Yoda is wrong.

[vakkotaur]

One quotation from the Star Wars movies bugs me. Yoda's "Do. Or do not. There is no try." may be well meant as a call to action, but is ultimately wrong. Of course there is a try! If people lived by "Do. Or do not." there'd be no significant progress of any kind. It's the try that changes people, changes history, changes the world. Should Edison (or anyone else) have "done not" rather than try? He went through how many failed filament materials before finding one that was usable? That's an awful lot of try, there. Should a kid keep crawling rather than try to walk? Of course not. The idea is absurd. Should the Wrights not have bothered trying to fly? It wasn't as if they were born with wings. "Do. Or do not." suggests not bothering to attempt anything unless it's a sure thing. There's a word for that sort of thing: stagnation.

A world of tries is, true, also a world of failures. But which world would you rather live in: A world of thousands and even millions of tries and failures, before any eventual success, or a world with no successes at all?

Comments

[kiwihunter8.livejournal.com]

You're not alone! Even when seeing the movie eons ago, I remember that bothering me. I don't think much would be accomplished in this world if we only did things we knew we would succeed at.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think the intent of Yoda's statement is that using "I tried" as an excuse for failure is not acceptable. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. It does mean that you should be going for success with the attitude that you WILL succeed, not with the idea that you'll give it your best shot.

With the background of The Force and the way it is supposed to work, this makes sense, I think.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

That makes some sense, though as I'm not a fan of the franchise I didn't really see it that way. I found the whole "Force" thing pretty hokey all along, too. Also, it seems like every time I see a reference to that line, it isn't used that way. It might be a halfway tolerable line in context, but it ought to be left there.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Things are almost always better in context, I agree. That's a difficult context, and Yoda isn't a native speaker of English either. ;p

I'm not a big fan of Lucas or Star Wars either, but I happen to like Yoda.

[timmowarner.livejournal.com]

I was going to point out the same thing that in relation to using the force, you either do it, or you don't. There's no half-assed attempt. This is illustrated with Luke in Empire Strikes Back when he tries to get the lightsaber to fly to his hand out of the snow because he's caught upside down. It just wobbles a bit. Then he stops, relaxes for a second and just does it. When you're a jedi using the force, you have to know something is going to work before you do it or else it's not going to turn out well. If you can't tell your master 100% that you will do something, it's not going to work right. Basically, there is no "try and see how it works out." It's not the Jedi way. You might as well not do it at all. Wow. I'm geeky.

Anyway, you're right. Unless people are training Jedi, it doesn't really make much sense. Normal people can try all sorts of stuff.