[Star Wars] how much fault lies in Master Yoda?

[CILinkz]

it is often depicted that the Republic wasnt the only one full of Corruption, but the Jedi Order aswell. festering Cracks that noone knew where they came from, Rot and Pride that they either never saw the Darkness infesting the Republic or too Prideful to see the cracks that happened under their own Noses. turning more into Politicians then Monks.

but i never saw a Story where Master Yoda was directly confronted with problems his decisions caused. he always was a Fan-favorite so i never saw any Bashing or personal failure which is kinda weird. he was the Grandmaster, everything was open to him, he was the highest Authority from the Jedi. but he never made any mistakes we saw? it was always either "i didnt see it" or some other Master was behind it and it never blew back to Yoda. maybe because he never made any decisions at all and let everyone else do as they pleased? and at the end when everything came out he always talked how regretful it was and that everything was his fault. what was his fault? which part as we never saw a decision or Mission that came back to bite him in the Ass or where he made a blatantly wrong call ( if we ever saw him doing anything ofc)

what you guys think?

 

[Kalem_Lee]

I kinda wonder about it thanks to rewatching the OT and some youtubers talkin about it. But while Luke was the only way(ignoring the living jedi) to kill the Emps despite his lack of training or at least the core value of what Yoda assumes is Jedin training, it'sm literally one dude against two of the most powerful sith lords around.

Crazy ass gambling there Yoda.

 

[Savinkov]

I think it was his wait and see approach that cost the Jedi order a lot. Not too mention his decision to not investigate further on certain matters.
Also, I would blame myself too if an organization that has stood for thousands years came to an end under my watch.

 

[Xintax]

Yoda was the origin of quite a bit of the rot perpetuating within the order, he held far too much personal influence due to the longevity of his species being what around 800 year old during the clone wars. That is to say that, around half of the high council were made up of his apprentices or their direct apprentices indicating that he had tremendous soft power to shape events/views for the order as a whole at the highest level. Add in the fact that he spent time mentoring the younglings and you can't point at someone with more fault for the fall of the order than Yoda.

It was ultimately his fear of the darkside and having jedi actually experience the temptation that the darkside promises that directly led to the collapse of the order. He also lacked in understanding the priorities of the younger generations within species that have far shorter lifespans making him Inherently ill suited for his role in the order, had he only occasionally given sage council but otherwise fucked off Ala Master Fey, the order itself wouldn't have had as many issues as it did.

 

[Soupervan]

The sith clouded their senses starting from Palpatine's Master, the plan was a long one of slowly increasing corruption so it would be even harder to see until it broke out into the clone wars by then everyone would be too busy.
Yoda was in charge of the Jedi so a lot of the blame is on him but.. we're used to seeing with our eyes, that's why it's so devestating when we go blind and why we have to get used to walking sticks and guide dogs and all the inconviences. Likewise the jedi are used to seeing with the force, they can't be entirely blamed when they're blinded by the dark side, though it is a major flaw in their training not to take the force with a grain of salt.

Yoda's worst failing was probably allowing and not fighting the updated code, the old code worked well for the Jedi since it was founded but then they changed it up into something that made them repress their feelings until they turned dark, with the old code Vader might have been less likely.

That they didn't allow jedi to marry also reduced the number of force sensitives- read future jedi- meaning they had a lot less jedi than they would have, maybe if they went by the old code even if Vader came to be and everything there would have been a lot more jedi that managed to escape or fight off the clone troopers, perhaps multiple jedi conclaves so Vader couldn't have slayed all the younglings instead causing the emperor to rely on less capable beings like droids or clones allowing a chance for even more future jedi's survival.
The rebellion could have then been over in a single movie instead of a trilogy if that happened... which probably is a good reason Lucas didn't go with the old code.

 

[CILinkz]

If yoda is so old and as grandmaster, isnt he the one who WROTE the new code? Who wrote it if not him or he atleast should have had a heavy hand in its conception. Is it really "allowing" something if your in charge of the whole thing?

 

[humon]

I'm coming into this fairly ignorant of SW lore, but it struck me to read someone say that Yoda was grand master for so long. I remember the old saying that science advances one funeral at a time. If you get someone at the top who can live 800 years, then that means no new ideas for 800 years... except for ideas of the subversive kind that take advantage of whatever particular weaknesses Yoda develops (the same way a virus adapts itself to better infect a chosen host). Nobody is perfect, and 800 years is a long time for the game theory of the natural world to test and probe at one individual. That's why we humans are supposed to die a lot sooner than that (and why AI could become a big problem for us -- imagine an intelligence that controls everything, can't see its own mistakes, and never ages out).

So I'd say the fault isn't with Yoda directly, but with the institutional stagnation that his long life resulted in. He is the embodiment of Osiris. And of course, like someone else suggested, his instinct after it all crashes down is to take radical ownership and ask himself what he could have done differently. After a failure like that, hiding on a swamp planet and refusing to train anyone else sounds about the right course of action, for someone who can no longer trust his own judgement.

I don't know exactly what his position on the dark side was (aside from his brief lectures in Empire Strikes Back), but from what people are saying in this thread, it sounds like he failed in the anti-fragility department. If he had coddled his students so that they never experienced the temptation of the dark side, then naturally they would be weak and fold easily when Palpatine comes knocking. But I don't know if that's what he did. It may just have been a case of good times creating weak men no matter who's in charge, and not even Jedi principles can stop Polybius from being proven right in the end, every time.

 

[Xintax]

I don't know exactly what his position on the dark side was (aside from his brief lectures in Empire Strikes Back), but from what people are saying in this thread, it sounds like he failed in the anti-fragility department. If he had coddled his students so that they never experienced the temptation of the dark side, then naturally they would be weak and fold easily when Palpatine comes knocking. But I don't know if that's what he did. It may just have been a case of good times creating weak men no matter who's in charge, and not even Jedi principles can stop Polybius from being proven right in the end, every time.

Click to shrink...

This is a good summation and is why the Courasant Jedi were so weak/bad when it actually came to getting things done and being productive elsewhere in the galaxy, they feared the temptation of the darkside far too greatly it wasn't only Yoda, however Yoda was the figure most at blame given his personal influence and word outright dictated most policies on the high council for more than 7 centuries growing his influence like a cancer over that time as the younger generations of jedi came and went. There is no denying that Yoda perhaps moreso than any other figure in jedi history had the most influence on dictating and guiding the order itself in part due to his lifespan and in part due to his power level within the force making him 'more right' when it came to listening to the will of the force.

There was quite frankly a lot wrong within the order that Yoda took part in seeing the effects of and never fought against, the fact that the order went from accepting people of all walks of life and backgrounds to being a cult which only accepted malleable children should have been a tremendous red flag. Only the core itself really has the resources to tag/test people for force potential basing the order away from the encounter trillions residing within the outer rim in favor of core. The outer rim mind that has had a consistent issue of being exploited by the inner rim, contents with constant slavery, piracy, smuggling and so many other issues that the jedi are nominally supposed to take care of should have been a tremendous red flag for anyone that had left the temple and been out that way at least once in their lifetimes.

The very notion that the jedi feared that the darkside would be too much of a temptation for the literal adults/teenager and slaves had some merit, but they wouldn't have had to fear such maladjusted people if they had been doing their job in the first place. Which in my mind shows how I'll suited Yoda and others were within the order were by the time of the clone wars in canon.

In essence the order went from a group of warrior monks that got shit done that was largely beneficial for people all over the galaxy into a cult, that dogmatically followed the will of the Core to the detriment of the wider galaxy.

This should have been widely apparent for just about anyone with 2 braincells to rub together which is why Qui Gon's death was such a tragedy, he was the only one calling the order out on it by the time of the first prequel movie and was why they labeled him a 'troublemaker' with some implications that it was only the fact that he was Dooku's padwan and thus Yoda's grandpadwan that prevented him from being booted from the council.

You can see this innate level of arrogance and general apathy within Obi Wan's dialog on Tatooine, someone who was raised from birth Basically within the order and was attached to the most 'radical' council member someone that actually called Yoda out on his shit leadership, yet he felt disdain for the way of life within the outer rim and to a lesser extent the inhabitants of the outer rim....his belief that the Lightsaber was a dignified/civilized weapon is also low key a give away for this organizational arrogance, we see in the actual era of the Old Republic, that jedi had no issues using blasters to get the job done and get it done fast should it be needed.

The battle between Qui Gon and Maul was called Duel of the Fates for a pretty blatant reason. Had Qui Gon survived the Anakin would have never fallen, and Dooku likely wouldn't have pulled away fully from the order and the plot to bring down the order would have faced far more competent opposition than it did in canon.