The Jedi

I love Star Wars. I love the Jedi outfits -- simple, practical, and cool. I recently acquired a good Jedi outfit sewing pattern. It's not perfect, but it is close enough that I can make the necessary modifications. It's a new pattern from Simplicity this year, number 4450. Their old Jedi pattern was crap, so I was ecstatic when I discovered this new pattern -- especially since it includes the Jedi cloak. I don't think I'll make a full outfit before going to Japan, but I'll certainly be making myself the cloak.

Finding this pattern got me curious about the Jedi religion, such that it is. I discovered that the census issue in New Zealand and Australia started out as a practical joke of sorts. Although this doesn't surprise me, I find myself wondering how many people actually try to follow the Jedi code. It doesn't seem like a bad idea, but it does seem more like a way of life than a religion.

I also found an interesting analysis of the Jedi philosophies and how they relate to multiple philosophies found in the real world. It goes into how these real-world philosophies relate to and contradict each other. The analysis seems to be taking a critical and disaproving look at the flaws of the Jedi religion (and with reason), but these flaws only makes the Star Wars story more dear to me. The flaws make the Jedi religion more realistic, as well as making it more important to the story. Does religion need to be followed to the letter all the time, or is it more of a loose guideline for how we should live our lives? It's also interesting to see how people have drawn from the Jedi philosophies to enhance their own religions.

All in all, even though George Lucas keeps refusing to rerelease the original Star Wars trilogy, no one can deny that he's created something that will impact generations to come. Whether or not you care about the Jedi code and its religious implications, Star Wars is an example of damned good storytelling.

Also, I have decided that given the narrowing time between me and my departure to Japan, the little bits of practice translating my blog to Japanese gives me is not worth the time I spend doing it. I'll get plenty of practice in Japan, and right now I would rather focus on getting prepared for departure, finishing our D&D campaign, reading a few more books, and finishing sewing the mad piles of cloth I have amassed over the summer (not necessarily in that order). On the plus side, this means I'll be updating the blog more often -- there have been times that I didn't update simply because I didn't feel like translating the blog into Japanese.