Is belief in democracy required of a Jedi? (RELEVENT TO MY ESSAY).

The interesting part of the question is not the "democracy" though ...

The interesting notion herein is the "believe in" part.

What would it even mean to "believe in democracy" ? Is that the same as believing in God, or the Easter Bunny or 'sex before marriage', or painless dentistry, or aliens ?

Where does this notion of "belief" come from ? How does it influence the consideration of the question ?

Alexandre Orion wrote: The interesting part of the question is not the "democracy" though ...

The interesting notion herein is the "believe in" part.

What would it even mean to "believe in democracy" ? Is that the same as believing in God, or the Easter Bunny or 'sex before marriage', or painless dentistry, or aliens ?

Where does this notion of "belief" come from ? How does it influence the consideration of the question ?

I was wondering that myself. I think the intent of the OP was to ask if the Jedi agree with democracy as opposed to other methods of government administration such as communist dictatorial or monarchy. I think most citizens of westernized countries agree with the concept of democracy.

Alexandre Orion wrote: The interesting part of the question is not the "democracy" though ...

The interesting notion herein is the "believe in" part.

What would it even mean to "believe in democracy" ? Is that the same as believing in God, or the Easter Bunny or 'sex before marriage', or painless dentistry, or aliens ?

Where does this notion of "belief" come from ? How does it influence the consideration of the question ?

I see question marks, risky move putting them in there, now I feel compelled to answer!!! I wasn't going to post this as its too early in the morning for me to know if I'm making any sense, so perhaps later I'll re-read this and smack myself in the face for making no0sense.

Not questioning of anything, or especially any something, seem's unJedi to me :silly:
Belief tends to infer within me cessation of critical thought, around something, and while this has usefulness and even is probably a vital part of how our minds handle complexity, I reckon belief works best when viewed as an attribute of history, and when used for the future is instead called faith. I don't know if anyone else thinks this way, so feel free to disagree!!

So, do I have faith in democracy; not entirely, but my belief in it is a measure of historical examples and the projections of expected current and future iterations hold some utility for me in decision making. I think those things have to be seen as what they are and not get them mixed up.

The historical existence of belief to me is quite static but fragmentary, being parts of truth which can be distorted by perceptions, in fact all of them distortions due to the limited capacity to perceive - belief in a piece of truth. In contrast, the present seems to be an active and fluid representations balancing between delusion and non-delusional to weigh up accuracy from our perception of a constant state of change, which is defined more rigidly by that circumstance rather then contemplation of any static moment. The further we project into uncertainty by contemplating the future, the less accuracy we can afford through direct experience (circumstance) and so it by definition must inherit greater delusion IMO by being built upon so much uncertainty. Both non-delusional belief and belief would require certainty, and so in this regard faith to me is inherently delusional to some extent.
All that assuming certainty, being the whole argument is underpinned by the condition that these hold a high degree of confidence, else they are just another set of contemplations perhaps better called expectations.

I can, for myself, answer the question "Do you believe in democracy?" with a YES!
For one simple reason:

I believe, that the opinion of every individual is worth as much as every other. Democracy is a way to take care of the opinion of each individual.

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Democracy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

"You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong.

It is entirely possible to make a claim that is false yet argue with logical coherency for that claim, just as is possible to make a claim that is true and justify it with various fallacies and poor arguments."

Entropist wrote: Democracy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Well in economic terms 'truth' might actually be market share!! But I agree it's not a measure to find a 'right' way, but sometimes it might be the best way for various reasons.

OB1Shinobi wrote: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

"You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong.

It is entirely possible to make a claim that is false yet argue with logical coherency for that claim, just as is possible to make a claim that is true and justify it with various fallacies and poor arguments."

Good luck reasoning this

Adder wrote: Well in economic terms 'truth' might actually be market share!! But I agree it's not a measure to find a 'right' way, but sometimes it might be the best way for various reasons.

What's the relevance of "truth", with market share, with democracy, with a Jedi?

But I'm more interested in the various reasons as examples of how democracy could possibly be the best way? Especially considering the association of democracy with argument ad populum fallacy .

Entropist wrote: What's the relevance of "truth", with market share, with democracy, with a Jedi?

The economic example was just to demonstrate a situation where a majority outcome (in a market) equals correct decision (more profit) - which is the condition of success in economic terms for a decision process, or in terms of logic perhaps 'truth'. When you bought up logic by associating democracy to a logical fallacy, my understanding of logic is that they are structures of types of truth - truth in terms of logic. So my reply is not an effort to define truth, rather it was just reflecting on the association you made between logic and a process (in this instance being democracy). An example.

Really, I imagine any example where the measure of the decisions success is associated to activity of the populace seems relevant and not a fallacy or actually 'incorrect' when viewed in terms of what it represents. It cannot predict the future, rather it is just a measure of the will of the people. So the people in democracy represent the entity of relevance being assessed, and therefore it's apt for decisions to be based around the people. But as mentioned, I think you are correct that as a rule popular cannot be considered as a rule to be correct, but there are examples.... finance and governance being two which come to mind - that is if the government is for the people, as a government for some other reason then the people might not get what it wants by using the people as the metric.

So I guess a government by the people, for the people operates on the premise that even if it makes less then ideal decisions, it was done so by consensus under fair conditions which allow sustainable and broad ranging growth by as many people within that group/nation as possible. In that regard the power of the democratic process is limited to selecting people to run the government, rather then the process of running government - which while impossible today could be imagined in the future to be a possibility with the pervasive growth of IT, in particular the I bit of IT - we have so much more information at our hands then ever before it opens lots of opportunities.

What does democracy have to do with Jedi.... is a good question!
Personally, I think it's an approach to connect to as many people as possible so to maximize learning, growth and understanding between as many people as possible.

Jediism tends to disagree with gestalt understandings of society, and tends to be a bit more teleological. They think that human existence (whenever that starts, something the Jedi haven't defined) is endowed with quite a few rights, traits, and abilities. Participation in democracy falls under the 3rd category. Even though a pure democracy is arguably not the best government (note that the US is a democratic republic), it allows for a certain degree of self-determination while still doing "the greatest good" for the majority as a part of the social contract. Jediism endorses democracy because they believe all people can and should have a certain amount of power rather than vesting it in the elite (regardless of the composition thereof).
So, tl;dr if you're a hardcore jedi: yes.