ATTN: COUNCIL; Updated Doctrine Proposal

Just talking still..
A lot of what I post is quotable and usable for a reason.

Truthfully in case your wondering the term “Jeddist” or modern day Jeddist is off the Disney radar. Using the term”a Jedi or Jedi - still belong to some one else.

What little time I did speak and take with Daniel M . we both realized and use this term for books and quotes so... we don’t get in Trouble. There is also that factor. Filling pages with the word Jedi is kinna dangerous in this day and age too- Disney went against deadmau5 ( a independent dj) on just his mask alone to look too much like the Mickey silhouette... just think what they will do to these books and thing we as a community are pulling out with their words in it? Something to think about as we move tword things like this more and more. As Jeddist we are smart - think about it. That alone in a proposal can’t be ignored no matter the wonderful usefulness or not.


Other unofficial means or un official sites may get away with it but we are a bit more ... of a target as we are official and have the license to loose more than most. Just saying that’s pretty real talk. Things may need adjusting even as they are now as well. Food for thought .
Edit : I don’t ever wanna be the rain in peoples celebration. Not my goal. I’m not saying no at all just - adjust as we go.

“Jedi” isn’t actually a problem or Disney would be all over several people in the community for having published works. And American Jedi would have never made it into production. Even when they went after the lightsaber group “New York Jedi” “Jedi” wasn’t a part of the dispute. We need to lay that fear aside .

A lot of people dislike that word “meditation” because they associate it with strictly Eastern styles, but if you’re thinking deeply upon something, you’re (by definition) meditating.

It’s not that I mind that particular edit. I just dislike all the hate around the word “meditate” .

My screen is really small so I can hit other points later but:

Be objective doesn’t actually cover 15. Because attachments also affect your ability to move in harmony with the Force. There’s a woman i know of whom can’t move on from her son’s death about 5 years ago. Now it’s not that she’s still mourning the loss- it’s that she literally can’t get on with anything else in her life. If we left this to “objectivity”, it ignores the process one has to go through to get through their grief. Okay- I can hear it: But doesn’t 3 take care of that? No, because compassion is an outward illustration we give to others- it’s not linked specifically to what we need to do for ourselves. 15 is entirely a focus on the self and moving past the obstacles we’ve put in our lives- where most of the others deal with interpersonal relationship.

And on 13: Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to limit it down to “A Jedi tolerates what is not Jedi, and only pass judgment against that which inflicts harm upon another being.” i explained it in the other thread but to recap- I felt like tolerance was the primary focus of this particular tenet. Though it seems worded with the intent to get across that Jedi have a “warrior monk” tone to them. Leaving the portion about justice was a nod in the direction of the epic hero’s journey, whom set out to actually help the world around them as they gain further knowledge of themselves.

That’s all I can do for the moment, lol. Gotta get back to work. But I’ll be back ^^, and hoped more discussion will have spurred.

Be objective doesn’t actually cover 15. Because attachments also affect your ability to move in harmony with the Force. There’s a woman i know of whom can’t move on from her son’s death about 5 years ago. Now it’s not that she’s still mourning the loss- it’s that she literally can’t get on with anything else in her life. If we left this to “objectivity”, it ignores the process one has to go through to get through their grief. Okay- I can hear it: But doesn’t 3 take care of that? No, because compassion is an outward illustration we give to others- it’s not linked specifically to what we need to do for ourselves. 15 is entirely a focus on the self and moving past the obstacles we’ve put in our lives- where most of the others deal with interpersonal relationship.

I see your point in that it is two different meanings. I'm not sure that "A jedi cultivates a state of robust of mental health and the ability to cope with loss and unexpected emotional trauma" is a particular goal or trait of Jediism. There may be a better way to phrase it.

And on 13: Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to limit it down to “A Jedi tolerates what is not Jedi, and only pass judgment against that which inflicts harm upon another being.” i explained it in the other thread but to recap- I felt like tolerance was the primary focus of this particular tenet. Though it seems worded with the intent to get across that Jedi have a “warrior monk” tone to them. Leaving the portion about justice was a nod in the direction of the epic hero’s journey, whom set out to actually help the world around them as they gain further knowledge of themselves.

Sure. I was just trimming what was there as I read it, I wasn't really looking into the principles themselves past face value. That Jedi don't proselytise is certainly a good point, as is that Jedi don't go around purity testing everyone for the sheer hell of it, but on re reading (13) a few more times, I'm more and more of the mind that it doesn't need to be there at all.

It's certainly something to teach, in case a student asks "Why don't we go around telling everyone else they are stupid and they should join us?"

It also stands out as being your only principle which is a "Do not" instead of a "Do"

Perhaps something like "A Jedi embraces diversity of thought" (doesn't feel right, but something better has not presented itself to me yet)

I like the use of meditate. It’s still -now- 2019 a word that can still mean moment of recognition / think time - quiet time - pause time- stoping - thinking - time outs - zazen moments- it’s still for me that idea of time reverend. I think that’s the right word. But for me that’s a real every day word. That sacred time. Label it and use it how ever but we all know that’s what that is type of thing. At least for me. I totally understand the idea of diss association from contemporary terms as well. Some times I think more than actual meditate some days. I still have a healthy balance I think of my whole actual practice but as far as that word... I’ll use it till I find others using other terms for it- I’ll use those when I learn of them. Smiley face. And that’s always my question - then what do you call it or use as?

“A Jedi tolerates what is not Jedi, and only pass judgment against that which inflicts harm upon another being.”

Eating inflicts harm on other beings. Are Jedi to pass judgment on eaters? What about those who vote for the wrong political party or candidate? You know, the one thats ruining (thus harming) the whole country? Shouldnt Jedi pass judgment on them?

OB1Shinobi wrote: “A Jedi tolerates what is not Jedi, and only pass judgment against that which inflicts harm upon another being.”

Eating inflicts harm on other beings. Are Jedi to pass judgment on eaters? What about those who vote for the wrong political party or candidate? You know, the one thats ruining (thus harming) the whole country? Shouldnt Jedi pass judgment on them?

No.

lol- maybe we should put “real” back into that line.

Eating animals in and of itself isn’t harm- it’s an engagement in the natural food chain. At some point, you reach unreasonable judgements of each other- food (a necessity for survival) shouldn’t be on the table.

A good conversation to be had, though, is whether or not a Jedi should strive to eat as ethically as they are financially capable.

In terms of political ideology- there is a lot of moving parts there. When you have a corrupt government, it’s hard to judge anyone’s decisions of who should and shouldn’t be in elected leadership positions. I personally refuse to judge anyone by their basic political affiliation. I’ll judge them on the merit of their personality and actions, as those speak more clearly of their intentions than a vote or general support of a candidate. But that’s me, and I place a high emphasis on personal responsibility over Durkheim’s “Collective Conscious”.

This thread, and the post which started it, comes from a place of (perfectly valid and reasonable) opinion. The post above is a great example - your opinion is eating animals "isn't harm". For many others, it is, and they choose not to do it, thus Vegetarianism and Veganism exist.

As you know well Alethea, Jediism is a broad church indeed, taking in any number of perspectives. There are many alternative, er, outlets, which take a greater or lesser influence from the EU materials referred to in this part of the doctrine. Some discard them entirely (my personal practice does, too).

The problem I perceive in instituting doctrinal change is, the doctrine as it stands is what brought this specific community of Jedi to this place in particular. Changing it because of an opinion you happen to have will have the consequence of alienating those of differing opinion and should at least require broad consensus this is "a good thing", something this thread seems to demonstrate is not the case. So the question for me is: is it worth alienating an unspecified number of people who are invested in this community as it is, to appease an unspecified number of people whom:
a) are already here and doing just fine despite this issue in particular,
b) have plenty of choice to go find/start something more aligned with their personal preferences elsewhere,
c) maybe haven't found this place yet, and are thus not invested in it already

For you, it is broken and thus needs fixing. But I don't perceive that as the prevailing attitude? I don't see a ton of chat about this in other threads or hear of significant work to check people actually want this prior to coming forward with a proposal? Of all the problems this place has, which people do talk about... why is this the one to merit change?

Anyone notice that participation (and incidentally opposition) really only seemed to ramp up once this began to look as though it was actually going somewhere?

You know, just sayin'... where were y'all a month ago when this input might have been more relevant??

Just because it's not something said publicly, doesn't mean that over the last decade it hasn't been expressed several times over that there are issues.

I could easily argue that the doctrine itself hasn't actually been useful at all- based on the fact that it is rarely cited. It's just a background piece. In which case, one might even argue that the doctrine should be scrapped entirely and we move forward without one.

But that would ignore the efforts of people before us that tried to make the doctrine worthwhile for the population. It would also ignore that the document itself helps bring validity to anyone that takes on the mantle of "Jedi". Stripping it away entirely would also prevent us from ever getting recognized in the UK as a Religious Charity too. So there's a lot of reasons to retain a doctrine.

I get it, change is hard. But through change we grow. Look around you, ToTJO has had a number of problems in the past few years with retention. Clearly, there are a number of things we are doing wrong, and it's time for change.

I know for a fact that there were members who left simply because they didn't have support from council members to redo the training here at ToTJO. They would start with a project, and were left to use their own initiative. Do you know what some of them felt the reason for that was? I do, I talked with a few- They felt like the knights and masters had already gotten what they came for: Rank. Though, I disagree with that assessment myself, I recognize how the atmosphere created that kind of feeling.

Moving forward is the only way we reclaim this place. And it starts with establishing who we are. The current doctrine doesn't actually reflect who we are. It doesn't even reflect who we want to be. So let's fix that. Let's move forward, not backward, and not standing still.

I'm not certain changing the wording in the doctrine is what will fix much so much as changing how we treat the idea of the doctrine in the first place.

The reason I say this is because we all know we're not going to get a contradiction-free wording - it might even be concerning if we did. On top of that, using the doctrine as a christian uses bible verses has always been one of many other sources of ongoing conflict between people in many social situations, essentially bringing out the very thing we already have here - people leaving. No matter how relevant one thinks they can make the doctrine, I don't believe that conflict will go away unless we re-examine how we look at the doctrine in general before we even think about touching it. It's the mindset one has about the purpose and nature of it that manifests what we do with the words in it once we do read it.

Does that make sense?

Your right , an update won’t fix people problems... I don’t think it ever has. Change come from inside - sometimes influenced but most of the time from the individual- not the words on a screen or on the page.
This place is built on self reflective and self paced ideas- any drama we find here can easily be found to the root of the problem... I know any problem I had here was totally a me thing... kinna like the Force - with or without me - it’s still gunna be there.

I may or may not be out of line, I've been with the community for awhile, but have only recently been really diving into everything and don't have much of a rank here. But I feel like I need to chime in.

There's a lot of talk about - should we, shouldn't we? I know when I came to this community years ago, everything was exciting and there seemed to be a lot of really interesting conversations, thought provoking, challenging. I really enjoyed it.

I've come back, and though I want to continue my journey, I've been finding a lot of... political sounding debate (political in this organization sense, not politics of a country), and some voices who seem to be purposefully attempting to start fights as opposed to creating a thought provoking atmosphere that is moving towards helping people gain new insights. I've also found a lot of discontent with the current state of affairs. What this all tells me is that something is broken, and change needs to happen.

Is the problem the docrtine? Maybe, maybe not. We can obviously debate if the doctrine is the problem, but I think there can be some recognition that there is a problem, somewhere.

What I know is that sometimes, by creating external change, we challenge ourselves to create internal change. When you have an alcoholic, you don't say to them, "Hey, we want you to stop drinking. If you think about it, you'll know it's best for you" and expect them to suddenly change their habits. No, what you usually do is change their environment, whether it's preventing them access to alcohol at home, or going to the full extent of putting them into rehab. By changing the external, we give them the opportunity to change internally.

I say this all to make the point that, perhaps the doctrine is not the problem, but perhaps by updating it, we can better come to realize what the challenges actually are, as a community we can come together and move towards the change that I hear so many people crying out for. Instead of stagnation, perhaps we as a community should attempt to make a change, and perhaps this won't be perfect, but instead of just throwing out the possibility, why don't we make a real effort on this?

The other thing is, sometimes starting fresh allows new insights that weren't there previously. Perhaps starting fresh here will allow everyone here to usher in a new era of insights and movements toward being a "Jedi". I think that this discussion has brought some extremely insightful conversations to learn from and I've been thouroughly enjoying seeing people bring up new ideas and counter concepts and coming together to create something, even if we know there will likely be imperfections on the path.

Seems almost nobody follows the one we have now, so...

I think most people believe they themselves follow it while people around them think that they don't, due to differences in belief in how to treat it. Then we get comments like the one above, and people replying over feeling offended somehow.

Is what I'm getting at becoming any more evident at this point?

Let's talk about how an update can help move things forward.

The Jedi Compass. The document was a piece done in 2013. FA took that document and turned it into a 7 Course program that my students (although a very small number) are having A LOT of fun exploring. The document was also used to prop up the book (also called the Jedi Compass), and on Facebook I've watched a couple of study-groups form around it and show some real growth. Previously, most of them just relied solely on the Jedi Path book and the Jedi Code you can find laying around the community in various places. Jedi Federation, who use to just ask questions about people's lives to determine who would and wouldn't become a Jedi, has recently begun using the Jedi Compass to focus their board questions in order to help determine if someone truly understands the Jedi Path.

At the time this document surfaced, there was a lot of inner-order conflict. Believe it or not, the Jedi Compass helped reduce some of that conflict- because it demonstrated that there IS a baseline for what all of the different Jedi Orders at the time believed.

You say "I don't think", but what I'm hearing is: "I don't want change." I have yet to hear a single argument from anyone that wants to maintain a two document system that could really support a two document system.

But just in case you want to say the same about what I've said- then I'll provide you with a couple of articles that support my "Two Documents is too much, let's choose one and stick with it"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/conquering-cyber-overload/201102/flooding-your-brain-s-engine-how-you-can-have-too-much-good

https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/how-people-read-online-why-you-wont-finish-this-article.html

^ And yes, I read through all of these two articles (you'll get it if you read the second one ). The current two document model has too much overlap and makes it a lot easier to just not read through thoroughly. One document will reduce this problem.

Now, I've given it some considerable thought, and I have to admit that if the previous mass edit was done based on the idea of simplifying and not actually looking at the principles behind each line, I'd prefer to wait on a serious take of how to edit with those concepts in mind.

I can defend the lines in the proposed "Principles of Jediism" (again not married to the name if someone has a better name!). Can you all do the same courtesy and cite the lines in each document to illustrate how either the two document system, the 21 Maxims or the 16 Teachings are the best system to go with? Because truly, if there is going to be a real defense of the current incarnation of the doctrine, or even one of the documents that are present to win out, it should be on their foundation alone- not upon the idea of "but this is tradition".

My point here is that there's no need to change anything that can't demonstrably be proven broken.

My point here is that there's no need to change anything that can't demonstrably be proven broken.

As there is (as far as I know) no set standard for Jediism, it's also pretty hard to prove it works....

I can defend the lines in the proposed "Principles of Jediism" (again not married to the name if someone has a better name!). Can you all do the same courtesy and cite the lines in each document to illustrate how either the two document system, the 21 Maxims or the 16 Teachings are the best system to go with? Because truly, if there is going to be a real defense of the current incarnation of the doctrine, or even one of the documents that are present to win out, it should be on their foundation alone- not upon the idea of "but this is tradition".

The idea of canning "two documents" in favour of a "single document" I believe is sound (I have a bit of another thought on that, but unless someone else brings it up first, I see no reason to go down that path)

I'm really on board for a nice straight forward plan-on-a-page sort of thing that encompasses what Jediism is, and is enough to start playing the game (like those "reference" cards you often get in board games - not the full rules, but enough to get you started and keep you going.

This still doesn't address what the basic principles should be, but apparently we want baby steps.

Fun fact with these things is that sometimes less is more - ie less people is better. If you (or a small team) comes up with a 99% solution, the rest will probably go along with it if it passes some basic robustness tests - if you come up with half a plan, you'll spend the next forever arguing over the second half.

@Steamboat The fact that so few hold loyalty to it (even as just reference material), IMO, is evidence it’s broken.

@James I hope you’re still considering pulling out a pot of tea ^^

I've worked 40 of the last 48 hours.

I think I put the kettle on half a dozen times, but honestly, I can barely form a sentence, much less remember if I put the kettle on, or approach distilling the key defining characteristics of the Jedi path....

It occurs to me that I don't think I've ever read the Jedi Compass. Is it available in hardcopy somehow?