Jedis are the ultimate Gandhists

I’m serious. You wouldn’t expect any less, based on previous posts, but you might also need some convincing on this assertion.

Anyone with a mild obsession with the Star Wars universe knows that to be a Jedi Knight, one has to be an ascetic, putting your self last in pursuit of communion with the Force. The ultimate achievement—becoming a Jedi Mahatma, reaching the Jedi Nirvana—is to be able to cheat death and become a part of the Force itself.

So, it’s easy to compare Jedi ways with Hinduism and Buddhism, but Gandhi was a Jain and preached non-violence. These knights go into battle and carry swords. But look closer at what Gandhi taught.

Gandhi saw violence as a term that encompassed more than physical attack. Violence is all that is negative and aggressive. Violence includes the eating of meat or the destruction of the environment. Gandhi drew a parallel between the search for personal enlightenment and the way people live their lives—there is a balance to be found, treading lightly on the land and taking no more than you need.

Gandhi said: “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

Conversely, any action that doesn’t fulfil these criteria is probably not violence. Which brings us back to the Jedi. Jedi are taught not to attack, only to defend, and to do so in a way that simply returns the anger and violence of the attacker. This is not simply a strategy as in some martial arts, but fundamental to the use of the Force. To do otherwise would be to exploit the Dark Side of the Force, which in turn would consume the user.

Take a hypothetical example: a Jedi is fired upon by an Imperial stormtrooper. Without time for debate, the Jedi avoids being hit, fires up his lightsabre and deflects the next shot to kill the soldier. As an act of bravery and warcraft, it would be admirable, but that is not what it is to a Jedi. There is no fear, no aggression and no malice. The Jedi acts as a conduit to the Force, taking no pleasure in undoing the violent actions of the stormtrooper.

In other words, to be a Jedi Knight is to achieve a balance that no ordinary human could, both because it is simply beyond our abilities and because we do not have access to the Force. So the Jedi Knight is the ultimate Gandhist, but only in the realm of fantasy.

Without the ability to enter battle without animosity, it is better not to enter the battle.

Taking control

Getting elected is no mystery. Experience shows just how many leaflets, letters, doors knocked upon, pounds and years spent it takes to win a council seat. With a creditable manifesto and enough time and money, winning a city council majority is and has been done by parties other than the current duopoly—in several countries too.

Things could be so much better, though. It makes sense not to spook the electorate when you are few and have limited access to the media, but fighting for control of a council presents the opportunity to reveal the long-term goals, the real differences between yourselves and the orthodoxy—your ideology.

Having an ideology is a revolutionary thing in itself in this allegedly post-modern world. What’s more, lofty global ambitions linked to personal goals that do not extend beyond the local community are an apparent contradiction that you can turn into a winning combination.

An ambitious mainstream politician in local politics will see it as a step towards the national level. His (or her) personal ambitions can be justified by linking them to his ambitions for his own political views, his local community and his country. But in reality, greater ambition coupled with greater ability will see the best and most driven politicians abandoning their roots. National-level governments do what they perceive is best for the nation and have little incentive to empower local communities, as Nixon astutely observed.

So, the average local politician is second rate because there is little worth bothering with at local level.

Turn that around. If we assume that we will most effectively change nation and globe by our example rather than domination, the ultimate ambition is to make your own community the epitome of fairness and ecological balance.

When communities start to turn against the dictatorship of central government, the best politicians will want to play a part in the re-invigorated local. And with a growing number of communities taking control of their own affairs, the pool of (genuine) best practice and experience will grow, making the localisation programme ever easier.