Learn_To_Know wrote: I think they need to read more responses from other Jedi from this Temple that don't meet their standards of Jedi yet consider themselves as such.
I can't speak for Alethea Thompson or UraharaKiskue, but as for myself:
The only thing I ever commented on is that I think "Jedi" should be an ideal and not a label. Yes, I defined the ideal pretty strictly, as it deserves, if being a Jedi is to mean anything of value. But I asserted nothing that contradicts or reinvents any aspects of the Jedi as portrayed in the movies, except perhaps for the lightsaber bit. But that's understandable.
Believe it or not, I considered my brief definitions of the Jedi ideal to be a
bare minimum. Other people more dedicated than myself may see fit to define their Jedi ideal even more strictly. But either way, it is just an ideal, not some ruler they have to measure up to right now, exactly as they currently are, or else they fail the "David test". Please.
Determining identity based on ideals does not exclude people the way that labels can and do. Quote me one place where I ever said that there are specific people here who call themselves Jedi who I don't think are. I never said that. And that even goes for whichever members may actively call themselves Sith. The Jedi path is a complex one, and no one knows where the Hero's Adventure may lead next. I did, however, assert, in the spirit of eschewing labels, that all of this Light and Dark and Shadow business is a bit silly (as a prefix to "Jedi") and is either redundant or contradictory, depending on the combinations. Is that saying anyone here is not a Jedi? Absolutely not.
I have utter confidence that everyone here has the potential (if they have not already manifested it) to become true Jedi by anyone's realistic definition. What is important to me is that we don't let ourselves get side-tracked by making things more complicated or "nerfed" than they need to be.
I realize that things are complicated further by the fact that we are all entitled, as Temple-Member-level members and above, to call ourselves Jedi, to denote that we are members of the Jediist religion. And that's completely fine with me, in that context.
But never forget that the whole reason we want to call ourselves Jedi in the first place is because we aspire to something greater, due to the motivating mental imagery we have acquired from the Star Wars mythos. There would
be no term "Jedi" without the latter. What we call ourselves, if it be Jedi, should reflect that primal ideal, or we become hypocrites.
Fraternally in the Force,
-David
