Discussion: Jedi Monoculture
Totally unrelated to my comic, but I'm putting it here:
A missed opportunity with the Star Wars prequels (and EU in general) is presenting Jedi as a monolithic culture. I've written before about how "Jedi Knights" were for years meant to be just a subset of "Jedi," the latter actually comprising a culture and religion that includes things beyond just military service. It's sort of how not all Christians are Knights Templar, assuming of course that all Christians have magic powers. The point of Yoda, in Lucas's own words, was that not all Jedi were warriors or soldiers. Obviously he forgot about this decades later, but whatcha gonna do.
Anyway, my point is that it made sense for the Jedi to appear monolithic in the original movies, because there were literally only two left (even then, Yoda and Obi-Wan represent very different outlooks and sensibilities). When a religion is going extinct, they tend to merge together all surviving elements, even if at one point they could have comprised completely distinct cultures and practices.
Going back to an earlier time with Jedi could have let us see great diversity, culturally speaking. Samurai and Shaolin monks are both connected to Zen Buddhism, for example, but bushido and the ethics of Shaolin are definitely distinct. The diversity doesn't need to come from some "grey side of the force" or another equally contrived EU concept, just an acknowledgement that different practices, skills, and points of view are allowed and expected in a galaxy full of different cultures and species.
Avatar got four whole nations (and a few more subcultures) just out of telekinesis, after all.
Comments (5)
This is patrons-only and I so want to link various of my friends to it. Alas.
Steve, I'd always just figured that Qui-Gon had caught midichlorians from some girl at a party on Nar Shaddaa and then gone around pretending that everyone had them and they gave magic powers, but I may like your theory more. ;)
Great observations - the Avatar guys did a much better job of fleshing out their universe, IMO, but then, of course, they had 7 seasons to do it...
I heartily endorse every single word you just posted. That said, the Great Internet Spoiler Engine seems to be suggesting that the big bad of Episode VII isn't a Sith, but is instead one of the "Knights of Ren," and if we all join together and hope real hard maybe it'll turn out that Abrams and company will be retroactively creating parallel traditions and techniques. It wouldn't be that hard to argue that the historical importance of the Jedi Knights was just inflated by their affiliation with the Senate there in the late days of the Republic.
"R-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-n? What's the Big Sleep?" There, I've got that out of my system. Anyway, it seems obvious that a galactic-scale civilization would be almost unimaginably diverse on any given cultural dimension, just because it's big. (Really big.) Perhaps the only sides we see in the movies are so monolithic because midichlorians are parasites that induce a near-rabid Manicheanism in their hosts to further their needlessly complicated reproductive cycle, a theory which I totally made up just now. :D