The Jedi are a "myth?"

[Guy Gardener]

This is what I don't get.

Founding Day.

The holiday anniversary celebrating the founding of the Empire.

Fire works and Jedi burning.

There's probably a panto, where fake storm troopers shoot fake Jedi and children cheer.

It's a PR goldmine.

I heard an American recently (on tv) call Guy Fawkes: Guy Fox.

That tiny chink in history took 500 years.

(Or 5 years of twitter.)

 

[DWF]

Watto was aware of the Jedi and knew they existed, though. "What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi, waving your hand around like that?"

That was ten years before order 66, therefore 30 years before Han Said what Han said.

Both Republics may be a lot smaller than we thought.

The Empire might be a lot smaller than we thought.

What if there are massive civilized areas of occupied space adjacent to the Empire/Republic where the Jedi are bared or excluded?

Example: Green Lanterns are banned from Earth's Solar System in the 31st century. No idea why.

Example: After the Monks of the Foundation assimilated the four Kingdoms of the Periphery by pushing atomic science with strings, the nearby ramshackle worlds descended into barbarism, didn't feel like saying "Yes" to enslavement, as they started digging for coal to keep their cities warm.

Consider what the Jedi did, and why it's a bad idea to let them run freely through your space.

They listen to the voices in their head and kill without thinking whenever some aspect of the universe disturbs their right and wrong.

They're not police.

They don't enforce law written down in a book.

They just whimsically cut limbs off anyone who seems like they might be guilty of doing something.

And they're allowed to do this?

Are they like Bond? A license to kill (and maim).

Also...

I can only see that the Jedi will "look after" worlds that pay the Jedi to do so in children.

Quid pro quo.

Qua Gon Gin said the Republic screenings would have identified Anikan as a force user when he was much younger, but think about that. Every child is tested, and any child that is found to be a potential Jedi is taken. On one hand maybe the parents are paid, as their children are dragged away never to be seen again, on the other hand their children are taken, and most parents really, really don't like that.

Although untrained potential Jedi arn't much to worry about, unless a Sith gets hold of them?

Are the screenings to recruit Jedi or starve out the Sith?

The Jedi are considered to be law enforcement; charged by the senate to maintain peace and order in the galaxy, to mediate and negotiate; and at times to pursue criminals and lawbreakers that have evaded the traditional police or military forces. The Jedi have constitutional authority over all Force users in the Republic (according to the EU).

Walker: Jedi Ranger, he doesn't do the will of the Force, the Force does what he wants it to.

 

[Set Harth]

^There are mentions of there being news services in the Republic and the Empire; it may be that all knowledge of the Jedi Knights was banned by the Emperor. With time, the knowledge of the Jedi Knights receded, and most people forgot about them, leading up to what happened in this movie.

In this image, from what I suppose is the TFA Visual Dictionary, there is the text: "In his travels, Lor San Tekka uncovered much of the history of the Jedi Knights that the Galactic Empire had tried so hard to erase."

 

[Ithekro]

Nute Gunray had never encountered a Jedi before the blockade of Naboo.

Think of this. Without any blocking of imformation, or murdering of any involved in the activity, there are people to fundamentally believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked. Others are just unsure it really happened because it happened when they were very young or before they were born. And that was by early 1990s before the Internet came about to throw more massive misinformation at people. So roughly 20 to 25 years after Apollo 11. Now, post-Internet and another 20 years or so, now what?

10,000 Jedi in an entire Galaxy. Around 200 dying on the first day of the Clone Wars. For every failed campaign there were probably several dead that had lead a Clone Army into battle.

Plus Palpatine wouldn't mess an opportunity to kill a lot of Jedi all at once if he could keep his hands clear and prop up the war in the lead up to Order 66.

 

[Jedman67]

The Jedi are considered to be law enforcement; charged by the senate to maintain peace and order in the galaxy, to mediate and negotiate; and at times to pursue criminals and lawbreakers that have evaded the traditional police or military forces. The Jedi have constitutional authority over all Force users in the Republic (according to the EU).

That would make them like US Marshalls. Not a lot of them, and able to operate in any State on a Federal level.

While I see the Jedi more like Beefeaters.

Purely ceremonial and on display for tourists at the palace with ridiculous old timey weapons.



If the Jedi are a necessary component to keeping law, their presence should be necessary continuously everywhere where there is law.

10 Jedi per planet, but all Jedi hang out on Coruscant.

It seems like the Jedi "can" keep law galactically, but they don't.

Saying that they are a senatorial special missions force really detracts from the lawfullness of their activities and seems like the Jedi are just enforcers of the momentary political winds, unless it takes an executive order to put them into action, or if using moral monks as hatchet men is actually a limiter on the ability of the senate to be skeevy, that whenever they come up with a sick plan to make a couple bucks, the blokes they have to send out to get shit done, can say "No, and you're a ####, no, go #### yourself."

Which would result in a constitutional crisis where the Jedi purge the Senate or the Senate purges the Jedi temple.

If the Jedi were a real religion and not just a collar to control force users, then their jurisdiction would exceed the borders of the Republic. Do the neighbouring governments have their own Jedi, or different methods of controlling their force users into something politically and socially useful?

I think US Marshall is a good analogy. They are not the primary police force in the galaxy; that would be impossible for such a small number of personnel (there are more police officers in New York City than there are Jedi before the downfall of the old Galactic Republic).
Back in the 'old days' the Jedi were actually in charge of the Republic's military. Following the pyrrhic victory at the battle of Ruusaan, the primary military was decommissioned and the Jedi became the UN Peacekeepers Of The Galaxy.



The Jedi Order is demonstrated as a quasi-religion of sorts.

 

[Ithekro]

Count Dooku was from a wealthy family. Count was his title from his birth family and it had an estate where he took up residence after leaving the Jedi Order.

Up until then he was probably only known as Jedi Master Dooku.

 

[USS KG5]

But there only about 20,000 Jedi left in Ep. III it's doubtful for the teenager that Han was at the time he really believed the stories of the Jedi.

From the novels right, 20,000?

Because from the actual film it seems to imply a few hundred, maybe a thousand at most - logically if there were thousands there would have been squads of them about quite capable of escaping the clone troops?

 

[Set Harth]

From the novels right, 20,000?

Doubtful, if they started with around 10,000 in TPM. ( I seem to recall the AOTC novel was said to have given a figure of 9,000. )

 

[USS KG5]

From the novels right, 20,000?

Doubtful, if they started with around 10,000 in TPM. ( I seem to recall the AOTC novel was said to have given a figure of 9,000. )

Was quoted as 20k upthread not sure where that came from.

 

[Ithekro]

Only way to go up that fast would have been basically rushing younglings into being Padawans for most of the Jedi Knights in an effort to run the Grand Army of the Republic.

But Kanan said there was 10,000 Jedi back in the Clone Wars.

 

[Guy Gardener]

10K Jedi + 10K Padiwan?

Life expectancy of a Jedi in peace time, if Yoda was mutated and twisted by the Force which was extending his life, is 900 years. If Yoda is just from a long lived race, then lets call it a hundred if Sheev is anything to go by that no suspected him of being magical.

Life expectancy of a Jedi in war time is shit. Sure they seem unstoppable, but they're also too brave and have bad tactics, despite being able to see the future. Their main strategy seems to be suicide.

If Ten thousand Jedi is static, and they all live almost a thousand years individually and respectively, then a mechanism was in place to replace Jedi as they died or retired, and maybe if some warrior monk with a short life span thought that s/he could devote 40 years to being a warrior monk, that means that the temple had 40 years to find a replacement who would be perfectly trained to seamlessly switchout with the exciting dudes duties as some noob is trying to fill his shoes.

So if it takes ten years to train a Jedi, then the Temple don't have to worry about starting replacement paperwork for the first 800 years, surely that means that they only need to train a hand full of Padiwans every decade to keep the ranks consistent at 10 thousand strong, if most Jedi have been Jedi for centuries, and have no yen for retirement.

 

[Ithekro]

Obi-wan said he was getting to old for this in ANH.

Dooku was even older, and while powerful, did seem to get winded. It seems a human lifespan is more or less today's average, plus or minus 20 years maybe.

We know the Jedi use to keep a record of all the Force Sensitive children in the Temple Achieves. Given what we saw in the Clone Wars, they can get this information from birth records on Republic planets, since the children kidnapped were not very old. Maybe a year or two old, and by the time of the Empire, the Inquisitors are going after babies. (an interesting note, one of the children kidnapped in the Clone Wars was a Gungan. So a Gungan Jedi is possible.).

The Jedi would I suppose come back when the children are three or four years old to collect their new younglings. Hopefully before they have too much of an attachment to their parents, and also before they start retaining their memories later in life.

 

[Dude]

Regarding the posts about the age of the Empire, Obi-wan specifically says that the Clone Wars were "before the dark times... before the Empire." It was really clear that the Empire was a relatively recent event, within the adult lifetime of Kenobi.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The adult life of a 60 plus year old, who might have considered that his adult life had begun the first time he cut someone in half with a light sabre at the age of 15.

 

[Dude]

The adult life of a 60 plus year old, who might have considered that his adult life had begun the first time he cut someone in half with a light sabre at the age of 15.

Sure, absolutely. Although the discussion with Luke was about the Clone Wars and indicated that they were before the Empire, none of the PT had been made yet. Watch ANH as a standalone movie, it was pretty clear that the Empire rose sometime in the previous 20-40 years. In a discussion that included that Jedi had protected the Republic for a thousand generations, that rates as relatively recent. Bottom line, it was really clear that the Clone Wars occurred before the Empire rose and that the Empire was not centuries old. That's my reference.

 

[Ithekro]

Also that Obi-wan was a general in the Clone Wars, or perhaps just after as Leia addresses him as "General Kenobi", and that he served her father in the Clone Wars.

Add to this that Luke's father had also fought in the Clone Wars as a Jedi along with Obi-wan.

Luke being around 20 at the time gives us an approximate for how long ago the Empire came about. Though at that time we didn't know that Darth Vader and Luke's father were the same person. Just that Vader was someone Obi-wan had been training. I don't know if we got the impression that Obi-wan had trained Luke's father in the course of his speech in ANH. Just that Vader had betray them and murdered Skywalker, then helped the Empire hunt down the Jedi Knights to near extinction. The only key we have to how long ago this is is Luke's apparent age. His father can't have died long before he was born at the oldest back. Or died not long after he was born, as Luke doesn't remember him at all. Thus we have a rough timeframe to when the Empire started to hunt down the Jedi Knights in ANH.

ROTJ and of course the Prequels give a the rest of the story in detail.

 

[Set Harth]

From the novels right, 20,000?

Doubtful, if they started with around 10,000 in TPM. ( I seem to recall the AOTC novel was said to have given a figure of 9,000. )

Was quoted as 20k upthread not sure where that came from.

Exactly.

 

[JD]

I believe that is relevant to the discussion :

5 Ways Growing Up in North Korea Is Crazier Than You Think

North Korean schools treat world history as an afterthought, the way American schools treat art classes. He learned about World War I and II and the Allied and Axis powers, but not the Italian Renaissance. He's aware of things like Sputnik, but he wasn't aware that an American was the first man on the moon (he was aware that someone landed on the moon, but they never specified whether it was an American or a Russian).

They also believe we are still at war.
Somebody posted this up thread, and I think it's worth looking at again.

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. [Kenobi smiles] Anyway, it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

It's pretty clear that at this point Han doesn't believe in the Force, and I could see a lot of people having this attitude. He doesn't necessarily say he doesn't believe the Jedi as people aren't real, he just doesn't believe in the Force and thinks their abilities are just "simple tricks and nonsense". There are magic acts today where people can appear to do remarkable things just through "simple tricks and nonsense", so I could see that being a pretty common attitude for people who aren't true believers. Another way of looking at it would be religious miracles, true believers will accept them, while people who don't (like me), will look for a rational explanation.

 

[Ithekro]

You wonder what stories were told about the Jedi in the Clone Wars (or even from before the Clone Wars).

There was that one scene in The Clone Wars animation were a Seperatist General if going on about how many Jedi they'll need to take his fortress, he has so much firepower. They'll need 50 Jedi, no 100 Jedi. They'll need an Army of Jedi. Than his battle droid look out spots Jedi and he keeps guessing until he gives up and the droid says "two". What!!

Of course it was Anakin and Obi-wan with their army of clone trooper, but still, two Jedi took that place. You wonder if that story was told to the public, or if the propaganda machines kept it to just victory for the Republic and the Clone Troopers.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

It's probably worth noting in general that calling something a "myth" doesn't necessarily equate to believing it never existed at all in any form. It might mean that sometimes, but it can also mean simply that one believes the stories and legends around the person/thing/event in question have been exaggerated and embellished compared to the underlying facts.