Star Wars Meta: Jedi Cult?
Feb. 3rd, 2019 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redrikkiI like to joke about how the Jedi are actually just a messed up space cult, but let’s take a look at that claim, shall we? The International Cult Studies Association defines a cult as “an ideological organization held together by charismatic relations and demanding total commitment.” Sounds like the Jedi to me. Cults can vary widely in terms of the degree of control they exert over their members. The greater the degree of internal control, the higher the risk of physical or psychological harm to members. The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame is a handy 18-factor frame work for identifying just how controlling, and thus how potentially dangerous, any cult-like group is. Each factor is evaluated on a sliding scale with 1 as low and 10 as high. Groups which score highly in five or more factors can be classified as potentially dangerous cults.
1. Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members.
The Jedi score a solid 9 on this one. The Council has unilateral control over advancement, mission assignments, and punishments. The Order also maintains their own secret prison to contain those members they feel have gone bad. Members have no clear way of raising concerns and no clearly defined rights.
2. External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior.
Jedi score somewhere between 7 and 9 on this. Members are forbidden from forming outside attachments or contacting their families, and they are not allowed to participate in the political processes of their home worlds.
While the Jedi Order claims to eschew political involvement, they maintain a pod in the Senate and meet regularly with the Chancellor in an advisory capacity. When Chancellor Palpatine asks to spend time alone with a young Anakin in the new Obi-Wan & Anakin comic, the Council agrees in order to maintain their friendly relationship and repeatedly attempt to use the friendship between Anakin and Palpatine to influence and spy on the Chancellor. They technically serve the Senate, but regularly conceal information about secret deployments, intelligence about the Sith, etc. When the Chancellor attempts to exert more control over the Council by appointing Anakin Skywalker, the Council beings to plot a coup against him even before they learn he is a Sith.
3. Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s); amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed.
Solid 9. Yoda is the oldest and wisest among us. We must trust in the Council.
4. Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts.
Solid 9. See above.
5. Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or “fundamentalism;” hostility towards relativism and situationalism.
Somewhere between 6 and 8. We hear individual Jedi privately express views other than those approved by the Council, but we also hear other Jedi expressing shock and horror at those ideas. Jedi like Qui-Got who persist in doing their own thing have trouble advancing within the Jedi hierarchy, or may even lose status. The Jedi ideals of maintaining internal peace and harmony help to squash dissent and doctrinal disputes mostly be pretending they don’t really exist.
6. Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones.
8 and 9. Jedi recruit children under the age of five. They have an in-universe reputation as kidnappers and were actually forbidden from visiting the planet of Bardotta thanks to their aggressive recruiting. On at least two separate instances they recruited children via ‘rescue’ without informing the children’s parents. See the Baby Ludi drama for details.
7. Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden.
1. They don’t have any…that we know of. Just kidding. No front groups.
8. Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members.
I’d put them around 5. Individual members don’t get paid and aren’t supposed to accumulate possessions or wealth, and that includes the leaders. That said, Council members have much larger apartments than the rank and file. The Jedi Order as a whole maintains several large and fancy temples throughout the galaxy including one massive and swanky one on Courscant.
9. Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups; amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners.
Idk 3-5? Jedi aren’t permitted to marry or ‘form attachments’ except in those weird old EU cases where certain (Council) members received special permission because their species was endangered or some shit. Casual sex is cool though, I guess.
10. Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups.
1. The Jedi don’t do this shit and that’s probably a good thing. The idea of people having to put out for Yoda kind of makes me sick.
11. Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s).
6-8. Younger members are literally not permitted to leave the temple or contact anyone outside, including their own families. Teenage members are only permitted to do so under the supervision of the Council or their masters. All education is handled in-house. According to the new Darth Vader comic, there was also a good bit of internal censorship where only certain members were permitted access to certain types of information about the Force and the Order.
12 Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers.
10. Jedi are removed from their families before their fifth birthday and forbidden to communicate with them ever again. In some cases, they are given new names to further distance them from their birth families. They are not permitted to marry. Having outside friends is treated as suspect.
13. Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts.
9-10. Prior to the Clone Wars, only 20 masters ever left. The Order maintained a secret prison for those Jedi they felt had lost their way. No word on what exactly ‘losing their way’ meant.
14. Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s).
8-10. All members were combat trained since pretty much minute one and were regularly deployed on missions which involved combat. They were technically serving the Republic, but most of their missions were dictated by the Council rather than directly by the Senate or other civilian body. Very little violence was directed at Order members by their superiors. That said, young members were often placed in life threatening situations as tests. See the ice caves of Illum or the temple on Lothal for details.
15. Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories.
6-8. The PT-era Jedi never shut up about the Dark Side and are constantly on alert for it within their own members. During the Clone Wars, they become increasingly (and justifiably) worried about the Separatists and the Sith. While deeply afraid of the power of the Dark Side, they tend to underestimate the skills and intelligence of actual Dark Side users.
16. Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
2-4. While there are a few very serious Jedi, most fall somewhere between whimsical and sassmasters.
17. Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
8-10. Surrender to the will of the Force. Trust in the Council. Trust your Master. Seriously, watch the Clone Wars. The sheer number of times Anakin and/or Ahsoka is told to turn off their brain and do as instructed is mind boggling. Also, Jedi as a whole practice literal mind control.
18. Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain.
7-9. See the entirety of the Clone Wars for details, but some examples include: maintaining a slave army despite believing slavery is a tool of the Sith; making deals with known slavers despite believing slavery is a tool of the Sith; handing over the Zillo beast to be experimented upon and killed despite believing in the sanctity of all life.
The International Cult Studies Association lists some additional risk factors including: excessive use of mind altering practices such as meditation; elitism; us-vs-them mentality towards external enemies; and attempts by the leadership to induce feelings of guilt or shame in members. Jedi exhibit all of these traits to varying degrees.
In short, the Jedi are a cult, and a potentially harmful one at that. Agree? Disagree? Want to clarify or refute any of my points? Is it just me, or are there a bunch of cults in the Star Wars universe?
1. Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members.
The Jedi score a solid 9 on this one. The Council has unilateral control over advancement, mission assignments, and punishments. The Order also maintains their own secret prison to contain those members they feel have gone bad. Members have no clear way of raising concerns and no clearly defined rights.
2. External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior.
Jedi score somewhere between 7 and 9 on this. Members are forbidden from forming outside attachments or contacting their families, and they are not allowed to participate in the political processes of their home worlds.
While the Jedi Order claims to eschew political involvement, they maintain a pod in the Senate and meet regularly with the Chancellor in an advisory capacity. When Chancellor Palpatine asks to spend time alone with a young Anakin in the new Obi-Wan & Anakin comic, the Council agrees in order to maintain their friendly relationship and repeatedly attempt to use the friendship between Anakin and Palpatine to influence and spy on the Chancellor. They technically serve the Senate, but regularly conceal information about secret deployments, intelligence about the Sith, etc. When the Chancellor attempts to exert more control over the Council by appointing Anakin Skywalker, the Council beings to plot a coup against him even before they learn he is a Sith.
3. Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s); amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed.
Solid 9. Yoda is the oldest and wisest among us. We must trust in the Council.
4. Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts.
Solid 9. See above.
5. Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or “fundamentalism;” hostility towards relativism and situationalism.
Somewhere between 6 and 8. We hear individual Jedi privately express views other than those approved by the Council, but we also hear other Jedi expressing shock and horror at those ideas. Jedi like Qui-Got who persist in doing their own thing have trouble advancing within the Jedi hierarchy, or may even lose status. The Jedi ideals of maintaining internal peace and harmony help to squash dissent and doctrinal disputes mostly be pretending they don’t really exist.
6. Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones.
8 and 9. Jedi recruit children under the age of five. They have an in-universe reputation as kidnappers and were actually forbidden from visiting the planet of Bardotta thanks to their aggressive recruiting. On at least two separate instances they recruited children via ‘rescue’ without informing the children’s parents. See the Baby Ludi drama for details.
7. Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden.
1. They don’t have any…that we know of. Just kidding. No front groups.
8. Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members.
I’d put them around 5. Individual members don’t get paid and aren’t supposed to accumulate possessions or wealth, and that includes the leaders. That said, Council members have much larger apartments than the rank and file. The Jedi Order as a whole maintains several large and fancy temples throughout the galaxy including one massive and swanky one on Courscant.
9. Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups; amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners.
Idk 3-5? Jedi aren’t permitted to marry or ‘form attachments’ except in those weird old EU cases where certain (Council) members received special permission because their species was endangered or some shit. Casual sex is cool though, I guess.
10. Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups.
1. The Jedi don’t do this shit and that’s probably a good thing. The idea of people having to put out for Yoda kind of makes me sick.
11. Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s).
6-8. Younger members are literally not permitted to leave the temple or contact anyone outside, including their own families. Teenage members are only permitted to do so under the supervision of the Council or their masters. All education is handled in-house. According to the new Darth Vader comic, there was also a good bit of internal censorship where only certain members were permitted access to certain types of information about the Force and the Order.
12 Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers.
10. Jedi are removed from their families before their fifth birthday and forbidden to communicate with them ever again. In some cases, they are given new names to further distance them from their birth families. They are not permitted to marry. Having outside friends is treated as suspect.
13. Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts.
9-10. Prior to the Clone Wars, only 20 masters ever left. The Order maintained a secret prison for those Jedi they felt had lost their way. No word on what exactly ‘losing their way’ meant.
14. Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s).
8-10. All members were combat trained since pretty much minute one and were regularly deployed on missions which involved combat. They were technically serving the Republic, but most of their missions were dictated by the Council rather than directly by the Senate or other civilian body. Very little violence was directed at Order members by their superiors. That said, young members were often placed in life threatening situations as tests. See the ice caves of Illum or the temple on Lothal for details.
15. Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories.
6-8. The PT-era Jedi never shut up about the Dark Side and are constantly on alert for it within their own members. During the Clone Wars, they become increasingly (and justifiably) worried about the Separatists and the Sith. While deeply afraid of the power of the Dark Side, they tend to underestimate the skills and intelligence of actual Dark Side users.
16. Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
2-4. While there are a few very serious Jedi, most fall somewhere between whimsical and sassmasters.
17. Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
8-10. Surrender to the will of the Force. Trust in the Council. Trust your Master. Seriously, watch the Clone Wars. The sheer number of times Anakin and/or Ahsoka is told to turn off their brain and do as instructed is mind boggling. Also, Jedi as a whole practice literal mind control.
18. Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain.
7-9. See the entirety of the Clone Wars for details, but some examples include: maintaining a slave army despite believing slavery is a tool of the Sith; making deals with known slavers despite believing slavery is a tool of the Sith; handing over the Zillo beast to be experimented upon and killed despite believing in the sanctity of all life.
The International Cult Studies Association lists some additional risk factors including: excessive use of mind altering practices such as meditation; elitism; us-vs-them mentality towards external enemies; and attempts by the leadership to induce feelings of guilt or shame in members. Jedi exhibit all of these traits to varying degrees.
In short, the Jedi are a cult, and a potentially harmful one at that. Agree? Disagree? Want to clarify or refute any of my points? Is it just me, or are there a bunch of cults in the Star Wars universe?
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-04 09:04 pm (UTC)The too-old Force sensitives thing is a thorny issue. In the Ahsoka novel, she meets a girl who is an untrained Force sensitive and is like, damn, that's a waste. In the Clone Wars, it turns out that there are other Force-based religions and the two groups have clashed historically because the Jedi Order keeps trying to take their kids without the permission of the planet's religious authority. Do the Jedi look down their noses at the people in that religious tradition and see their practices as a waste of Force-given talent? In the show, it kind of seems like they might. They dismiss their Bardottan's complaints about Jedi recruitment and then casually violate their planets' ban on visiting Jedi because of course they know better. Man, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but Jedi clearly seem to think they have a right to Force sensitive children, whatever their justifications.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-05 01:04 am (UTC)Then I thought about it some more and I had the epiphany that society is used to children having no true choice in what faith they follow. Children are always "indoctrinated" by their caretakers and there's no way to avoid it. Even I was! My parents were atheist and religion was a non issue in our houseld (or my homecountry, for that matter), so I am atheist as well without ever thinking too hard about it.
Not that all that many people want their children to make a choice of their own. Christians have got christening infants, jews and muslims have got male circumcision, other religions have probably got similar rituals. I believe there are some denominations that wait until the person in question has mind of their own, but most don't. (To be fair once again, that can be true of atheists as well. I have recently learnt that when I was 5 or so, my paternal grandma tried to teach me a prayer and my mom was pissed that she was filling my head with nonsense.)
The thing about Jedi is that due to their non-attachment teachings, they can't really have children of their own. So they've got to be forcibly convertitive and find some other Force sensitive children, to whom they can pass down their way of life.
What makes it even more interesting, the government evidently supports them in that (until Palpatine appears on the scene, that is). Here comes the broader issue of who knows what's best for the child - family or state? I believe it's the family, but in Europe in the last few years we've had somewhat of an upheavel with the death of Alfie Evans and also with Bavernet. Oh man, I hope none of those accusations are true. *sigh*
To end this on a somewhat lighter note, are you familiar with metal songs by Dooku's actor? They're total cheese, but kind of great? One of them is called The Bloody Verdict of Verden and it's sung by Lee as Charlemagne about his slaughter of Saxon heathens for their "worship of devils". Which is sort of relevant to our topic, but mostly I can actually imagine Dooku singing it both as a Jedi or a Sith lol.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-05 01:46 am (UTC)About the recruitment, it is so complicated. You're right about kids being raised with religion, but the Jedi aren't just a religion. They're a profession, a whole closed society of unpaid space cops and diplomats. Their parents aren't just signing them up for baptism or Hebrew school, they're signing them up for a lifetime of dangerous, unpaid service to the state. And of course the state encourages them to do so. Force sensitive are a valuable strategic resource and, as long as the Jedi are nominally under the control of the Senate, it makes complete sense that the state wants as many Jedi as it can get.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-07 12:05 am (UTC)Essentially I agree with you that Jediing is more than religion, it's an entire way of life that's quite limiting as far as a chance at personal happiness goes (though to be fair, religion can also severely limit a person's liberty depending on a specific interpretation... hello there, Saudi women!).
When it comes to the Republic's/Senate's stance on the Jedi, I guess we've got to keep in mind safety concerns. I must confess that I don't know what the current canon take on the Order's genesis is - is the Ruusaan reformation even still canon? Considering that the Sith were not just "any" darkside users, but an offshoot of the Jedi, I imagine the public of that era might have felt that having the Jedi around is useful, but not quite safe. Consequently the Senate would have put the Order under (a closer) supervision and asked to put in place preventive measures to stop such a problem from arising again.
Also, the Jedi need the Republic as much as the Republic needs them - if not more so. If necessary, the Senate would be likely able to find other enforcers, diplomats, and healers, but the Jedi can't go full vigilante and step on toes of planetary leaders and megacorps without a mandate from a legitimate authority. Not to mention, who else would be able to shoulder the cost of living of an organization whose members count thousands, yikes! Unsurprisingly, it ultimately led to the Jedi putting their mouth where their money is.
OTOH I'm not sure how the Order could have operated before raising their adepts since infancy. I mean, there are thousands of inhabited planets in the GFFA with thousands of sentient species and even more cultures and religions. Seat together around one table a prototypical American, a Brit, an Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, a Pole, a Russian, a Serbian, a Bosnian, an Israeli, an Iranian, an Iraqi, a Kurd, a Turk, a Saudi,etc. etc. and ask them to forget all their prejudices and differences, accept a new faith, and make them work together. Personally I don't see it happening.
Either the Jedi of the Old Republic accepted members mostly from tolerant, liberal worlds, but proved pickier with possible candidates from planets known for religious intolerance, xenophobia and speciesism... or I don't know.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-07 12:57 am (UTC)I'm thinking about what you said about the Order and it's relationship with the Republic. I think you're right about how much the government relies on them for funding, but I question you assumption that they'd even want to be out there as a vigilante force if that wasn't their literal job. The Republic funds them because they provide this service, but otherwise they're basically a monastic order. The Jedi without their relationship with the Republic would probably be like monks, or, possibly like knights Templar. The Templars were an order of armed monks who helped fight the crusades and guarded pilgrims to the holy land. I can easily see the Jedi providing a similar function and living off the payment for their services.
As to recruiting adults, I don't think it would be as hard as you imagine. After all, the knights Templar came from all over Europe to serve. The Templars made it worth their while. They gave non-inheriting noblemen an opportunity to gain wealth and power. They provided commoners a chance to get out, get an education, and see the world. The Jedi could easily do the same. Recruiting kids was easier because they didn't have to break them down first before they molded them into what they wanted.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-08 01:51 am (UTC)Well, I don't know... Like 90 % of my knowledge of Knights Templar comes from Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings series, which - while a great fun! - is not exactly educative, and the Templars stuck around only long enough to curse the Capetians and go down in flames. Googling them know, apparently their main jam aside of fighting had been... banking. Color me surprised.
I can see some similarities with the Jedi, but I'm not sure if there's a place for them in the GFFA. I mean, the only thing the Jedi could protect in a manner similar to the Templars are the kyber crystals, which is something what the Guardians of the Whills already do, but without much glamour, and I can't for the life of me imagine them as businessmen.
My own impression of the Jedi is that that they are a bit too... aggressive? in their symbolism (I can't find a better word for it) to be just monks. I remember reading a meta that highlighted the symbolism of lightsabers - image-wise they are de facto the perfect weapon - a sword made of fire - fire has the connotation of cleansing and punishing, the sword speaks for itself. Considering what emphasis they put on their lightsaber, I just don't think their main purpose had ever been to meditate and ignore the outer world.
Anyway, I'm not generally well-informed about the new canon, but I flicked through the companion picture book for Rogue One, and what surprised me is that apparently due to its name many people in the GFFA belive that Jedha is the place of origin of the Jedi, which is frankly surprising, since the movie makes it clear that it were the Guardians that made it their home. The Jedi don't seem to have done more than pay it an occasional visit in order to harvest crystals and build around those statues much like on Ilum. I thought that it was strange that in such a large galaxy, two of the very few known Force religions would have originated on the same planet - if only for the reason that it wouldn't be very original on the creators' part.
So, I've been thinking that either the Jedi - Jedha connection was a misdirection, or the Guardians and the Jedi have common origins. My pet theory is that the Jedi started as the offshoot of the Guardians akin to how Christianity split from Judaism, and quickly gained numbers and became the dominant religion. I'm thinking that a long time a group of Force sensitive Guardians felt that what they were doing with protecting the crystals and the locals wasn't enough anymore (they had a vision, perhaps?) and decided to play a more active role in the larger world. So, they took some of those crystals and went to Do Good in the name of the Force and convert more Force sensitives to their ideals. If the GFFA was more of a Wild West back then, they could have well been a vigilante group.
But times changed and they were forced to change as well.
I recognize that the GFFA could be much mellower about things like racism and religious intolerance, but I don't think that the Templars are a good comparison, since they were all catholics. Sure, there were differences among them, but they were all raised with the same basic ideology. But it is true that one of the major reasons as to why crusades came into being was that the Catholic Church wanted to give the Christendom a common foe, so they would stop fighting among themselves.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-08 02:06 pm (UTC)Still, if the Jedi did have those ties to the Republic, I think it would actually make it easier to recruit adults. I mean, the US military has little trouble attracting recruits with the double allure of patriotism and tangible financial benefits.
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-08 09:01 pm (UTC)The prequel Jedi had seemingly forsaken all political power. On the political scene they function merely as mediators and advisors. It's up in the air if that how have always been or if they had gone for the other extreme in reaction to the Sith.
I am of two minds about at what point they started preferring children over adults. You are certainly right that recruiting adults would have been easier, since they wouldn't have to take part in raising them and deal with their parents and regulations about child protection and so on. OTOH the attractiveness of being a Jedi for someone not raised as one depends on the palatability of their philosophy and rules - could they own things? How about getting married?
I think that by necessity they would have taken only adult members in their beginnings. The only children they taught would have been their own kids, nephews, nieces, orphans they took in etc. I mean, who would have sent them their kid for training anyway? It might make sense for the inhabitants of Jedha to send some of their children to the Guardians of the Whills since they are familiar with their ways. OTOH Force sensitive children are born all over the galaxy and their parents have most likely never even heard of the Jedi.
So I think that only after they became a stable, respectable institution, they would have been able to start some sort of a prep school with the government's backing. That prep school would have ultimately evolved into what we see in the prequels.