothing to Vader either, and even if it did, it’s not like LUke would even know that. And Beru and Owen also had nothing to do with Vader at all.

Luckily, unlike every other single person in Anakin’s so-called family (and most of the blind fandom), Luke actually cared about him.

The point of Star Wars is redemption, not “so-called” consequences that people who like to play god think others should have gone through. And what the kriff is wrong with someone who *wants* other people to suffer, anyway?

Luke was not a monster, and if he’d done that? He would have been worse than Vader ever was. 

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl If you say that Jedi Apologists are fixated on people suffering the consequences of their actions. Then why don’t they accept the same logic for the Jedi Order? Children died in Order 66 as a consequence of recruiting people at such a young age. Windu fell for Palpatine’s bait because the High Council had an awful strategy. The Republic fell because they had incompetent and corrupt politicians leading them.

Luke should have killed Vader in ROTJ. He should have cut off Vader's hand then said "you betrayed your friends, the Jedi who raised you. You broke Obi-Wan's heart and caused him to live in exile. You killed my sister's family and killed my mother and my aunt and uncle. And now you're going to pay the price, Anakin." And then Luke kills him.

First off, every single one of those statements is inaccurate.

Anakin’s “friends” betrayed him first. He never had any real friends, except Kitster, who he left on Tatooine years ago. Obi-Wan betrayed him and turned on him. Obi-Wan did, in fact, turn Padme against him. Ahsoka abandoned him. The moment Yoda heard what happened to Anakin, he orders Obi-Wan to kill him. That was everyone Anakin cared about, except Shmi, who was dead, and Rex, who was gone.

And Obi-Wan broke his own heart by being a dumb*** and not helping Anakin or even trying to talk him down when he had the chance. And he lived in exile because of Sidious. Look up who the Emperor was, please..

None of what happened to Leia had anything to do with Vader. That all had to with Tarkin. Padme died from childbirth, literally nothing to Vader either, and even if it did, it’s not like LUke would even know that. And Beru and Owen also had nothing to do with Vader at all.

Luckily, unlike every other single person in Anakin’s so-called family (and most of the blind fandom), Luke actually cared about him.

The point of Star Wars is redemption, not “so-called” consequences that people who like to play god think others should have gone through. And what the kriff is wrong with someone who *wants* other people to suffer, anyway?

Luke was not a monster, and if he’d done that? He would have been worse than Vader ever was. 

[praetor-canis]

Garland Nixon on geopolitics. I don’t need any fandoms right now. Just watching the game of geopolitical power play out in real life takes up all my leisure time.

The Komodo Dragon tactic as Garland lays out in this episode is such an effective strategy.

#youtube #Garland Nixon #politics #geopolitics #war

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl Frankly, there is no such thing as a clean war. I wish I could tell you about all the names we call the Japanese raiders/pirates in Chinese. The hate has been growing they started raiding our coasts back in 13th century. And it’s only worsened since WW2.

The samurai are just retainer swordsmen used by local warlords. Hit men with swords. Killers for hire. Like the retainers used by Chinese warlords back in 400BC.

I think Western media give the Warring States period too much credit and romanticization. I’ve always said that both China and Japan actually loathe those periods of chaos. Sure, we all have plenty of stories about that period. But nobody in East Asia truly looks forward to a repeat of those times.

I’ll post some excerpts from “Intrigues of the Warring States” and “Archives of the Great Historian” when I get a chance and tag you. You’ll get a better idea of how bloody things got back then. You’ll also get why many philosophical schools valued “detachment” for the Kings and Generals in power. A death toll of 200k from one battle is no joke for any medieval state. Stretch this out into a period of more than 500 years (770-221 BC). At the end you either desensitize yourself to it, fail and get everybody you love killed or you commit suicide by jumping into a river like Qu Yuan. Makes GOT and LOTR battles look like child’s play.

Honest to goodness, none of the Star Wars characters would have survived that period with their sanity intact. Anakin may have flourished though, but he’d probably end up even darker than Vader. Slaughtering nomadic raiders? Yep. Slaughtering entire cities? Check. Killing commanders for failure? Absolutely. Padme may love it too, considering how they used diplomacy and war in sync with each other. No such thing as closing down negotiations for a war. The best approach is usually two-pronged. War is simply politics by another means.

This is perhaps the most frustrating part of talking to Jedi apologists. They don’t get the “when, who and why” of the philosophies involved. We’re constantly talking in abstractions with them. Truth is “detachment” is simply a state of mind you need when you wield power. If you’re a common man, be generous, care for your clan. It takes a village to raise a child because the parents probably got killed in the latest skirmish and the clan can’t let the kids starve to death.

You do know that bbygirl-obi is both Indian and Jewish right. I mean I know you know that because she talked about it all throughout the post you're big mad about. And still you're accusing her of being this white person misrepresenting Buddhism and the Holocaust? It's also wild to assume she has zero experience with DBT and that she isn't allowed to speak about it. Genuinely where do you get the audacity

Did I say she was a "white person"?

Regardless she's "defending" a fictional religion created by a white American man raised as a protestant who has openly admitted he took elements from several religions and blended them - and treating it like it is a real actual religion practiced by real people in the real world in order to sheild said work of fiction from criticism.

Even if it was a real religion, criticising it is permissable. No religion or its practicioners should ever be above criticism= especially when there is evidence for the wrongdoings of some of those practitioneers. Oh did you believe no Buddhist ever did anything bad ever? Ask the Royhinga in Myanmar about that... Oh didn't you know? Predominantly Buddhist Burmese government have been enacting a genocide against Muslims for a while now...before that they were attacking the Karen and Kachin minorities.

Nor did I say she has zero experience with DBT and can't talk about it. Stop strawmanning: its annoying and shows that you don't have an argument or valid point: you have to invent one so you can take offense.

Yet again, she's proclaiming a fantasy TV written by a dude who didn't even realize his leading lady was high on over the counter medication for undiagnozed bipolar disorder presents a wholly accurate depiction of real life therapies - to a person who has studied and practiced that form of therapy for years.

..and then when challenged trying to hide behind cries of "religious discrimiation!"

It is literally akin to some nutter making a series about some form of quckery and then saying it ia proven and highly effective medical procedure- before screaming discrimation and trying to sue the doctor who calls them out for misleading people.

People who use real life laws and principles to try to shield fictional characters from criticism are beneath contempt. People who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality need to get a life, stop clutching them pearls and acting like the self-appointed moral gatekeepers of fandom spaces.

[praetor-canis]

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl That’s a good perspective. And to bring it even closer to home. Why is it that the Jedi has so much power while the average people on Tatooine has so little. It’s because of the system, with all the power and wealth getting concentrated by the core worlds.

On that note, I have to recommend the writings of Gu Hongming. The man was a Chinese born in Malaysia, his father was a plantation manager and worked for the local British company. His father’s boss thought Gu was a smart kid and brought him over to Scotland for a better education at the age of 10 (same age as Anakin when he left Tatooine). After all those years in the West, Gu goes back to China and becomes a staunch supporter of it’s government. If you read his writings, the guy is wholly unimpressed by the way Western countries assert their interests through force while talking about God, Faith and the white man’s burden. For me, that kind of disillusionment is exactly what Anakin went through when he was with the Jedi.

You do know that bbygirl-obi is both Indian and Jewish right. I mean I know you know that because she talked about it all throughout the post you're big mad about. And still you're accusing her of being this white person misrepresenting Buddhism and the Holocaust? It's also wild to assume she has zero experience with DBT and that she isn't allowed to speak about it. Genuinely where do you get the audacity

Did I say she was a "white person"?

Regardless she's "defending" a fictional religion created by a white American man raised as a protestant who has openly admitted he took elements from several religions and blended them - and treating it like it is a real actual religion practiced by real people in the real world in order to sheild said work of fiction from criticism.

Even if it was a real religion, criticising it is permissable. No religion or its practicioners should ever be above criticism= especially when there is evidence for the wrongdoings of some of those practitioneers. Oh did you believe no Buddhist ever did anything bad ever? Ask the Royhinga in Myanmar about that... Oh didn't you know? Predominantly Buddhist Burmese government have been enacting a genocide against Muslims for a while now...before that they were attacking the Karen and Kachin minorities.

Nor did I say she has zero experience with DBT and can't talk about it. Stop strawmanning: its annoying and shows that you don't have an argument or valid point: you have to invent one so you can take offense.

Yet again, she's proclaiming a fantasy TV written by a dude who didn't even realize his leading lady was high on over the counter medication for undiagnozed bipolar disorder presents a wholly accurate depiction of real life therapies - to a person who has studied and practiced that form of therapy for years.

..and then when challenged trying to hide behind cries of "religious discrimiation!"

It is literally akin to some nutter making a series about some form of quckery and then saying it ia proven and highly effective medical procedure- before screaming discrimation and trying to sue the doctor who calls them out for misleading people.

People who use real life laws and principles to try to shield fictional characters from criticism are beneath contempt. People who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality need to get a life, stop clutching them pearls and acting like the self-appointed moral gatekeepers of fandom spaces.

[praetor-canis]

Come on Anon, don’t be like that. Buddhism may have originated from India, but it’s not the most dominant religion in that country. They’re mostly Hindu, and in ancient times Buddhists and Hindu had fought bloody wars for dominance in there. Unfortunately, the Buddhists didn’t do well against the Hindus and the stuff that made it out separated into different. Zen Buddhism that you see in Japan, Korea and China was was a hybrid of Taoist self-cultivation and Buddhism. Being Indian doesn’t mean a person has authority on Buddhism. I can say with confidence the average Indian wouldn’t know as much about Zen Buddhism as the average Chinese.

@tragicfantasy-girl I see you’ve looked up Myanmar. Quite a messy situation, isn’t it?

You do know that bbygirl-obi is both Indian and Jewish right. I mean I know you know that because she talked about it all throughout the post you're big mad about. And still you're accusing her of being this white person misrepresenting Buddhism and the Holocaust? It's also wild to assume she has zero experience with DBT and that she isn't allowed to speak about it. Genuinely where do you get the audacity

Did I say she was a "white person"?

Regardless she's "defending" a fictional religion created by a white American man raised as a protestant who has openly admitted he took elements from several religions and blended them - and treating it like it is a real actual religion practiced by real people in the real world in order to sheild said work of fiction from criticism.

Even if it was a real religion, criticising it is permissable. No religion or its practicioners should ever be above criticism= especially when there is evidence for the wrongdoings of some of those practitioneers. Oh did you believe no Buddhist ever did anything bad ever? Ask the Royhinga in Myanmar about that... Oh didn't you know? Predominantly Buddhist Burmese government have been enacting a genocide against Muslims for a while now...before that they were attacking the Karen and Kachin minorities.

Nor did I say she has zero experience with DBT and can't talk about it. Stop strawmanning: its annoying and shows that you don't have an argument or valid point: you have to invent one so you can take offense.

Yet again, she's proclaiming a fantasy TV written by a dude who didn't even realize his leading lady was high on over the counter medication for undiagnozed bipolar disorder presents a wholly accurate depiction of real life therapies - to a person who has studied and practiced that form of therapy for years.

..and then when challenged trying to hide behind cries of "religious discrimiation!"

It is literally akin to some nutter making a series about some form of quckery and then saying it ia proven and highly effective medical procedure- before screaming discrimation and trying to sue the doctor who calls them out for misleading people.

People who use real life laws and principles to try to shield fictional characters from criticism are beneath contempt. People who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality need to get a life, stop clutching them pearls and acting like the self-appointed moral gatekeepers of fandom spaces.

[praetor-canis]

@bbygirl-obi I will just address three points in your post. The "diversity" that you noted in The Jedi seems extremely akin to the diverse population of the United States under neoliberalism. You have all these people from different countries, but internally they have conformed to the same values of Western Civilization: Liberal democracy, individualism, and belief in the free market. More often than not, this "diversity" is used as a tool to inflate their own ego about how good the great melting pot has worked. It doesn't mean there's an actual difference.

The clash of civilizations isn't a cultural thing. Zen Buddhism is a hybrid of Buddhist religion and old I'Ching philosophy. Which leads to the whole "found family" and "Jedi having great relationships" argument. The Jedi don't practice these non-Western traditions that you spoke so fondly of. And if you ever bother to pick up a couple of Wuxia novels or watch Anime, you'll see the difference between the Master-Padawan relationship and the Shifu-Tudi relationship. The way that they twisted this whole thing is a direct contributor to how messed up Anakin's messed up values.

As for the "the Jedi deserved genocide" point that you made. Literally, nobody in the "Jedi Critical" team is saying that. We're saying that the Jedi Order stood by and upheld a corrupt system until everything fell on their heads.

That type of criticism is 100% valid when discussing the fall of a dynasty, kingdom, republic, or even an entire civilization. Rome didn't fall in one day and the Europeans didn't deserve the long wars that followed. Where is Carthage? Where are the Assyrians? Israel was lost as a kingdom long before the Germans ever came into the picture. Was the Jews completely innocent in losing their old kingdom? Didn't the loss of that old kingdom lay the foundations for future events? Wouldn't things have worked out differently if Israel hadn't fallen? By your logic, all analysis regarding societal collapse would count as "victim-blaming".

When we look back at the Opium Wars in China, we are extremely self-critical for not seeing how important muskets and gunboats had become in wars. However, nobody is saying that the Qing dynasty deserved to be targeted by the crazy UK and their drug-peddling East India Company. In fact, much of our sentiments on the matter are more similar to Anakin's. We weren't powerful enough, we didn't try hard enough to defend our civilization and next time we will do better.

Since you people are so hung up on the WW2 and holocaust analogies. I will expand on that. Yes, the holocaust was a genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. The allies or good guys of that war in Europe were the UK, the US, and France (I'm not forgetting the USSR, but they're not relevant to the point). However, from the POV of third-world countries (India, China, Vietnam, Algeria), the UK and France aren't saints either. In fact, if you do more research, you'll find that their greed contributed immensely to the events leading up to WW2. Everything that the Nazis had done to the Jews had already happened in many regions of Asia and Africa under the orders of the UK and France. This is why almost immediately after WW2 ended, regional wars started to be fought. The core world senators and the Jedi are just like the UK and France.

"the jedi don't have therapists-"

jedi philosophy, and in particular the practices and teachings that jedi were expected to implement in their everyday lives, was therapy. dialectical behavior therapy (dbt), to be exact. anyone who's familiar with dbt knows where i'm already going with this, but like genuinely look up the basic tenets of dbt and it's identical with what the jedi were doing.

dbt, to put it simply, is a specific therapy technique that was designed for ptsd and past trauma. it's pretty different from traditional talk therapy. it combines a few different environments (individual, group, etc.), recognizing that no single format of treatment can stand alone.

the key focuses of dbt include:

emotional regulation- understanding, being more aware of, and having more control over your emotions

mindfulness- regulating attention and avoiding anxious fixation on the past or future

interpersonal effectiveness- navigating interpersonal situations

distress tolerance- tolerating distress and crises without spiraling and catastrophizing

i'm sure it's already clear from that list alone how much the jedi teachings correspond with the goals of dbt. the jedi value, teach, and practice the following:

identifying and understanding emotions

mindfulness and living in the present

compassion, diplomacy, and conflict resolution (on interpersonal scales, not just planetary or galactic)

accepting and tolerating certain levels of distress or discomfort (particularly mental, such as discomfort at the thought of losing a loved one to death)

idk man seems almost as if jedi mental health practices and dbt are two sides of a completely identical coin. (fun fact: both star wars and dbt are products of the 70s.)

and guess what? dbt was specifically designed as a treatment for borderline personality disorder. remember that one? or, if you don't, maybe you remember a specific character, the one who was literally used as an example by my professor in my undergrad psych class when she was teaching us about bpd?

tldr: simply existing within the jedi community, practicing jedi teachings, surrounded by a support network of other jedi of all life stages, was the therapy for anakin. even when viewed through a modern lens. it was even, more specifically, the precise type of therapy that has developed in modern times to treat the exact types of mental issues he was struggling with.

[praetor-canis]

@tragicfantasy-girl Lol, you tagged me? You know, you don't even have to go far into history or violent Buddhists. Look up the CNN or BBC coverage of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. Buddhists fighting Muslims in a violent clash of religions. Another hot tip would be to look up the society of old Tibet. Absolutely brutal. Everything from flaying to slavery was practiced.

I haven't watched any of the new Star Wars stuff on Disney+ in the past couple of years.

However, I have read several non-fiction books on history, civilizational collapse, and geopolitics. I see no problem with criticizing the elites of a society for contributing to their own demise.

"the jedi don't have therapists-"

jedi philosophy, and in particular the practices and teachings that jedi were expected to implement in their everyday lives, was therapy. dialectical behavior therapy (dbt), to be exact. anyone who's familiar with dbt knows where i'm already going with this, but like genuinely look up the basic tenets of dbt and it's identical with what the jedi were doing.

dbt, to put it simply, is a specific therapy technique that was designed for ptsd and past trauma. it's pretty different from traditional talk therapy. it combines a few different environments (individual, group, etc.), recognizing that no single format of treatment can stand alone.

the key focuses of dbt include:

emotional regulation- understanding, being more aware of, and having more control over your emotions

mindfulness- regulating attention and avoiding anxious fixation on the past or future

interpersonal effectiveness- navigating interpersonal situations

distress tolerance- tolerating distress and crises without spiraling and catastrophizing

i'm sure it's already clear from that list alone how much the jedi teachings correspond with the goals of dbt. the jedi value, teach, and practice the following:

identifying and understanding emotions

mindfulness and living in the present

compassion, diplomacy, and conflict resolution (on interpersonal scales, not just planetary or galactic)

accepting and tolerating certain levels of distress or discomfort (particularly mental, such as discomfort at the thought of losing a loved one to death)

idk man seems almost as if jedi mental health practices and dbt are two sides of a completely identical coin. (fun fact: both star wars and dbt are products of the 70s.)

and guess what? dbt was specifically designed as a treatment for borderline personality disorder. remember that one? or, if you don't, maybe you remember a specific character, the one who was literally used as an example by my professor in my undergrad psych class when she was teaching us about bpd?

tldr: simply existing within the jedi community, practicing jedi teachings, surrounded by a support network of other jedi of all life stages, was the therapy for anakin. even when viewed through a modern lens. it was even, more specifically, the precise type of therapy that has developed in modern times to treat the exact types of mental issues he was struggling with.

[praetor-canis]

How Both Parties Work for ‘Tyranny, Inc.’

#youtube #useful idiorts

[praetor-canis]

@loubuttons Riiight, the Jedi weren’t gaining anything with that fancy Temple and those state-of-the-art fighters. They align themselves with a government, with a specific group of political elites and a very particular political outlook. They enforce the laws and orders of the Senate, and get great privileges from the government for it. But they’re not doing it for themselves, for their order. They’re just doing it for the average citizen down at level 1313 on Coruscant. The flow and ebb of the Force also implies that the political entities you love are just as likely to die as the individuals you love. Anakin in the PT is a classic example of individuals caught in a greater turmoil. The galaxy was hardly saved after ROTJ, turmoil was just as bad. But because our protagonists have made it to the top, it’s more peaceful for them now. Of course, neither GL nor other creators understand such concepts of ancient philosophy.

@tragicfantasy-girl I don’t know, I just finished reading Parenti’s “Make Believe Media” and he makes a pretty good case for fiction subtly affecting a person’s worldview and fundamental values. Watching the news, I’m inclined to believe that there is definitely intent for fiction to bleed into reality as they tout epic battles between good and evil. Jedi apologist fans are a pretty good experiment group, who come out as more Baizhuo (woke left) than others. I think it’s even more important that you get the concepts and philosophies right when you look at fiction. The real message is in the abstract concepts and values, not so much historical parallels.

You know what's kind of a messed up dynamic that's not really explored in the Original Trilogy? How Luke is kind of caught in an ideological tug of war between Obi-Wan (and Yoda) and Darth Vader.

Obi-Wan wants Luke to become a Jedi and bring down the Empire and Vader, thus righting a wrong he was unable to right twenty years prior. Unless I'm misreading motivations here, that's already hecka questionable treatment of your vulnerable student, but it's made worse when he deliberately lies to Luke and stokes hatred/a desire for revenge in him against his father -- without ever telling him that the father he longs for and the monster he thinks killed him are one and the same. I can kind of understand Obi-Wan's line of thinking here, especially if Luke was potentially the only powerful enough to go up against Vader, but I still don't think it was right.

Then you have Vader, who is in some ways playing out the same script. He wants Luke to become a Sith and to be by his side as his son to redeem his failure from twenty years ago. He has a chance to make everything he did mean something because he didn't save Padme, but his son still lives. This desire is of course far from 100% benevolent and it's all twisted up with what the Emperor wants, so it ends with the same sort of vibe as Obi-Wan's treatment of Luke: it reduces Luke into a utility or object rather than a person.

Obi-Wan wants Luke to be the Chosen One.

Darth Vader wants him to be his heir.

The only people who want Luke to just be Luke are Han and Leia.

And then Luke wins by being himself -- by being the compassionate, forgiving son who just wants his father. And miraculously, that saved the galaxy.

#star wars realism #star wars #anti jedi