The Jedi Path. (Now you too can actually pretend with slightly more accuracy that you're a Jedi!)

Vaapad should probably be a form to itself instead of a subset of Juyo...

 

$19.95 I can do, $75-$100 is ridiculous, especially since I'm not interested in all the bells and whistles.

I just want the book.

 

How freakin' awful is this:

Good Lord. It was one thing to know about this particular policy but for this book to be IU and to have the rationalization as to why this was a good policy right there... no wonder the people were so willing to believe Palpatine's poodoo about a Jedi Rebellion and plot to take over the Senate. Or Anakin's belief in that crap too. Jeez.

Thank the Force for Luke Skywalker!

 

Yup, the Jedi officially use metaphysics to justify inequality. (This is, of course, where the term "Aryan" comes from. After a fashion.)

So, black and black morality, or blue and orange?

 

I think this is one of those "two universes" things. Meaning there's the universe represented by The Jedi Path and HoloNet News. And then there's everything else.

 

And you mean by that what? The reality is one thing, and the Jedi are taking a position that reveals their insularity and stupidity in this period? On that I agree.

There's nothing at all justifiable with that passage though, and I really wish there had been a Luke margin note about that one. The survivors of Outbound Flight absolutely hating and fearing Jedi makes way more sense in that light than even in the light of the novel Outbound Flight with C'Baoth's craziness.

 

Still, the jedi don't do that. They could, legally, but they don't. So it is a rather moot point, is it not?

 

There is also Luke's commentary on the subject: "I will not do this. Membership and recruitment in my Order is strictly voluntary."

While the text of the language is harsh, it dates from shortly after the end of the Sith Wars and in practice did not work that way - except in cases like with Jorus, who was on his way to the Dark Side anyways. The incident from the HNN article was a special case where the Council made a call on a gray area (orphan with Force-sensitivity recruited, parent later found alive and wanting the child back) that wasn't particularly sensitive, but let's face it - there were other forces at work there (nor did the mother seem particularly concerned with getting her kid back in the long run)

 

I'm interested in buying this, however, I haven't read too far in the post-ROTJ timeline. How far does it "go", exactly? I'm kind of wanting to know as little as possible about the NJO until I finally get to it, so I'd rather not to get it spoiled in depth, but I am very interested in seeing Luke's observations about the Old Jeid Order.

 

No, it's really not a moot point at all. The point is the whole "besides, we could just take these kids if we wanted to. Oh yeah, and the fact that they are Force-sensitive is proof of their consent despite them not being at all capable of giving any kind of verbal consent, let alone have the rational faculty to do so." It's the mindset that the Jedi are entitled to take children away, regardless of how parents feel about it. It becomes a matter of the Jedi Order having this mentality that not only do they have the legal authority, but the moral and metaphysical authority to take infants from parents and cut off all contact with them from that point on. If they decide to reason with families they are only doing the families a favor, but at the end of the day the Jedi can get their way no matter what if they choose to. It's an underlying mentality.

It's awful, and yes... it's that mentality that is the very core of the problems of the Jedi in that time period and their relationship with the rest of the galaxy. Somehow the Jedi are turned on, after being the heroes of the Clone Wars, just at Palpatine's say so. It's all because of the way in which they thought of their relation to the people of the Republic.

 

It wasn't for Roan Shryne. He refused a position in the in my opinion wonderfully named Jedi Acquisition Division because he disliked the "recruitment" of the small children.

Personally I like the way the Jedi hide behind law in this issue, when the issue is not really - in my own personal opinion - what is legal, but what is morally right. An issue which they try (again, in my own opinion) avoid facing both through that hiding behind the law -tactic and through the metaphysical defense.

 

That this is one of those places where the EU diverges from Lucas. In Lucas' films we see no evidence whatsoever of "baby-snatching" without the parents' consent. In fact, TPM strongly emphasizes Anakin's choice in the matter as well as Shmi's consent. It seems that certain EU has decided to take the fallacious "baby-snatching" charge resulting from Tea-Party-esque anti-Jedi sentiment and convert it into an in-universe reality. I strongly doubt that "baby-snatching" is a part of Lucas' vision. Also, not all EU is created equal; some sources make a point to mention parental consent.

 

Anakin was 9 years old though, and Qui-Gon Jinn was a very different sort of Jedi than those on the Council. Not all EU is created equal, but the Jedi Path is written as a Jedi manual that was penned and distributed shortly after the Ruusan Reformations. It's pretty authoritative, IMO, and it was obviously written after any sources that emphasized parental consent.

Even if parental consent is the norm and just comandeering a baby in teh way that C'Baoth would have is frowned upon by the Jedi Council, this document does nothing to offer a Padawan or a Knight any kind of reasonable examples against the charge of them being baby snatchers... it simply prevaricates about the legality, and thus morality, of them doing so with or without consent and then it cites Jedi Masters using a very weak metaphysical justification for infants "consenting" to be in the Order.

 

And yet we still don't see any Jedi snatching babies in the films, or any indication whatsoever that they do. While Qui-Gon is assumed to be different from the Council in certain ways, that doesn't mean the Council is necessarily different from Qui-Gon in every conceivable way.

I really don't care when it was written. The sources which emphasize parental consent shouldn't lose their validity just because a later author came along and decided to overwrite them IMO. Especially given the fact that the only Jedi recruitment we saw in the PT included parental consent.

Nor does it provide any examples specifically proving the charge, as was pointed out by other posters.

 

What do you mean? That The Jedi Path and HoloNet News aren't canon, or, like Stephen Colbert put it, "[R]eality has a well-known liberal bias."

 

It stops right before the NJO since there is a piece of paper written by Luke and I want to say that the date is 22 ABY, but I don't have the book in front of me so I may be wrong about the date, but it does take place before NJO.

The part about the Jedi having the legal right to take Force-senstive children didn't really bother me since we have never seen that happen yet. The part about the Force presence in a child meaning that the child is consenting to join the Jedi Order is crap though, but it says that only some masters believe it so the Jedi as a whole don't follow it and to me, it isn't that big of a deal.

 

Whether or not there are any depictions of Jedi taking children without the consent of their parents is besides the point. It's the attempt to refute the accusation that Jedi are kidnappers by saying "we have the legal authority to do so" and then the metaphysical justification. Which suggests the author at least considers it to have some merit. That's what I'm getting at. And this is a text given to Younglings and Padawans to read while they are in the Temple.

The mentality behind it is reprehensible, irrespective of whether or not there are examples of Jedi taking babies without consent. It's the very idea that the can and that's okay, so technically it's not kidnapping. Because they have the legal authority to do so.

Furthermore, we are talking a thousand years of this. Just because there's not a story depicting it, doesn't mean it never ever could have happened that some Force-sensitive children were taking legally by the Jedi without the consent of the parents. Or with said parents under duress of some kind.

 

That's nothing more than an appeal to ignorance. It doesn't suffice as proof that it did happen.

 

Certainly not, but your one or two stories that you can cite are not proof that it didn't happen either.

Neither of which is the point. A point which you are avoiding, for whatever reason.

 

I don't get how I'm avoiding the point. Is the point that the Jedi mentality is now **** because an author said so? I thought I made it clear that I tend to reject the book's stance. This reminds me of another situation, where one book said that a certain philosophy was firmly debunked in-universe and summarily rejected by the Jedi, while another book came along years later and indicated that the same philosophy was embraced by many Jedi, including Council members. In that case it appears that the two authors simply didn't agree on the in-universe Jedi position.

 

I don't care who wrote this, what perspective it's from, or whatever. I am not going along with anything that even remotely portrays the Jedi as baby snatchers. This section is simply non-canon in my mind. (I'm sure Lucas would agree)

 

Man, when I think back on all the arguments I could've won here simply by pointing out the undeniable truth that Lucas would agree with me...

 

Really, I don't care if Lucas would agree with me. This isn't an argument, that section to me is non-canon. Lucas can come out and say it definitely is canon, and I would just ignore him.

 

Somewhere Noah Webster is putting on his Steel-Toed Doc Martin's of Correction.

 

I think myself that people should remember the context of the Jedi child "acquisition" orders.

First, it's written just post- Ruusan, with Force sensitives not in the "custody" of the Order seen perhaps, I think, more than in other eras to be a possible danger for the Dark Side's new rise, especially as various Sith minions based on Darth Bane trilogy were still running around as I recall.

Secondly, I assume myself that the Order would have lacked in manpower after the war - which had claimed great number of casualties among the Jedi in it's last stages - at a time when they needed to go back into areas that had been under Sith control up to a thousand years. In those areas especially they might have, I guess myself, felt like they needed to take into "custody" all the Force sensitive children.

Thirdly, I recall that they were getting rid of the former frontier "Jedi baronies" and the Jedi families like Farfalla's that had ruled over them had to adapt into the no families and no children demand. Again, I think that this would have partly blocked one source of future Jedi recruits outside Corellia, with possible Force sensitive nieces and nephews apparently less likely source of recruits from these established Jedi families than the children of Jedi.