Lit "Unlearn what you have learned" - The Jedi Thread

I think I should bow out (I fear I'm being unintentionally disruptive, and I don't mean to be ).

A few closing points:

* I don't mean to sound like some adolescent gamer "TEH DARKSIDE IS TEH KEWLZ" troll. Apologies if I have. Running around indulging (and eventually giving in to) dark-side temptations has a known end-point, and it's undeniably negative.

I fear my earlier attempts to point out what I see as Jedi refusal to face - and then turn from - the dark side were ill-described on my part.

* I just don't see the old Jedi (pre- or post-reboot) as flawless, or entirely healthy in their approach to living with Force sensitivity. When the pre-boot Order ran dissidents out of town and gave Knights (i.e., Ranik Solusar) severe grief about having families, they weren't encouraging nuance or being very helpful to finding a good work-life balance, IMHO.

Neither does staring into the Force practically all the time; The Jedi Path states apprentices were expected to meditate whenever they could, and that doesn't cultivate relating well to the sentients one is supposed to be compassionate towards.

Whether this holds true in the post-boot is up for grabs, but Kanan demonstrates that questioning how the Order came to certain traditions was frowned upon; at no point did Caleb Dume ever seem to be thinking "wow, Force choke'll make me a better Jedi!, yet Jocasta singles him out and Mace glowers at him.

* Taking those points together - yeah. I think "light-sided" can be more than the OJO idyll. Don't play with the dark side, but don't fail to have a life, either - there's room for monasticism, but forcing it to be the only choice doesn't work, either.

Having a family, non-Jedi friends, etc. - everyday living - shouldn't have to be classified as "Grey Jedi," much less "dark" or "heretical."

(At the same time, let's not risk excusing Anakin for his failure to seek help, take responsibility for his crimes, and walk away from Palpatine. "He was tricked and didn't get proper support" only goes so far; he could've stopped Mace from killing Palpatine without betraying Windu, after all, but instead he made the wrong choice, and kept making them.)

 

I've always enjoyed hearing your take on Force philosophy. Especially as it relates to the NJO. Few people like to talk about Jacen's fall in depth.

 

Man, i feel like you dont know much about meditation.

Meditation, first and foremost, is mindfulness. "Be mindful of the Living Force." Zen teaches to make every day living meditation. Washing the dishes, cooking, eating, scrubbing the toilet. Everything and everywhere.

There's nothing inherently about meditating at every opportunity that disconnects you from people. It makes you *more* connected to the world and better able to accept things as they are. It's bot meditation that distanced the Jedi Order from regular folks, it was being cloistered in a Temple and mostly interacting with the galactic aristocracy.

It should be telling that the Jedi ideal as embodied in Qui-Gon is interaction and compassion for "pathetic lifeforms" as young Padawan Kenobi put it, and being mindful of the Living Force. The Living Force defined as being the Force "right here, right now." The Force in its myriad manifestations in the form of living beings.

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At the beginning of the movie, at least.

Furthermore, even if we accept that the Jedi are disconnected as a whole, that's evidence that they're doing it wrong and are misguided, not that following the light side of the Force is misguided or insufficient.

We know what happens when you're totally in tune with the light: you "become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

 

A lot of people today have an instinctive reaction against discipline, especially spiritual discipline. That's all well and good, but the advantage of such discipline is that it tends to be more effective at...well, disciplining people, and that in turn definitely has its advantages when it comes to the behavior of powerful people in particular. The Jedi Order is, like it or not, sitting on a truly enormous amount of power, and it certainly makes a lot of sense that the people they hand that power to they then require to follow some rules and observe some spiritual practices on a regular basis. This is little more than common sense.

The Jedi in the OR are not only figures of religious authority, but also adjudicators and enforcers of the law and advisors and all kinds of other things--not to mention people with supernatural powers that seem to have very few clear limits. Generally speaking, you want such people to be psychologically and mentally stable--and very lived into a spiritual and compassionate and selfless view of themselves and others and their power and the Force. You want them taught and trained how to use that power, how to think of it, how to relate to others, how to relate to themselves. The general way to make sure this happens is spiritual and religious practices and disciplines--not just letting everyone winging it as they feel like on their own and hoping it works out.

If anything, the Jedi Order in the Prequels time period seems to suffer from the opposite defect--their problem is definitely not that they spend too much time doing spiritual practices and disciplining themselves and learning to see things from a larger and more compassionate perspective. Turning the Jedi into Generals and soldiers and government enforcers, as we see in the Prequels, seems to have involved throwing Jedi into combat willy-nilly, putting them in positions of vast responsibility with lots of leeway and very little oversight, after not much training at all: in short, in letting ordinary discipline and spiritual practices slide (hopefully temporarily) for the sake of more mundane, albeit urgent, priorities. This is essentially Anakin in a nutshell--a Jedi of the war, who got used to wielding vast power on his own and not being answerable to anyone long before he'd spent any time becoming spiritually attuned to the Force and himself, used to focusing on fighting and winning rather than on confronting and fixing his own very wounded psyche.

That he ultimately prefers to transition from this position to Galactic despotism is, really, not as odd as it might seem. Anakin never knew what it meant to be a Jedi in the deeper sense--he was used to, and liked, all that it meant to be a war Jedi in a state of extraordinary crisis, in a state where the deeper aspects and disciplines of the role had been allowed to slide for the sake of power. In a more ordinary time and place, his fall would certainly not have occurred as it did.

 

Oh, I think they're certainly not flawless - that's a big point of the prequels, I think. There's a reason Qui-Gon surpasses them.

I dunno, I'm with Dawud on this one, but this is part of what this thread is about - are there ways we can understand the Jedi through real life religious analogues and practices? It's worth remembering that, at the end of the day, the Jedi are clerics. Monks, even.

Mace Windu in particular is kind of an unduly harsh Master, and I think he makes a lot of bad decisions surrounding Anakin. He, more than, say, Yoda, seems to be really militant about the dark side.

This is interesting, and I actually agree with it - it's just that the Jedi order are monks. I don't know what the Guardians of the Whills are like.

This is the crux of it, though: the Jedi pretty clearly don't think having friends is dark sided, and they don't even think having a family is. What they warn against is attachment - which has a very particular meaning. Wikipedia has it this way: "Attachment, that is the inability to practice or embrace detachment, is viewed as the main obstacle towards a serene and fulfilled life. Many other spiritual traditions identify the lack of detachment with the continuous worries and restlessness produced by desire and personal ambitions." Detachment in Buddhism is about accepting and appreciating everything in the present, and seeking to deal with change and loss as part of the universe; it doesn't mean that you don't care about things, it just means that you don't cling to them in such a way that keeps you from enlightenment. For monks in many religions, this is coupled with actual vows of poverty and chastity, because the responsibilities of leading a religious life can often be in tension with the responsibilities of owning a bunch of stuff or having a family - it's a Duty thing.

A perfect example of this is in AotC, when Anakin wants to go back for Padmé. Obi-Wan doesn't say, "How dare you fear for your friend!" He asks what Padmé would do, to which Anakin responds: "She would do her duty." Additionally, Yoda doesn't scold Anakin for mourning a friend - he tells him to work on accepting the Will of the Force. (Which, ironically, probably would have ended with Padmé alive.)

Yeah, like...being in love doesn't guarantee you're going to go to the dark side some day. After all, Obi-Wan suffers such a loss when Satine dies, and he's better prepared to handle it. But Anakin sure does play all the hits the Jedi were warning about.

 

It's pretty important to note that the Jedi Council was worried the prosecution of the Clone Wars would lead to the Jedi losing who they are. It did, and it didnt in a circuitous sort of way.

They had already started losing their spiritual way well before the war. Both, i believe, in terms of their function as law enforcement with the Republic structure as well as the way they had quantified the Force and their relationship to it. When we pick up with them in TPM, they have it all down to a sort of science and the naturalness of their path had sort of faded under the artifice of their dogma, duties, and the mechanistic view they seem to have adopted of the Force.

"Over 20,000!"

Midi-chlorians became the Order's sort of version of the DBZ scouter.

There's a far more natural relation to the Force in the OT than the PT. A greater emphasis on spiritual discipline and worldview than on more practical skills. Luke is fully trained with mostly having trained via book and experience and a few weeks with Yoda. The key portions of his training arent lightsaber technique and Force feats, it's largely about how he relates to the Force and putting his faith and trust in it.

It's a long standing phenomenon in religion that clergy and mystics frequently clash, with the mystics' criticism of clergy being that they limit themselves to books and rarely do the deep necessary spiritual work to truly experience the Divine. This is the clash between Jesus and the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sufis versus exoteric religious scholars. Taoists versus Confucians. Dogma and ritual vs ecstatic union.

This is first apparent in Qui-Gon vs Jedi Council.

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hey guys what's been going on in this thread


My legends view on midi-chlorians is that the midi-chlorian count was another prerequisite like age and no marriage that the Jedi had.

Things that weren't strictly necessary, but dogma that was built up over the past millennia that was extremely convenient in acting as "training wheels" that prevented another schism.

I don't know if there's no canon on it, and I doubt they've even been touched, but I don't think midi-chlorian count has ever been established as a static value? My thought was that someone could increase their count, or even use the Force with a lower count, but the Jedi had their dogmatic and rigid way of doing training that either didn't have time or interest in those things.

 

Canon hasn't touched on midi-chlorians much, which is maybe not surprising, so it's hard to determine what exactly a high midi-chlorian count strictly indicates. I'd be curious to know more about that. It seems pretty clear that, below a certain count, you're more or less just a normie. (But that normies still exist within the Force and can affect/be affected by it.)

I'm attracted to the idea that admitting only those with a certain count was a measure the Jedi took. I doubt it was a "lack of interest," though - I'd be surprised if there wasn't a whole lot of Jedi thought on the subject.

 

Well, I believe in Rinzler's making of Star Wars, the notes he had from Lucas back in 77 or 78 mention midi-chlorians but also say someone like Han Solo could learn to use the Force. I think either that, or Car'das, or both, informed my belief that Force sensitivity was simply natural aptitude that could be achieved through training by someone that was not born with that aptitude.

 

Pablo had a bunch of tweets about the Jedi last yeat(i think?). He touched on midi-chlorians, basically suggesting that the Jedi reliance on midi-tests was something of a degradation of their mysticism.

Remember, Legends had the Matukai whose martial and physical training could develop Force-sensitivity in beings otherwise unable to use the Force.


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I wonder, then, if the idea isn't to decide whether someone can be a Jedi but just kind of, like, curiosity? Just to see where someone's starting. There's no indication in TPM that Qui-Gon's measuring for a minimum.

That said, there's undeniably a canonical category of beings referred to as "Force sensitive." And Han is not Force sensitive. So how does that work?

 

I dont know if Han could ever do what a Jedi can, but with training he could do what Chirrut does.

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My view is influenced by True Blood of all things.

"Can all vampires fly?"
"Can all humans sing?"
"So, yes, but not well?"

All beings have midiclorians and all beings are tied to the Force but some are more tied than others.

 

Chirrut is self-trained though, no? So I would posit an even higher ceiling with actual training.

I just think it would take a whole lot longer for someone like Han, whereas for Luke it's like a day. And maybe the Jedi decided training someone that will take a larger fraction of their lifetime isn't worth their time. In Legends they had certain ages where milestones were to be reached, at least for being selected as a Padawan, right? Unless TCW eliminated that.

 

Chirrut is a Guardian of the Whills, that's an order basically space Shaolin warrior monks who guard the Temple of the Kyber. He learned zama-shiwo from someone. I never got the sense that he's self-trained.

The Jedi youngling/initiate stage was from infancy to 12-15. Then they do the Intiate Trials, get selected as a Padawan. Canon may have replaced the Intitate Trials with the Gathering. Seems to me, all the truly important milestones in Jedi Knighthood go through "facing the mirror" and confronting one's own dark side at deeper and deeper levels.

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Chirrut wasn't trained as a Jedi though, correct?

I'm just wondering if he would be capable of more if there was no purge and he was trained to be a Jedi.

 

I'd assumed the Guardians of the Whills were a bigger deal - potentially the Order from which the Jedi derived - before the Empire. Chirrut and Baze (and the couple of others we see milling about dressed like Chirrut) are wanderers and beggars now because the Empire has driven them from the temple.

 

I'd suggest that Han is probably a fair bit stronger in the Force than the average Jedi, hence all the lucky breaks and plot armour.

All his lower midi-count means is that he can't move **** with his mind. Which is fine. Better to be Han than Coleman Trebor.

 

So he's Corran Horn

 

Right, it seems clear that non-"sensitives" still have a role to play in the Will of the Force, and similarly that the dark side thrives on the evil of non-sensitives, too.

I don't know if Han had Jedi potential, but it's clear he's an instrument of good.

 

I really wish Yoda's line in AotC about Padme being strong in the Force hadn't been cut.

Made it into the novel, but still. That was the first time I thought that maybe strength and sensitivity weren't meant to be the same thing.

 

Chirrut wasnt trained as a Jedi, no, but the Rogue One Visual Dictionary does say that the martial art he practices, zama-shiwo, is very similar to Jedi body control methods(which are currently unnamed as far as i know). Zama-shiwo is Jedha's native martial art. It is comparable to the various internal martial arts like tai chi chuan, baguazhang, xinyiquan or aikido etc. So, his training is quite similar to some element of Jedi training. He's attuned enough to the Force that he can hear the singing of kyber crystals.

Re: kyber crystals

Remember a dozen years ago when LFL was quite insistent that lightsaber crystals and their colors *weren't* like mood rings? They kind if are now. Haha.

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I thought Chirrut's description of the crystal as "singing" was great. Additionally, there's the lovely moment where Jyn holds her kyber crystal tight as if in prayer when they need some luck.



Re: mood rings - I don't love the idea that the color the crystal turns reflects something about the user, but for some reason I love the idea of bleeding crystals, and that repairing them turns them white.

 

The bleeding of kyber crystals just adds another dimension to the notion that Sith and dark Force-users are corrupting the natural order. From the bleeding of crystals to the Empire's and First Order's use of kyber crystals to build superweapons and even use on capital ships, it reveals a lot about what their relationship with the Force is.

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