Jediism, The Religion Of The Jedi, The Force is strong with this one... Options

Just when you think you've seen it all...

http://www.thejediismway.org/

While many see it as a joke, a small minority of people have truly adopted "The Force" as their religion and its early practitioners called it "Jedi," as George Lucas didn't give a name for the religion that the Sith and Jedi practiced. Though a new movement has decided to call it "Jediism."

This has got me thinking. What if more people started to believe in it? What if in 20 or 30 years enough devout followers adopted this as their religion that their combined faith and energy pooled together to bring the Force into existence? Do you think it would come into existence? If it did, would you try to master its ways? Merely hypothetical conjecture for now, as, in my opinion, it is too new of a religion to have any real power. But what about in a few decades? Lucas did admit that he based most of his ideas for the Force on Taoism.

Your thoughts?

This post has been edited by Slayden: Jul 15 2007, 06:45 AM

Honestly, what tickles me a lot about the Jedi in the Star Wars movies is that they are not mere run of the mill musclebound and idiotic barbarians/warriors/etc... These guys actually had powers - powers that augmented their physical skills, and power that was trained, cultivated, etc... according to a master/student relationship with actual philosophical lessons and a freakin CODE - so that density of muscle didn't determine destiny.

What I really wish is that Lucas would make two specific and crucial contributions to his Star Wars mythos that (to my knowledge) he has not yet done: I wish he would offer a single term that indicates those who choose to walk the way of the Jedi and those who choose to walk the way of the Sith; and, I wish he would add one more group in addition to Jedi and Sith (that also is referenced by that single term), with a new name, that use the Force, who do not walk the ways of either the Jedi, or the Sith.

This post has been edited by Praxis: Dec 3 2008, 04:09 PM

(Geek Mode)

There are the Jensaari, the White Current Adepts, the Baran-Do sages, the Aing-Tii monks, as well as the 'Gray Jedi', who were sort of technically associated and trained by the Jedi, but operated outside their code and were even known to hold a more inclusive view of the force, one that would later be more common in the new jedi order era, generally referred to as the 'unified force' - a view in which the 'light' and 'dark' side are aspects of the individual's psyche and potential, rather than anything to do with the force itself.

There were dozens of other organizations as well, don't remember very many off the top of my head. Of course, this wasn't mentioned in the movies, but the process of authoring and structuring the novels relies heavily on Lucas' input (for now) and supposedly much (though not all) material relating to history, force users, and primary cannon characters is decided by lucas if only in the sense of a vague framework where authors have the ability to exercise significant creativity. In the end, there are mandates by which a book must abide in order to be 'canonized' as it were.

*ahem*

The views of these various group differ sometimes only very little and sometimes wildly. Some recognize no distinction between the light and dark side, seeing the virtue of the force in it's inherent quality of connectivity and organization. The white current adepts, for instance, are total pacifists, and see the 'dark side' as an illusion born of the individual's own inner evil, and consider this a taint of the force. They insist that the white current itself is something other than the force, that is to say, that it is a deeper aspect of the functional force, whereas the jedi, for instance, utilize a more superficial aspect.

While the movies of course remain the most widely 'impressive' and known elements of the star wars universe, the books evolve the universe to an incredible degree of detail, and in my opinion really serve more as a base of consideration than the movies themselves.

Eh, that's my piece.

peace

p.s. ah, here also, from wookiepedia:

Counter to millennia of Jedi teachings, the followers of Potentium claimed that there was no inherent evil in viewing the Force. They claimed that what others called the light side was actually just the Force itself, which is inherently good. This was backed up by the fact that Ashla, the ancient name of the Force, came later to describe the light side. What others therefore called the dark side was a perversion of the Force, twisted by those who used it. Believers of Potentium said that the potential for light and dark sides resided in the user, not the Force itself. They also thought that the Jedi Masters refused to believe in the Potentium view because it would mean the Jedi weren't needed to fight evil, for evil would not exist. And since there was no dark side, there were no dark side actions or Force techniques; in effect any action, good or evil, could be performed without risk as long as the intent wasn't evil. Some Jedi have theorized that the Potentium may have originated as a Sith scheme to subvert Jedi teachings.

About a century before the Battle of Naboo, the followers of Potentium were expelled from the Jedi Order, parallel to the Jedi Order's treatment of Gray Jedi as "misguided." Yoda and the rest of the Jedi Council didn't consider them Dark Jedi, but they said it was the duty of the Jedi to use the Force to protect others, not study its absolute limits. The Council said that testing the Force to its limits would lead to the dark side.

It should be noted that some followers of the Potentium still attempted to avoid the dark side--however they saw the dark side as something within themselves to be avoided, not something in the Force. They reason that if the Force is the energy that flows through all life, the darkside simply came from the corruption of humanity. They felt that if they could be perfectly moral, they could be immune to the dark side and therefore use any technique they wanted.

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Dec 3 2008, 08:16 PM