CV#2,
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Dude, no, I'm not ignoring the main point in favour of nitpicking. But there are many things to talk about in your rambling posts, so I may stray off topic from time to time. First up you're citing examples from novels and the EU, not from the movies, so right off I have no common ground. R2 was trying to detect the Force in EMPIRE and failed? Where'd you get that? I must have seen that one more than a dozen times in my life, and I didn't see that. Of course, I don't speak robot, so maybe he weas saying "WTF-toweet?" You tell me, but it sounds like something was added in translating it to text.
Second you say it's "unlikely that the Jedi could remain unknown and 'fringe' as the Guardians of a 1,000 generation Republic." Well, agreed, but that's how they're portrayed in STAR WARS. When Lucas made that movie he had no idea he was going to make the series that he did. The JEDI he described in that film were supposed to be all but forgotten, but then we get these prequels that show they used to sit in on government sessions and they were the professional negotiators when folks moved armies against one another. In STAR WARS, some 20 years after the events of ROTS, they are scoffed. Saying that members of the Royal Family of Alderaan and thier friends still refer to the Force doesn't say anything about whether it's a science or a religion. It sure doesn't show that it's mainstream; Han only says that line out of respect for Luke. And I didn't take it that Luke did know what Ben was telling him, or Ben wouldn't have needed to tell it to him. If Luke already knew what the Force was, then why did Ben describe it to him, and if Luke already knew who the Jedi were, then why did Ben give the history lesson? If it's as you say, then that's some crappy dialogue.
All that other stuff about quantum mechanics and so on, about finding scientific ways of "proving" the Force, or of proving that there are limits to understanding, that's all well and good, but it ignores the main deal. These Jedi can lift X-Wing fighters out of swamps with their minds. That's something that takes more than Faith, and it's visible, and anyone could see that happen. So manipulation of the Force is FACT, not Faith. James Randi wouldn't be offering these guys a million dollars to prove the existence of the thing. Even if the scientists couldn't figure out how the Midichlorians in the blood made it so that folks could do things, they wouldn't scoff and call it a superstition. They'd be just as impressed as anyone else who'd witnessed the simple and tangible and repeatable experiment of lifting things off the ground from a distance with no apparent machinery.
Since you're obfuscating your argument with stuff from pop-physics, EU nonsense and Harry Potter books, I just have to ask. Are you saying that everyone believes that the Force exists, but the religion is in how to study it? Is that the uncertain area, regardless of the Midichlorians and all that, that allows for some degree of Faith and religion? Because if so, I can meet you halfway. But if not, I still have to go with Helena on this one.
Which makes no sense to me since it is more plausible to link fiction within fiction as a comparison illustrative fact. Suspension Of Disbelief requires it. Cognitive synthesis as creativity exploits it.
The Novel. I believe as R2 stands in the rain outside the hut. And then again as Luke lifts him.
No Ben is quite explicit when he describes the Jedi in ANH as 'Guardians of the Republic for a 1,000 Generations...' Given what we see of their abilities, it seems highly unlikely that they are 'too subtle to be detected'.
Given nobody else carries 'a more civilized weapon' and Ben does little with The Force that could be called 'stupendously obscure' it stands to reason that the Jedi were indeed well known for being _highly visible_ protectors.
Yet the Clone Wars are not forgotten and that sets the time frame (within one lifespan) for the period when Jedi participated in a widely known conflict. Luke doesn't fail to recognize the term, Clone Wars.
Red Leader doesn't scoff. Leia doesn't scoff. Tarkin doesn't scoff. Dodonna doesn't scoff. With one exception, none of these are 'royalists', nor are the Jedi specifically associated with Royalty. Having said that, there is no real dichotomy or marginalization of opinion between the PT and the OT. In the OT, the Jedi were punked because they were ancient has beens. In the PT they were chumped because they could not fight at all well enough to compete on a modern battlefield. Again, it is easy to see the failings of something you don't understand and employ them as a method to exonerate your own weaknesses. As Motti's psychology indicates.
It doesn't have to, it simply needs to make clear that _the Jedi_ are not unknowns but simply a movement (like the cathars or gnostics) 'whose fire has gone out of the universe'. Since the phrase: 'May The Force Be With You.' is itself not unknown or forbidden knowledge restricted to the Jedi it can thus be assumed that they and The Force belief are both known in the universe and that neither is required to exist in spite of or because of a given correlate tagging label.
To Jedi, The Force is a living, breathing 'codified' doctrine. Because they feel it's mechanics as internal sense of limitations in what is and is not possible.
To Non-Jedi, The Force may be dogma. Because it is hard to associate rules with what you cannot sense as vectors of cause and effect.
You may not know the names of all the Popes but if I tell you Pope Benedict II, you're not likely to fail to recognize that his name as being associated with The Catholic Church. Knowing what the Church did in the Middle East, and Europe throughout the dark and middle ages, you may not feel that this qualifies the pope to much praise, yet he is still Pope. And it is still Catholicism.
The Jedi are both the warriors and The Order which inspired them. Until and unless you define the term Jedi better, the notion that science as a working doctrine and dogma as faith driven religion cannot be better differentiated or integrated.
On a related theme: The Purge is similar to the Friday The 13th Massacre of the Templars. Do most people know that the Templars were Knights? Yes. Do they know that their order was a manifestation of Church policy to recognize and exploit the wealth of the returning Crusaders by giving them a writ? Not so much. Yet it is the theocracy of the Church which gave and ultimately took away the Templar powerbase.
Luke knows what a Jedi is. I believe the line is something along the lines of "I was a Jedi Knight, the same as your father was..." "Oh no, my father was a navigator on a Spice freighter..."
No it is in fact critically central to the argument. Because it goes to show how a completely accessible 'real' power is not necessarily measurable by technical means and thus could be treated as 'magic' (naturalist/non-aligned supernatural powers) or 'religious' (something that is _worshiped without proof_ as much as much associated with a specific godhead.). Even if the doctrinal limits of it's expression are known, as a matter of practical use, they may not be quantifiable using 'scientific method'.
No. Yoda can. The rest are lucky to lift a few rocks and _in Star Wars_ none do, during combat.
Sigh, there is a saying that any technology sufficiently advanced seems like magic. But the opposite is also true. At /some level/ of advancement, you can no longer build a tool to contain or manipulate the magic. Because you are at such an elemental state of energy-not-matter existence that 'it just is'. Where that interaction occurs at a level that includes something beyond the limits of our world (effectively making Jedi anchored in both the mundane and supranormal realms) it is quite possible that 'in the absence of any technological understanding on the other side' something is made to seem like it is magic or religious because the effect (or sideeffect) of the supranormal realm can be felt here, without measurable effects as to why.
To people who have grown up centered around the concept of technology being everything, this is a very disturbing limitation to a basic desire to encompass something with definitions or descriptions and then manipulate the laws of the definition to manipulate The Force. The Force _just is_.
Ah, now here you taint your own argument. For if I am not allowed to bring up a possible understanding for how The Force exists using our physics, then neither can you. While if the Midi test was 'standard' and given to every child as a function of establishing a medical history that the Jedi might 'harvest', statistically, for adepts, then Schmi and Anakin would both know about the testing already.
I findi it humorous that you feel you can set what is and is not allowable within the scope of 'just Star Wars' vs. the EU yet have no problems stealing from the PT to support non-existent (non-created) ideals of the OT.
More likely they would be divided into two groups:
1. Those who feared. And either wanted to destroy or deny what they saw (this is the group that signed off on burning their neighbors as witches in the Middle Ages).
2. Those who were jealous. And either wanted to own/exploit the ability for their own good or destroy it so that no one else could have it or compete with them at unfair
advantage.
No. I am actually doing quite the opposite of 'obfuscation'-
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Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret.
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http://en.wikipedia....iki/ObfuscationIn explaining things in some detail, hoping to find a level for which your narrow awareness can resonate a emperical or philosophical understanding. You might call it digressive confusion on your part but not obfuscation on mine. Particularly since I answer each segment of your post, in context and correlate it with my own views using terminology which should be accessible to your displayed intellect and education level.
As to my beliefs, I am saying that the inhabitants of the physical Universe know that the Jedi existed and most likely that they believed in something called The Force. But that having been without living reinforcement of that apparent 'magic' they now find it easier to deny the belief (Sasquatch, UFOs, Merlin, God/The Devil) without proof, either for convenience of guilt (the Jedi weren't nothin' special so therefore their betrayal is not important) or fear (If the Magic is itself endemic to everything and now we have no one to interpret it's existence and prove it's limits, how will we know when we trespass upon it?).
The human mind is a wondrous thing, but it tends to work off a complex system of branching label relations rather than specific experiential recollection. If you cannot label the boogie man, it is dangerous and thus better not known. If you can, acknowledging it's worth becomes relative to your own vulnerabilities and needs to focus on other things 'beyond that which you cannot deal with'.
By putting it in it's own narrow little cell of reality and throwing away the key, you bind it to that area of your conscience where you can deal with it rather than having it pop up inconveniently in every little thing.
That said:
1. Religion. That which is a bureaucratic and structural construct of organized/dogmatic spiritualism.
2. The Force. A proveable mysticism which some accept and some don't. Like not crossing paths with a
black cat or throwing salt over your shoulder only with the potential for realworld dispelling of disbelief.
3. The Jedi. _Practitioners_ of the practical mysticism known as The Force. Whether others believe
in their powers or not. Because they have both a secular and a spiritual grounding, they are
remembered for their effects on the Galaxy as much as their 'quaint beliefs'.
4. Faith. That which reinforces access to the mystical if it allows for an instinctive grasp beyond our
notional belief in what reality is vs. can be. Or which contravenes that ability by making the assumption that
you cannot quantify a desire without corrupting it with labels. It just depends on how regimented your
understanding of the term and thus your approach to the magic that exists 'with or without it' is.
5. Mysticism, that which believes in an arcane existence of reality deeper than the immediate 'proveable'
one, independent of emperical proof of perception. In this, I yield to Wiki-
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Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός – mystikos, an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries; μυστήρια – mysteria meaning "initiation"[1]) is the pursuit of achieving communion, identity with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true human perception of the world goes beyond current logical reasoning or intellectual comprehension. A person delving in these areas may be called a Mystic.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MysticismSince it basically allows for a description of the universe in which 'all may be known but the unknowable'. The latter of which is -perceived- as both itself. And it's causal outcome effects upon mundane existence. But which is so far beyond quantifiable science as to be magic to those who can only think in terms of 'real or not real' proofs of technology.
CONCLUSION:
In essence, Helena's argument (20,000 years and nobody understands it any better than is shown...) is the answer within the question. Given: The universe will keep on cooking another 13-50 billion years, depending on which school you follow, will there always be a time when technology is the only way to tap the primal forces of physics and nature? Or will there come a point where the sheer awareness of all things at their most subtle levels, connects us to them without an intermediate interface crutch?
To bastardize the quote: 'And when we are done with all our journeying, it will be to return to where we started, and know it for the first time...'
If man ever had magic, and lost it due to thinking too much or thinking too little, it may well be that technology and science is the system by which we imprint more than an instinctive understanding of universality as a system of causal efficiencies by which a greater supranorm beyond our reality integrates within ourselves as much as our 'faith as a lack of proof', process-driven, understanding of same. At the same time, though undoubtedly manipulative, elitist and singular in it's expression of that understanding, religion may be the one bulwark that reminds us not to stop believing that that 'greater connection' awaits a more wisened rediscovery.
KPl.
P.S. Forgive me, I had to remove the individual block quotes as the forum rules seem to be unhappy with that.