The grey Jedi

2005-06-18
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Intro ∞

I created a Grey Jedi for a Star Wars (pre-d20) campaign. I had not previously played this game before, but I rather appreciated the fact that the Star Wars world was fast, and amazingly well documented. I didn’t even glance through the rules when I decided I wanted to have some form of Jedi powers. I ended up settling on a “Failed Jedi”. The Failed Jedi is a Jedi who has Force Skills, but failed (or was never offered) Jedi training.

This is a set of documents which I was working on in order to describe this character’s unique personality. I wanted to describe the differences in philosophy when comparing the ‘official’ Jedi philosophy and my character’s own beliefs.

I was later prompted to revisit this writing when our party was sent on a mission on behalf of the Jedi Master of one character (I was specifically asked to go). The mission was to find and recover a Sith Holochron — a device purported to contain a wealth of Sith knowledge. Our intentions were to sneak in, steal this Holochron and take it away. We wanted to do this stealthily because nobody else knew of this device. We wanted to take it because ultimately the Force sensitive evil persons who were the political power in that area would eventually find it, and be an even more serious threat to freedom.

Original text re. “The Jedi Code” ∞

(true source unknown)

This text was originally taken from the internet and passed to me. I do not know its origins (and haven’t looked yet).

2017-01-09 – I do see various other websites with it, but I haven’t looked into who might be the oldest or more identifiably “original”.

  • There is no emotion; there is peace.

  • There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.

  • There is no passion; there is serenity.

  • There is no death; there is the Force.

  • The Light Side is created and sustained by life. The Jedi acts to preserve life.

  • Killing is wrong. Sometimes it is necessary to kill.

  • The Jedi may find that killing in self-defense or in the defense of others is the only course of action for him.

  • The Jedi may kill, if killing preserves the existence of life.

  • The Jedi who does kill in this instance, however, must never forget that killing is always inherently wrong.

  • The death is a stain upon his spirit.

  • The Jedi does not act for personal power or wealth.

  • The Jedi seeks knowledge for enlightenment, peace, and harmony.

  • He wishes to defeat those who would wipe out such qualities – those who would inflict death, tyranny, or ignorance upon others.

  • A Jedi never acts from hatred, anger, fear, or aggression.

  • A Jedi must act when he is calm and at peace with the Force.

  • To act with anger filling one’s soul is to risk temptation to the Dark Side.

  • In conclusion, Jedi seek nonviolent solutions to problems, but they don’t always find them.

  • Sometimes, killing or fighting is the only answer available. Sometimes it is even the “best” answer.

  • But that doesn’t mean the Jedi shouldn’t seek an alternative.

  • The Jedi should also be mindful of the actions of those around them.

  • It is not acceptable for a Jedi to associate with those who willfully choose to commit evil.

  • When a Jedi is around those who choose to do evil, the Jedi must make a strong effort to persuade them from committing evil.

  • When a Jedi is in close proximity to an evil act, he is bound to make his best effort to prevent that evil from occurring.

  • If the Jedi refuses to act in the cause of good, then the Jedi is helping evil by his inaction.

My notes on “Jedi Harmony” ∞

What follows is my own text discussing some issues which I had on my mind while in character, and which I the player had in mind while mulling over the greater ideas within the Jedi philosophies.

Buzzwords:
  • Ignorance
  • Power
  • Choice
  • Morality
  • Freedom
  • Duty
  • Knowledge
  • Awareness
  • Omniscience
  • Happyness

  • Opinion

—

  • Jedi seek a strange concept known as “Harmony”.

  • They see it as a peaceful, calm, desirable end.

  • They seek it by defusing hostile situations.

  • They seek it by educating ideals.

  • They seek it by prompting communication, goal foreknowledge, structure with choice and ‘the Jedi Spirit’.

  • They oppose evil, though they know not what it is.

  • They promote good, though they do not understand it.

  • Jedi have, as part of the basis of their beliefs, a policy of noninterference when it comes to politics. They do, on the other hand, believe that they are worthy advisors and are morally suited if not obligated to that task. This is the major difference between the Jedi and Grana philosophies.

  • In the end, Jedi have intertwined themselves with the spiritual direction of a number of societies.

  • The foundation of leadership is the concept of mass appeal backing those persons. A leader is chosen and given responsibility by a majority.

  • Morality is thought to be consistent between leadership and the majority of citizens.

  • Jedi feel morally superior but morally different (higher) from the general rabble and appear hesitant to take up the reins of power.

  • The Jedi philosophy is not political. Is the Jedi philosophy a religion?

  • A religion is based on feeling, on history, on the insubstantial. The Jedi philosophy is insubstantial in some senses, but heavily uses restraint of action, goal forethought and sensitivity to other’s needs.

  • A leader with beliefs and with religion brings followers to him, and instills belief in others. Jedi appear to eschew this course of action even though it would serve their needs well.

  • Logic distills, separates, and frees one from religious-type beliefs. Perhaps Jedi logic could be seen to fail as a religion because it relies on philosophic thought and not heavily on senseless faith. I could say that a lot of people are more easily swayed with mass trends than with internal thought and that the Jedi philosophies would not be true to themselves if adopted to a religious format. True Jedi beliefs are better kept to Jedi and perhaps a few force sensitive persons. Jedi morality would be better alternative for regular citizens.

  • Jedi morality attempts to find harmony in it’s participants. Harmony is a happiness granted to all participants where any one happiness does not interfere with any other.

  • The problem is that happiness is an unknowable variable, unless one defines it in another.. which is the sort of action the Jedi oppose. If one were to suggest an alternate approach, it would require an understanding of the person(s) in question to determine what they appreciate. Then, the benefactor would open up paths in the world to help (overtly or covertly) the beneficiary achieve those goals. It may well be possible to arrange the path and paths of others such that they don’t interfere with one another. This is possible on a small scale, impractical on a large scale, and impossible on a Universal scale.

  • Harmony is large-scale. It is defined as an arrangement of persons who all have happiness’ which don’t interfere with the happiness of others.

  • Pure Universal Harmony is unattainable under normal, foreseeable, methods and understanding. To maintain it, one would have to know the state of happiness in each participant. However, populations have evolved to improve general common happiness. With this we may see ‘majority rules’ practices, whereby a greater mean happiness or shared item of happiness is desired by the assembled body. This kludge is not generally satisfactory as the only rule. Individuals within that setting still seek greater personal happiness.

  • Centralization threatens to remove the purity in harmony by lessening the knowledge of individual happiness’s. Common and ‘noisy’ issues become higher priority, and individuals must work to attain other unanswered happiness-attaining issues. Sub-groups will form to answer part of that problem, where the goal of the smaller group is sought after by their participants outside of the ‘majority rules’ setting. Ultimately this recurring set of structures acts to facilitate the attainment of a variety of bits of happiness by pockets of similar individuals.

  • Thus, if a body were to improve happiness, they do so solely to further their members’ mean happiness. Seeking individual happiness, as with ‘dictatorship’ will not create harmony unless every effected participant is in pure agreement. However, in the case of dictatorship, more often than not the ruler will strive towards mean happiness after defining it in the citizens.

  • Happiness requires the freedom to choose, and the ability to attain.

  • Good is seen as cooperative and empowering.

  • Evil is seen as opposing and oppressing.

  • Jedi seek a mean harmony by way of empowering others to help individuals attain individual harmony, and by aiding communication to help ensure that individual happiness’ do not clash when one method of attaining or one piece of happiness itself does not oppose (2) or oppress one another.

  • Jedi seek to thwart evil directly by opposing and/or converting participants. They see this as a necessary to protect their investment in mean harmony.

  • Evil is identified in a participant when items of disharmony are seen — items like the specific denial of another’s happiness or path to happiness for it’s own sake.

  • A structure is seen as evil when it is seen to continually act on behalf of a non-mean desire for happiness. The Empire is seen as an evil structure because it is seen to deny or make unreasonably difficult a majority of people’s attempts for personal or small-group, or mean, happiness.

  • Long-term goals for mean happiness with methods which require short-term mean unhappiness are considered dark, and are debated before, during and after the fact to question the morality of the decision. To further complicate, mean-morality may be redefined before the benefits of such a long-term goal are realized.

  • If a person suddenly has dictatorship thrust upon them, and Harmony is their goal, then they must act towards two immediate goals: (1) Act to thwart evil (2) Act to thwart challenges to #1.. Evil must be identified and converted or opposed. Countermeasures must be designed to oppose attempts by evil to seize dictatorship.

  • Constant vigilance, even eternal vigilance would be required to continuously poll mean morality and thwart evil.

  • The trap is that by attaining confidence in the hearts of man, one acts to plan against evil by assuming other sources of similar power. This cycle may continue until power itself is seen as a threat.

    • Therefore, use of dictatorship to promote Harmony must remain active only by ‘thwarting’ evil towards continuously-polled ‘mean happiness’, and promoting communication and understanding between participants. This is fair equilibrium. This is Jedi Harmony.

–

  1. By the fact that Jedi exist and desire to be active, it is obvious that their Harmony has not been attained. Perhaps it is not a natural eventuality.

  2. Communication also acts to stabilize collections of people, by coordinating them such that their attempts at mean or small-group happiness do not conflict.

–

  • The Sith were lost in a cycle of attaining power because of their fear of losing their personal abilities to obtain self-happiness. If one acts to obtain limited dictatorship over one’s life, then one would look to others for signs of their power clashing or potentially clashing. Because they would seek to remove challenges to their power, they saw others as competition.

  • Ultimately, they became trapped in a circle of fear of ‘competition for power’, or the fear that conflicting desires would have them lose their own personal power. That fear became reality, and conflict, became reality. Sith, Jedi and other forces turned on them because they saw them as a threat.

To do ∞

  • Add in a better character description
  • Add in character history?

  • Research the origins of the original text.

Other notes

  • Balance between my choices and opinions, those of others, and ignorance.

  • Power is action.

Resources ∞

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