The Force: A History
A justjedi.com Extract
The first Rough Draft
By: The Keeper (Trisskar)
"The pillar of Knowledge is the most important of the three pillars you will study during your time as an initiate...If not for the histories of the Order recorded in our Holocrons, what would Master Mandibu know of the force beyond her vague feelings? Without the diagrams of combat techniques in our archives, how could Master Vaunk know the proper way to instruct you in shii-cho?"~ The Jedi Path
History is an important part of our lives. It tells us of things that have occurred in our past and teaches us how to move on into the present and future. It shows us both our greatest successes and our hardest failures.
In this article I wish to touch up on the history of the online movement. Jedi. “Over 390,000 people answered “Jedi” in the 2001 census for England and Wales and 14,000 in Scotland (a lower proportion). This is more than the number of identifying Sikhs, and more than Jews and Buddhists combined.” So says the the Census Campaign website:
In Australia more than 70,000 people declared themselves members of the Jedi order and right along with them over 53,000 people listed themselves as Jedi in New Zealand.
Later in 2011 - 176,632 describing themselves as Jedi Knights. As reported on The Guardian:
All of these very large numbers on Census aside. The views were greatly mixed, many admitted that they signed as “Jedi” due to concerns of how the Census worked and instead of putting ‘Non-Religion’ an organized movement encouraged people to put ‘Jedi’ instead as a little joke. While these numbers were extensive and very impressive, this did not in any means register the Jedi as an actual, legalized religion.
That notwithstanding “Jedi” had been viewed as a religious movement online long before 2001 and continues to grow more and more with each passing day. Memorable leaders such as Relan Volkun, Nightflyer, Mitth, Streen and many others laid the foundations and the structures of the online and even offline Jedi movement.
Let us continue forward and learn how these great founders started our history and how many others kept it alive and well to this day.
The Jedi were first mentioned in the 1977 movie Star Wars IV: A New Hope and remained central in the five subsequent Star Wars movies, along with novels and games also based in the Star Wars universe. While these sources are entirely fictional, their creator, George Lucas, researched a variety of religious perspectives during their creation. Daoism and Buddhism are the most obvious influences on his concept of Jedi, although there are many others.
A few years after Star Wars had stolen the hearts of many fan’s and entered into the vast aspects of media, the main movies, TV shows, books, comics, games and also the internet. Some of the fans had gone so far as to create a roleplaying community where a small group wrote fan fiction stories together about Star Wars and the famous Jedi. Some even went so far as to apply real philosophies, lessons and scholarly agenda into their stories playing out fictional characters in a fictional environment with a very real ideology.
Along with the Role Playing communities. Places where members would write a section of a story, and have other members slowly build and add to in order to create one big story. There were also chatrooms. A notable Chatroom was called the Mos Eisley Cantina.
With all these varying influences, creative, explorative minds and people looking for a suitable place to ‘fit in’ some special members decided to carry things to the next level.
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