Doctrine Discussion: Betterment of the World

From a certain point of view I think Stephen way to go with This can be qualified as elegant and toughtful. Maybe he Just didnt want to publicly humiliate in front of a particular person.

Which does not mean anyrhing sorry about That. Maybe he didnt want to publicly humiliate one particular Person. Thats more like it.

Flojade, hi. If you look underneath your posts you see the buttons? One says "quick reply" and the other says "action"? If you click the Action button, one of the options is "Edit" ... if you click that you can make changes to your comment. Theres a time window-- one or maybe two hours. Im not totally sure how it works but it lasts for a while... but not forever. Anyway, tis feature helps us to clarify and add to the points we make without having to post an entirely new comment.

I RESPECT YOUR KINDNESS!

But why do you feel you have to get involved?
And why are you speaking for Stephen? Do you know him well enough to accurately represent his way of thinking to me?
Does he need you to speak for him?
These are real questions, the answers may be "yes" and i will go from there if so.

As for not wanting to publicly humiliate another person... I guess we all have our own views on that. In my view he already made it public by saying something in the first place. I will either say nothing at all or i will speak clearly, so that my exact point is as obvious as i can make it. I really dont have respect for the passive aggressive style of trying to correct or admonish someone on the sly.
Call it out directly or just leave it alone. Otherwise people get to making snickety remarks at each other "under their breath" so to speak. In some half-assed way that they can deny if theyre called out on it.

Thats weak and petty in my view. Im not saying Stephen is weak and petty, im only saying i dont agree with "half-way" statements. If the thing is important enough to say, then its important to say it so that people understand it. If its not important enough that its worth "making a scene" over, then its really not important, and you should probably just keep it to yourself.

Thats how i see it, personally.

Jedi Flojade,
Thank you for what you wrote.
I am not going to respond myself, I do not wish to escalate anything.
I will consider everything that has been written, rather than respond emotionally.

Right! Thanks for the editing tip
OB1Shinobi, your words are strong (even though all is relative in this world) even if part of your style seems to indicate that your are not that emotionally involved it could mean that this matter rises strong feelings in you.
When someone is driven by strong feelings it is sometimes hard for them to get perspective especially when the person they direct their enegy towards tries to speak to them. This fact, in some cases, can bring the necessity for a third party to get involved in order to appease things.

However, I get that I probably reacted to quickly and it's not the first time people tell me not to get a bullet for somebody else so I will take it into account

Do not feel you have to answer that as I think we both made our points clear enough. We have drifted far enough from this beautiful topic as it is in my opinion.

Kit wrote: So I'm curious, do you feel in your path that bettering the world beyond just humans is important?

Yes. So much yes. This is actually something I’ve been thinking about and meditating on a lot lately.

How do you honor the line of "[Jedi Believe] In the Force, and in the inherent worth of all life within it."?

Good question. Basically, I’m still trying to figure that out. For now, I do my best to respect and honor nature and other animals (both wild and tame). Part of my religious practice includes honoring Gods and Goddesses of animals and wild places and I include in that my innate feelings of love for (most) living creatures. I don’t get out into the natural world nearly as much as I’d like to and that’s something I want to rectify moving forward.

For the record, I very much believe in applied praxis - putting one's spiritual work into tangible interventions in the world outside of whatever spiritual arena you're a part of. It may be something as simple as volunteering at a food pantry, but I strongly feel that the current of one's spiritual activity needs to end up in the material world in some way to become grounded (in my old tradition we called this the "magickal link.") But there's also a grave importance in working from a position of humility to balance that intention with openness, critical thinking, and a practical understanding of all the forces involved...or else great harm can be done. I've spent much of my life working with Native American communities, where centuries of interventions by "friends of the Indians" have been just another branch of attempted genocide because people lacked the ability to check their paradigm and ideas of what was "good" for others and listen and respect the people they were "helping." This is also vital in bettering the natural world - we've got so many problems currently caused by interventions that didn't understand the natural systems, or else arrogantly thought they could improve on it by mixing and matching nature or throwing a bunch of chemicals at it. Every heinous housing project out there started out as someone's brilliant "fix" to social problems.

So my view is that first, one has to have a clear head, the willingness to be the student of nature (human or otherwise), and do a lot of growing yourself as you work with *living* changing forces in action. This is where I have a lot of hope for Jediism - surely what is taught in the respect and honoring of the Force can give us a good ground for developing this kind of knowledge, wisdom, and sensitivity - which includes knowing where decisive, direct intervention is called for and having the preparation to effectively carry it out.