The Jedi way.

I have always thought that the process of creating Jedi laid out in the last three Star Wars movies (I always count them from release date) was far from ideal, bordering on child abuse. And now I think I can clearly articulate why.

I was in a discussion yesterday about mindfulness, and the concept of the rational mind v. the emotional mind v. wise mind (which is a combination of the two).  When the discussion turned to rational mind, the example was, as is usually the case, Star Trek's Spock.  One of the participants in the discussion mentioned that she had little experience with Star Trek, that she was really a Star Wars person, and that there was no comparable person in that universe.  When I suggested Yoda, I was immediately shouted down. Yoda exemplified wise mine, everyone said.

No, he doesn't.  And the Jedi ethos doesn't either, going as far as to openly reject emotion.  A Jedi must not fear, a Jedi must not be angry, a Jedi must not care about other individuals except in any but the most abstract and generalized way.  The good of all rather than the good of individuals is what matters.  Children were taken from their homes and mothers at a very young age, an age when attachments to others are very important, so they can grow up without needing love. One of the reasons Yoda gets so exasperated with Luke is that he is so emotional.

This is extremely unhealthy. People need other people.  All healthy people will feel anger sometimes, and will  feel love sometimes; our brains are hard-wired that way. To take children and deliberately make them unhealthy emotionally is abusive.

So I stand by what I said: the only difference between a Vulcan and a Jedi is that Vulcans are born that way, and Jedi are made.