Fictionally: Was Combat Training Inherent to the Jedi Path, or....

Fictionally Speaking: Was Combat Training Inherent to the Jedi Path, or was it adopted out of necessity?

This came up during a conversation on Facebook recently, and turned into a rather lengthy contemplation of the fiction’s example of the Jedi. To some this may not bare any relevance to the real world Jedi model, but there are those who may find it pertinent and I believe that there is value in having this discussion so that our community is given an opportunity to explore what exactly the fiction has to say concerning Combat Training. That is…could a person in the fiction be a Jedi (not Jedi Knight, just “Jedi”) if they did not receive martial arts training? Or was it more of a precaution to ensure that the Jedi Path could continue?

There were two sections in the discussion that tie in together, and trying to rewrite it so it makes sense is a bit too much for my brain to handle XD, so I’ve left them intact below. What’s in Blue was the question that helped facilitate the contemplation around it. I’d really love to hear your own thoughts on the matter, it’s just no fun if I’m the only one talking . Though….I apologize in advance for the wall of text

“the Jedi of fiction across the board are known for two primary external skills: swordsmanship and Forcework. Warrior and Monk.” - Otori

“Warrior” is a very specific term. Later you point out that training hadn’t changed- but there are some things not taken into account on the subject of training- so let’s start with what a warrior is: It’s not a swordsman.

My husband was a warrior, but one could argue that I was not. We had the exact same occupation (Military Police). We had almost the exact same training by the time we met- he got training for Afghanistan, and I got it for Iraq; he had received in-depth training for Law Enforcement Operations on Ft. Stewart and I got a more in-depth training on Detainee Treatment. These are the only differences in our training. That’s how cohesive our training in the military is- even when you’re separated by thousands of miles, we still run the same training drills.

Despite having trained for combat, I didn’t go outside the wire once. Nathan on the other hand ran several MSRs and learned to drift a Hummer on ice around a very thin one-lane road. He got into several fire fights.

The definition of a warrior is “a person engaged or experienced in warfare
broadly : a person engaged in some struggle or conflict.” (Merriam-Webster)

For additional understanding, warfare is defined as “military operations between enemies ; also : an activity undertaken by a political unit (such as a nation) to weaken or destroy another ; struggle between competing entities” (Merriam-Webster)

With these two in mind, one could argue that because I was deployed and provided a military operation of guarding detained persons in a combat zone I could qualify as a warrior under the description “engaged in warfare”. But that would be disingenuous to the common picture the definition outlines. The picture a person would see, on average, are operations carried out by my husband. Under the second definition (prefaced by “broadly” of the Warrior definition, people see protestors and those struggling to get change in/for their community. We call these people “Social Justice Warriors” to better identify what kind of warrior they are.

Still, there are soldiers who have never once engaged in warfare. In fact, I knew a First Sergeant (E8, you can look up how long it takes to get to that point) who never deployed. He was never once engaged in what is traditionally viewed as warfare. As such, it would be disingenuous to call him a Warrior. But his *training* far exceeded that of myself and my husband. He was a skilled soldier, and there is no doubt he would have been able to hold his own- but that didn’t make him a warrior.

So when you say “a swordsman and a force user” this does not automatically translate as “a Warrior and a Monk”. A Combat Medic is trained in the same Basic Training Nathan & I received- but their orders are vastly different: they can only use those skills to defend themselves when absolutely necessary. Their focus is on the safety and care of their patient(s). Here again, we have a situation where it is questionable whether they would qualify as a “warrior” in the traditional picture painted by the definition. They are on standby, and protected by the warriors around them. But the struggle (conflict) to save someone is enough to qualify them in the second definition, while the fact that it is an essential military operation under the first definition.

Let’s turn our attention to Jacasta Nu. She certainly had the same *basic* training of a Jedi. I parallel this with “Nathan & Alethea had the same basic training of a soldier”. But after that basic training, she would have become a padawan. And here’s where we get into an interesting discussion: Who trained her? There is no canon stating who it was. But what’s interesting is that she had apprentices while she was the Chief Librarian. It stands to reason that the majority of her missions were peaceful, and therefore offered very little in terms of combat experience. Leaving it up to her to simply teach the basics of lightsaber combat to her students.

This is where we have to reach an understanding of what the fiction lacks- it tells the hype, and gives little direction for those who don’t get to become knights. Furthermore, not all Jedi became Padawans, by the age of 13 if they were not chosen, they had the choice to move on to the Jedi Service Corps.

That’s one of the keys missing in the discussion of the fictional Jedi structure when we look at the real world model: Is Knighthood the only way a person is recognized as a Jedi? In the fiction, the word “knight" refers to a very specific group of people within the Jedi Structure. Again, I’m going to relate this to the Army structure - so bare with me while I try to flesh this out in a way that the analogy makes sense:

All US Army Active Duty Enlisted personnel who have completed Basic Training are “Soldiers”. This includes those in combat arms (Infantry, Field Artillery,etc), Combat Support (Military Police, Signal Corps, etc), Combat Service Support (Adjutant General's Corps [which includes admin and the band- yes even the band has to go through Basic Combat Training], Quartermaster [which includes supply and the cooks], etc) and our Special Branches (Veterinary Corps, JAG, etc). Within each of these, you are given a paygrade (E1, E2, etc) as you progress in your journey in these different jobs. You may also find that you are given a different rank from what others are given at the same paygrade. At one point, there was a split at E4, on one track you were a Specialist 4, Specialist 3, etc; on the the other it was Corperal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, etc. Eventually, it moved to only E4, E8 and E9 having two different ranks associated with the paygrade.

As you can see, the Army can be fairly complex. So now let’s look at the Jedi Order:

Jedi Knights would have been used to describe those who the Army classifies as Combat Arms and Combat Support. While Jedi Palawan’s who failed to become Jedi Knights, but decided to still stay on board as members of the Jedi Service Corps, would be akin to the Army’s Combat Service Support and Special Branches. All of these personnel within the Jedi Order are expected to live by the wisdom and philosophy of the Jedi Path.

Right now, in the offline community, we treat the “Jedi Knight” as though it’s either a paygrade. If the paygrades matched the current model, it would go from E1-E4. E1- Jedi Student, E2- Jedi Apprentice, E3- Jedi Knight, and E4- Jedi Master. And in some lesser-known orders, the E5- Grandmaster. And just like the US Army, some people are able skip up to the first three pay grades based on their education level…or if they just start their own order. Orders that allow for specialization (guardian, counselor, sentinel, etc) treat the title as more of a Rank with the paygrade attached. That is “Jedi Consular Knight” or “Jedi Guardian Master”. At the core is still “Knight” and “Master” when these may not be appropriate to the fictional model which had knights working specifically in traditionally warrior operations.

So the question becomes: Is the only way to be a Jedi, to be a Warrior Monk embodied by the fictional description of “Jedi Knight”? Or did the fiction intend for “Jedi” and “Jedi Knight” to be different in the same way that “Soldier” and “US Army Military Police” are different, but the same? Or to be more coherently put: All US Army MPs are Soldiers, but not all Soldiers are US Army MPs- so would it be appropriate to also say “All Jedi Knights are Jedi, but not all Jedi are Jedi Knights”? And if so, what defines the basics of the Jedi?

Life situations do change, and I absolutely agree that our focus will shift in those instances. Side note, the Consular classification still trained in combat, even combative Forcework. - Otori

We aren’t really certain how the need for combat training became a necessity. Once again, I go back to the US Army, which has a more recent history. During the Civil War, women provided medical aide to the sick- but they were not afforded combat training by the militaries they supported. During World War II, there was a mixed batch of soviet women who were trained and untrained as snipers. And in Nazi Germany, women were allowed to be part of the auxiliary forces, but were not allowed to receive combat training until very near the end of the war. Over time, we’ve found the wisdom in training the medical branch of our enlisted personnel. It rose out of necessity for the type of operations our military is expected to carry out during wartime. Of course, this isn’t the only way that you can provide these services- government contractors provide assistance as well. We have civilian mechanics that come out to combat zones, civilian laundry services on a Forward Operating Base, there are plenty of civilians that help supplement our operations in the field. But what distinguishes them from a soldier isn’t just the combat training a soldier receives- it’s the philosophy contained within the Army Values, Military Ceremony & Tradition, the UCMJ, and our belief in the International Law of The Hague and Geneva Conventions. In the US Army, combat training comes from a need to ensure that if stuff hits the fan, there are people available to protect each other and the civilians caught up in the chaos.

This is where the questions take form- why did the Jedi of old need to take up arms? Their goal was to increase peace, which can be accomplished in many ways. It’s in Dawn of the Jedi that you begin to really understand that the reason the lightsaber would eventually come into existence was because the Je'daii came under threat. It became necessary to ensure the safety of their people. This tradition would carry forward, and the mission to become guardians of peace would expand.

And that’s something to take into consideration- by the time they became “Government Contractors” for the Republic, it meant that they would need to produce more Jedi Knights in order to maintain this role for their benefactor. It’s not explicitly said within the fiction, but hear me out. There’s this combination of needing to appease their benefactors, but also to ensure that they had a fairly strong deterrent against attackers. All eyes turned on them, they would need every Jedi to know how to defend themselves, and defend the Temple. Luke, having a small team of Jedi to work with, trying to rebuild the Jedi Tradition from the ground up, had to contend with the lengthy history of the Jedi. The only answer to the problem was to also train his knights to protect themselves and move forward. And he could only do that with what he had available to him.

When you piece together the geo-political circumstances, and look at the whole of what the Jedi Order looked like (even before Disney got ahold of it) you find that there is a very real potential for the Jedi to not have to engage in combat operations at all. That there may have even been an opportunity for the Jedi to never have to pick up a lightsaber had circumstances been different.

The reason that it was so important in their universe, however, is because fear drives a great deal of the galaxy. The fear that someone having power no one else has means that they need to be squashed before they become a threat. In the real world, there is a very wide history of exactly this. In Abrahamic traditions, we can see a history where the fear of something people didn’t understand would cause dogmatic followers to murder children in order to prevent further problems. And it’s not limited to Abrahamic Traditions, there are plenty of examples worldwide where infanticide has taken place because of a belief that some children are born with bad omens over them. But the truth is, there *are* areas of the world where it’s unnecessary to be trained in military/warrior-grade combatives. Self-Defense will suffice. And even then, you will have many, even in this community, that will never need it (that’s not an excuse to not get Unarmed Self-Defense training, because you never know and it’s good for disciplining the body- but it is a reality). In fact, I’d argue that my training with the Force is the reason I’ve never been in a real physical altercation.

The point is, working with the Force seems to be a major component of actual Jedi Philosophy in the fiction. But using it for combat operations surfaced as a necessity to their circumstances, not as a rule for the philosophy itself. A philosophy of defense was adopted, not inherent.

Which is true of Sri Lankan Sinhala tradition as well. Buddhism doesn’t inherently have a tradition of violence coded within it. But with both the Tamil and Islam Extremists, the leaders in Sinhala found an ethical framework inside of Buddhism to justify protecting themselves and others against a hostile enemy. This is *NOT* me justifying their tactics. In fact, the way it all has gone down there and in Myanmar is abhorrent. All this paragraph is, is a method of explaining the rise of how the circumstances play a role in the development of new tradition. But it should also serve as a warning to the problem of not having a solid philosophy on when such things need to be laid to rest.

Take the Shaolin tradition. There is no archeological evidence that they began forming their own martial lineage before the Sui Dynasty, which was nearly 90 years after the founding of the Shaolin Temple. And even then, it wasn’t exactly a martial tradition at its inception.

It is believed that a tradition of defense began taking form as a result of the conflict in the area. So in this example, similar to the ones in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, a necessity for some form of defense became apparent. However, the focus wasn’t initially on a martial form, but rather the hand gestures of arhats statutes. During the Tang Dynasty (about a 300 year period), these became 18 postures and 18 forms. But the documentation from the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties do not mention combat training taking place in the monastery. This lends to the idea that rather than a Martial Form, the 18 Louhans were more akin to Yoga Postures.

The Ming Dynasty (about 300 years) forced conscription, even on monks. It is believed that it was during this period of time that the monks fabricated a rich history of martial arts practice because it was becoming a large part of their training. But here’s where two incidents during the Tang Dynasty contribute to the need to develop a philosophy around the use of defensive tactics- because they were under attack once more. During the Tang Dynasty, the Monks had to defend their temple against bandits, and a second time 8 years later (with help from the attacker’s enemy) against a guy who declared himself emperor. This sets up the stage for a philosophy where you don’t fight unless you’re engaged in an imminent attack. So later on during the Ming & Qing (another 300 years after that) Dynasties when their region is facing lawlessness and pirates, Martial Arts arises as a way to answer the problem with the previous example setting them up to build an ethical foundation for it’s application. The issue of it coming on their doorstep goes on for 600 years (the Qing Dynasty ended in 1912, and was momentarily restored in 1917). But this is where we get to today- with a well connected world the Martial Arts aspect isn’t necessary for defense. And realistically wouldn’t get them very far against modern weapons (I’d like to say “fortunately the average citizen of China has no access to guns”…but historically the governments around the world have been was just as a much a threat to any religious organization as your run-of-the-mill criminals…soooooo….yeeeaaaah).

The thing is, although the art of Shaolin Kung Fu can be used for self-defense, in truth that’s not what it was about in the first place. The 18 Hands of Louhan were intended to be used for contemplation. “Louhan” is the Chinese word for”Arhat”. The Arhats were people who had attained enlightenment, you could say they are like Christian Saints, but to Buddhism. Today they are given their own statue and placed in their own unique pose. The Shaolin Monks were given a tradition of 18 hand gestures which were held by 18 different Arhats so they could use these to meditate on. Eventually, as stated before, they moved from the hand gestures to postures and then forms. But at the heart of it all, was the meditation upon the Arhats themselves. One might say they were trying to evoke something of the Arhat to gain insight into their own journey to Enlightenment.

Which is where an understanding of the purpose behind the fictional Jedi’s development of a Defense Philosophy should be understood. Because it is in the knowledge of it’s actual purpose that we can begin to form an understanding of whether or not Combative Martial Arts and Force Work are necessary for someone in the fictional verse to be a Jedi (not a Jedi Knight, simply a Jedi). There is something else to take into consideration- Ters Sendon, one of the founders of the Jedi Order, is never seen engaging in combat. He’s simply considered a Chronicler. And Garon Jard, another founder, is shown saying “*if* we fought, it should only be in self-defence.” (Asterisk mine). All of this begs questions about the combat role within the fictional Jedi Order. If it was simply a matter of circumstantial necessity, or essential to the Jedi Path itself.

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