Balancing Jedi procreation vs. lack of relationships

From what we know of the EU, it seems that Correlia does things differently--hence, it's not weird for their Jedi to have families and lineages. But how does it work otherwise?

1) Is there a constant rate of mutation among the sentient races, so that the Jedi doesn't find itself depleted? IE, after the Jedi Purge, there is still a constant number of Jedi being born, we just don't know it cauz no one's looking

2) Maybe the Force/Midichlorians "overflow" into sentient creatures. Same thing with the constant rate of mutations, except this is a constant rate of midichlorians hopping into living people.

3) Maybe other Force-sensitive orders breed like there's no tomorrow (look at that blue Twilik, mreow), and it's just the Jedi who don't let themselves have fun.

 

Funny how the Jedi leave force sensetive Ewoks and Gungans at home.

 

What's the randomness factor of genetic force sensistivity? With Ki-Adi Mundi having a whole litter of kids, you think at least one of them have some Force potiental.

 

i'd venture to guess that that the Jedi only find and train a small fraction of all the Force sensitives they come across... remember, they need to snatch the kid fairly young. Considering that there are only on the order of 10,000 Jedi and at least a million worlds, it is likely that the Jedi only come across a small fraction of the galaxy's force sensitive beings, and catching them in their infant state is even more rare. after all, the jedi didn't know about the slave kid on tatooine who had an awesome midichlorian count until a jedi actually met him and tested him... they didn't detect anakin from afar.

the jedi don't need to procreate if they know how to find enough potentials to keep their numbers up.

 

at cannes film festival few years back George Lucas was asked about that topic and he said: Jedi shall have no attachement that distracts them from their work, though that doesn´t mean they have no sex. Sex is allowed, love is not.

They are all hippies, who do it, but without emotions included.

 

Every child born in the Republic is tested for high midi-chlorian levels. That's where jedi come from. Force sensitive children coming from normal parents must indeed be rare if there were only about 10 000 jedi before the clone wars, while there must be trillions of kids born every year in the galaxy.

 

at cannes film festival few years back George Lucas was asked about that topic and he said: Jedi shall have no attachement that distracts them from their work, though that doesn´t mean they have no sex. Sex is allowed, love is not.

They are all hippies, who do it, but without emotions included.

This description of the Jedi has bothered me from the start. All this "no attachments, no emotions, no love". To me, a being that does not feel (or does not allow itself to feel) always has something slightly evil and inhuman to it, and this does not fit the image of a Jedi. I don't want to believe that a Jedi would have sex and then throw his partner away like he wasn't dealing with a being that has feelings. You get a description like that, and on the other hand you know that a Jedi has to live a life of discipline. A life of celibacy would have fit their image a lot better - not something like that.

 

Every child born in the Republic is tested for high midi-chlorian levels. That's where jedi come from. Force sensitive children coming from normal parents must indeed be rare if there were only about 10 000 jedi before the clone wars, while there must be trillions of kids born every year in the galaxy.

QUI-GON JINN: Had he been born in the Republic, we would have identified him early, and he would have become Jedi, no doubt...

Who exactly is testing them all? In order to test every newborn on every world and space station, you would need a vast bureaucracy of Jedi testers, presumably ingrained into the local health care administrations. Since there are clearly not enough Jedi to handle this role, it would fall to non-Jedi to oversee and administer this program. I doubt this is the case on many worlds that might belong to the Republic but don't let the Republic set local policy, or have the infrastructure to implement this system. Many 'rural' worlds might not have basic health care or demographic-recording functions.

I don't believe the Republic works in such a way as to impose something like this on its member systems. The Republic works on local control, and really only gets involved in things that go beyond a single system. It might have voluntary programs that some systems participate in, but I don't think they could
enforce it across all worlds.

I would imagine there would be many cultures where there would be opposition to having children tested for Force potential as some cultures might value keeping their kids with their parents over the value of having them trained as a jedi. Other cultures simply might be more isolationist and not encourage their species to leave the homeworld.

Besides if, as you suppose there are only 10,000 force sensitives were found out of the trillions of sentients in the Republic, that means that testing yields 1 potential in every 1 million people (prentending that the Republic has 10 trillion people, based on the assumption that Coruscant alone has 1 trillion in population). Is that really cost-effective? It might be easier to simply have some Jedi meditating deep in the Force and divining the locations of potentials about to be born, and retrieving them.

I propose that Qui-Gon was expressing a hope that Anakin would have been found, and not a certainty that he would have been discovered.

 

Maybe it's just one of those standard tests they run when the children are born. All Qui-Gon needed was a sample of Anakin's blood and a couple of seconds on the computer for Obi-Wan to run the test. It seems like the test itself is simple enough that anybody could do it: a sample of blood and a program to test it.

 

The problem of course is that blood tests are done on pretty much every baby anyways and as we saw the test for midis requires blood and a short period of time, nothing else.

The more interesting thing this would do and which I don't doubt did do, would be to create a governmental database of who every positive test is, meaning they could be tracked down much faster.

 

Man, I wanna be a Jedi and get my freak on with the wimmenz!

Wait...I can do that as a Sith if I really wanted to. nevermind.

 

Blood tests are pretty standard - but if they were universally testing for midi-chlorians, then there would be a fair amount of health care professionals who know about midis, and thus researchers would be exploring them.

Does the general populace (ie specifically the health care and scientific communities) know about midi-chlorians? Or would the Jedi keep that knowledge a secret in order to protect their order or the Force.
The last thing the Force needs is a bunch of scientists tinkering with midichlorians.

Blood tests are pretty standard -- on "developed" worlds. Just as in our own world, not every child gets equal health screening at birth, I'd imagine that there are many worlds in the Republic where the infrastructure for blood screening every child simply does not exist. The Republic is similar to the United Nations - each member is still in charge of its own affairs, but can participate in larger programs and handle larger issues.

The Jedi screening program is at most a voluntary program for worlds to participate in. There are many worlds that either don't want to participate or don't have the resources to participate.

Further, while the Jedi serve the Republic, would they really have Jedi-testing be a Republic program.. it seems that it would enmesh them closer to the Republic's bureaucracy than they might want -- especially if a list of jedi potentials was kept by the government. it could be used against the jedi, by digging up dirt on their families, blackmailing their families, etc.

 

This leads us to an aspect of the EU that isn't explored sufficiently in detail...or shouldn't be touched upon, ie: artificial Force users, or somehow using some weird Zahn-ish scheme to gain absolute dominion over "the Force"

 

This leads us to an aspect of the EU that isn't explored sufficiently in detail...or shouldn't be touched upon, ie: artificial Force users, or somehow using some weird Zahn-ish scheme to gain absolute dominion over "the Force"


this 'absence of work' in the science of the Force leads me to suspect that the Jedi did not give regular people the tools to know and study midichlorians. They don't want researchers monkeying around with midichlorians precisely because they don't need artificial Force users, or people juiced up on harvested midis or finding a way to kill or nullify their power.

 

There's been a handful of experiments geared towards bestowing non-Force sensitives with that ability; notably in Jedi Outcast and, apparently, in the Grievous origin story in SW: Visionaries. As far as I know all such attempts have failed though.

 

do we have any info on how Jedi we know about were 'selected' to be taken into the Jedi Order. i recall one story in Tales where Mace has to deal with some parents who aren't sure about the severance of all ties.

 

Medical experiments to artificially increase midichlorian counts would not help because there would be no Force for the midis to "communicate" with.

It makes sense that there might be a finite amount of Force to be tapped within a particular space or host, and that the level is not constant - in some people or places, the amount of Force, and thus the amount of midis that would live there, would be higher than others.

hmmm do midis actually die, or do they simply move away? ie, if you tried to juice someone with them, would they die or dissipate to other places/people until an equilibrium was reached.

 

I don't think the Force is really genetic, since it seems that Forceusers can be born to families with no history of Force-sensitivity.

 

I don't think the Force is really genetic, since it seems that Forceusers can be born to families with no history of Force-sensitivity.


it is not totally genetic, but it does have some hereditary component, since the offspring of force users have a good tendency of being force sensitive.

think of it as a genetic pre-disposition.

 

The Force is a combination of genetic factors and metaphysics. Let's leave it there for now.

This description of the Jedi has bothered me from the start.

Which is part of the reason they're going to get owned. They have no real-life experience -- notably with the tough moral choices that stem from emotional conflicts. This experience could have aided them in the Clone Wars, and in figuring out that there was a Sith Lord at the head of the Republic. But the Jedi are secretive and dogmatic.

Desann's experiment did not fail -- it in fact succeeded. The problem was that none of the test subjects could stand up to the awe-inspiring might of Kyle Katarn.