In our continuing series of Forum User generated editorials, we’d like to feature Rouge77’s recent post Jedi Order - a prisoner of the elite of the society it helps to protect?. To read it, please click on the link, and then feel free to add to the discussion by going to the forum.

Jedi Order - a prisoner of the elite of the society it helps to protect? by Rouge77

What I mean with the title is that the the main galactic government’s elite and thus it’s views of galactic affairs and it’s ideals, including those about the social structure, have “colonized” the Jedi Order through both it’s members getting to leading positions in the Jedi Order and by the simple fact of the close connection of the Jedi Order to the government in Coruscant through 25 000 years. One can’t have a pretty much symbiotic relationship that long without starting to resembling each other - at least when it comes to the Jedi Order.

There’s little to be said of how the Jedi Order has influenced the Old Republic (OR) & etc, but perhaps because so little is known of the early history of OR; with one major exception - the Jedi Order has made OR & (New Republic/Galactic Alliance) NR/GA a participant and a victim in the Jedi vs Sith conflict that started as an inside schism inside the Jedi Order and which is basically the Jedi’s fight, not OR&etc’s.

The Jedi Order is led by people who don’t see it and it’s interests separate from the interests of OR/NR/GA’s elite (which they see also as the same as those of the whole population of OR/NR/GA). This has led inside the Jedi Order to a similar stratification as in the society outside it, and just like in the OR/NR/GA, the result seems to be stagnation and an inability to meet new challenges, because keeping up this status quo of stagnation beneficial to the elite (or, after Purges and falls of OR/NR/GA, regaining it for the benefit of the elite) is the only ideal and the only goal which the Jedi Order and the OR/NR/GA have left. There are no new answers to new challenges in an organizational or ideological level, and the occasional change in methods used is soon abandoned (as in DN those of NJO).

This could be seen as one of the reasons of the problems and defeats of both the Jedi Order and the Coruscant -led government. After failing, they rebuild, but they rebuild in the same exact manner, and thus are destined to fail again. They have only one social model, only one model for the relationship of Jedi Order to the galaxy and for it’s role in the galaxy (through OR/NR/GA) and no goals beyond regaining and keeping up the status quo. Instead of looking to adapt to the galaxy and it’s challenges, the Jedi Order and OR&etc act as staunch conservatives, hoping that the galaxy instead adapts to their views. Let’s remember, the OR/NR/GA itself hasn’t really grown significantly in area for a long time - beyond the brief time which Hapes and IR were it’s members - perhaps not much in the last two thousand years. It rebounds after defeats, but hasn’t really threatened to become a pan-galactic government for a long time. It’s like the Roman Empire since the time of Trajan.