To Bend Or To Be Bent?

A recent thread derailed for a short time and got me thinking, as discussions of this nature came up every now and then in my time here. The 16^th teaching tells us that it is "our ideals, philosophies and practices [that] define the belief of Jediism (emphasis added)", but just how far can we take it before Jediism becomes a word as useless as "the Force"? Is there a "The Jedi Path" everybody who dares call themselves by that name really ought ascribe to?

Enough newcomers go out of their way to pretend to be cultishly devoted to the doctrine almost as though it was a document of divine wisdom, and enough grandmasters disagree with point after point in it. I don't know whether it is meant to be a measuring stick, a standard to rely on, but I do know that it would be nothing short of foolish to "swallow our moral code in tablet form", if I may borrow Hitchens' words here. In my opinion, we should always seek to understand and to think and to judge for ourselves, and never seek to bend and twist ourselves so as to align with something that chances are was never even intended to be a mold of this kind.
Does it matter more who we are and why we are the way we are, or does it only matter that we meet a check list?
And thus I present a list of TOTJO doctrinal points I disagree with in one way or another:

• The Force as anything other than a vague label that can mean anything and therefore means nothing
• The coherence of the notion of inherent worth
• The sanctity of anything
• The ethic of reciprocity in either of its traditional forms as either a necessary or sufficient moral principle
• The relevance or usefulness of the Creed outside of ritualistic recitation
• The third of the 16 teachings
• The fifth of the 16 teachings, because I have no way to agree with things I do not understand
• The tenth of the 16 teachings
• The eleventh of the 16 teachings
• The dozenth of the 16 teachings
• The 15^th of the 16 teachings
• The maxim of Loyalty
• The maxim of Defense
• The maxim of Faith
• The maxim of Pure Motive
• The maxim of Discipline
• The maxim of Discretion
• The maxim of Harmony

I can explain in what way I find issue with these and why, so ask away if you want to, but also, tell me what you think of these and perhaps other parts of the doctrine. Do you feel obliged to force yourself into believing all of it? Do you feel like less of a Jedi or even like worse of a person if you don't? What do you think of fellow Jedi who disagree with your views on either doctrinal points or their application in assessing real world events?
Do you bend what it means to be Jedi, or does what you think it means to be Jedi bend what you are? Is it somewhere inbetween, and where so, if it is?
And why?

I see the doctrine as a guide in the beginning, until you figure out exactly what you believe.

Now i 'm not sure how it's gonna look considering I'm a knight, but I rarely look at, or consider the doctrine. I like the creed, but the rest I'm not fussed about.

I've argued before that I think it's possible to be a Jedi without belief in the force (named)... My version of the force is (simply) 'connection', not exactly anything ground-breaking.

Others might say I'm not a Jedi because of the above, maybe they're right! Maybe they're not... But I don't think it matters too much..

We could expand that list, Anton ... We could expand it all the way to include the entire Doctrine of the Order, but also the entire doctrine of any and all religious tradition or philosophical genre ... So, in a way, the notion of "agreement" becomes, it also, as meaningless as the terms Force and Jedi.

Philosophy is for helping us to live our daily lives better - from just the stuff we have to do every day to getting on with others who have stuff to do every day too .... Philosophy concerns itself with the "why" about phenomena that might come up in any near or more distant field of sense. It is to reconcile us to the fact that we can't know everything - and perhaps not even the stuff that we need to know. Philosophy is to get us to question what we are inclined to feel certain about, especially concerning ethical issues (how we get on together with other Life, whatever its form).

Religion is related, but the problems/questions that it deals with are those about which we just can't have any knowledge ever. It is about the transcendental, existential angst of being a phenomenal person who had a beginning, have some perceptions through time - and then some thoughts, feelings and memories of those perceptions through time (experience) - and by some curious fluke of evolution, we are conscious of the inevitability of our own death (the term or totality of that phenomenal existence). It is not to find or provide answers about which to be certain -- it is to engender faith (being okay with that uncertainty) and a comfort in just sharing that same existential angst with every soul that has ever been.

Doctrinal dimensions of every tradition are not fixed, static facettes which must be clung to out of soteriological motives, although the social organisations that have grown up around these traditions may have some pretty strict ideas about what one is commanded to believe (like that works !). When that happens, both philosophy and religion get blocked off -- they just become impossible. To have either, we have to have doubt. And a pretty good measure of it too ...

So, let's expand that list as far as we can ! And let's bring just as much disagreement as we possibly can to the whole of the Doctrine, of our Order, but of anything that anyone tells us we can be "sure" about. It's a funny thing, but we tend to think about that which we disagree with, whereas what we agree with, we don't think about it much beyond "I agree". Well, we "agree" only until we run into a situation where there is an absurd contradiction, then we feel let down by what we "agreed" with unquestioningly ... As it were, we only betrayed ourselves in not questioning, not letting ourselves be responsibly "un-sure", not letting Life be just as messy, tangled and dangerous as it actually is ...

I don't disagree with any of it. Like many others, I read it and felt someone had codified something I already believed. That's why I call myself Jedi, why I trained here, and why I swore oaths to this Temple.

tzb, if you don't mind my poking deeper...
You must have found a way then to reconcile some things I understand to be internal inconsistencies and contradictions of the doctrine long before you read it. To stick with just the maxims, as an example, the extent to which one is faithful is the extent to which one is being dishonest. The extent to which one has integrity is the extent to which one ignores notions of loyalty. When devotion to one principle implies abandonment of another, how do you balance these seemingly incompatible ones against each other and why do you do it in your particular way rather than any other? Now, most of the time they wouldn't clash, but enough sufficiently extreme cases are thinkable and I'd be surprised to hear you say you haven't ever experienced any such. Surely then, some principles take priority over others. Yet - and this is the reason I picked honesty and integrity as an example - some principles are not gradual but demand total commitment, would you not say so? Is it even possible to hold to secondary or soft principles at all then? Can one even say they are principles if they aren't... well, principal?

Hi Gisteron - as ever, you raise some interesting and provocative questions

As an hors d'oevres could you explain "the sanctity of anything" bullet point?
Is this in reference to your viewpoint or the viewpoint of another? Do you recognise the sanctity of anything, from another person's perspective?

In return, to answer one of your questions, I like the Creed, and for me, it serves more than a ritualistic purpose. It is relevant and practical to me because it's a very handy, concise reminder of how I would like to respond to things and situations we encounter every day. What could be more practical than that?

I don't personally believe anyone has completely fixed personalities or traits - they are all subject to change. Personally I am here to be bent by Jediism, rather than to bend Jediism to me.

Loudzoo, I do acknowledge that some people do hold some things as sacred, or at least they claim so. As far as I see usually by that they mean that those things are so important to them that everybody else must not touch them. To me this sounds like a kind of attachment the fourth of the 16 teachings warns us against, and so with the promotion of the sanctity of the human person the doctrine goes on breaking its own Integrity maxim yet again. I feel no obligation to respect anybody else's sanctities as anything more than cartoonishly over the top attachments, and I have none of my own as far as I am aware.

Gisteron wrote: the extent to which one is faithful is the extent to which one is being dishonest. The extent to which one has integrity is the extent to which one ignores notions of loyalty.

I'm afraid I may not be understanding what you're asking here Gist. I don't really see how the examples that you gave are accurate. If I am faithful how is that dishonest? Is it my faith in this Temple that is dishonest, my faithfulness to my fiance? (different kinds of faithful, I know, but I still find them relevant) How does integrity exclude loyalty? I would argue that a person without loyalty might lack integrity making the two dependent on one another rather than exclusionary.

As you did point out there are some extreme, and very specific, circumstances in which they just might end up being contradictory. Those are difficult times for all people, Jedi or otherwise, when two of your principles are at odds with each other. I don't believe that you have to abandon one or the other, maybe just prioritize one over the other. I would rather be dishonest than unfaithful, so long as the lie wasn't the part that made me unfaithful, because to be unfaithful would be to be dishonest with myself. I'd rather break a loyalty that would cause me to loose integrity, because I would argue that a loyalty such as that wasn't a good one to have in the first place.

Goken, I was specifically referring to faith, honesty, loyalty and integrity as they are described in and by the maxims and to no other sense of those words. My concern in the context of that post is that some of the maxims do contradict each other and my question to tzb was how he is able to reconcile this with being on board with all of them.

Alexandre Orion wrote: Religion is related, but the problems/questions that it deals with are those about which we just can't have any knowledge ever. It is about the transcendental, existential angst of being a phenomenal person who had a beginning, have some perceptions through time - and then some thoughts, feelings and memories of those perceptions through time (experience) - and by some curious fluke of evolution, we are conscious of the inevitability of our own death (the term or totality of that phenomenal existence). It is not to find or provide answers about which to be certain -- it is to engender faith (being okay with that uncertainty) and a comfort in just sharing that same existential angst with every soul that has ever been.

This is very well said. I think you hit the nail on the head here. There is a difference between philosophy and doctrine. Your philosophy is how you live your life according to how you perceive your environment and the beliefs you take from those perceptions. Doctrine is ones attempt to quantify those beliefs into some corporeal form. In the end we can never successfully quantify anything that we can never "know" so doctrine, while presenting a nice and tidy wrapper, is actually meaningless.

It comes down to everything having a "light side" and a "dark side". Everything has poles and one aspect cannot exist without the other. All this really means is that they are opposite ends of a non quantifiable spectrum. If one ceases to exist the other becomes meaningless. In this context (which is really the only valid context) the dark becomes something that is not functionally evil... rather it is something that is necessary! Therefore we are forced to deal with and interact with it as much as the light. Accepting this idea is the path to true balance I think.