Yodas Teaching

"Do, or do not. There is no try."
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will, as it did Obi Wan's apprentice."
"You must feel TheForce around you. Life creates it... makes it grow. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."
- Somewhat RetConed, unfortunately, with the twaddle in ST1 about MitiChlorian?s.
"Adventure; excitement. A Jedi craves not these things."
"Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering."
"You will know the Dark Side from the Light when you are calm, at peace, and passive."

"Ow! Lying on my ear you are!"

Some of these "teachings" are pretty poisonous. The idea that we are "luminous beings" and not "crude" matter is at the core of dualism, which can lead to people committing heinous acts convinced that they are justified by some other "plane of existence" or "after-life".

The idea of "luminous beings" doesn't need help from dualism, it is a simple scientifically proven fact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared) one just has to forget about the limitations in our human eyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum)

Obviously 'luminous' was mean't figuratively by Yoda, wasn't it?

It can also lead to disconnection from reality. The notion that fear and anger should be avoided disconnects us from useful emotions. Fear and anger evolved for very good reasons.

I agree with you - in our world. But in the fantastic world of StarWars, where TheForce is real, these might be useful teachings.

Discussion guessing at what dualism is, and whether its presence or absence leads to more heinous acts, has been removed. This site has been proven unsuitable for resolving such issues.

For your limitations argue, sure enough yours they are! --Yoda

Yoda's EnglishLanguage needs to be refactored.

Why? Does not your kind understand those of Germanic descent, hmm? Correct Yoda's grammar, would you?

Some of it moves the primary verbs to the end, à la GermanLanguage. Otherwise it is more TopicComment? structure, like ChineseLanguage.

Actually, the way Yoda speaks is based on Yiddish, a dialect of German (with additions from Hebrew and SlavicLanguages) spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe, and still spoken by some ultra-Orthodox (Chareidi) Jews today. The reason Yoda speaks English like that is GeorgeLucas (or maybe someone else who helped write StarWars' script, forgessen :-) ) had encountered a quote from IsaacAsimov saying that it would be impossible for one to view someone speaking English in Yiddish's grammatical order as threatening. This of course was important for creating a strange being that would look like an alien to adults but not be frightening to children.