I have a particular fondness for the independently-published Star Wars philosophy book. People are all over the board in how they see the Force and Star Wars and these books reflect that.
Jedi Manual Basics: Introduction to Jedi Knighthood by Matthew Vossler came across to me, from its description, as a book written for kids (another fondness of mine). But it’s actually a workbook for those wishing to study Jediism as a religion or personal philosophy.
Jediism has been gaining ground as a religion in recent years. This book lets you walk through the basic precepts and examine your own understanding of the Force through a series of studies and writing assignments.
I would have liked to see a bit more actual background over assignments. And the use of URL’s as reading assignments could be problematic as sites go down and change. As a result, its usefulness in the long term is doubtful. But if you’re at all interested in Jediism, this would be an interesting way to explore it further.
If you told 1975 George Lucas about this, it would probably scare the flanel out of his shirt.
Yeah, I’m with Aaron here. You’ll never catch me telling people away from something that makes them happy spiritually, or gives them any kind of real fulfillment, but there’s something that has always seemed slightly unsettling to me about culling your faith from a film or television franchise. I’d be curious to know how George feels about this stuff.
Then again, I don’t really get religion at all, so whatever.
I suspect he’s still freaked out by it!
It could be worse though. I mean there are books in print that are using Star Wars to thrust fundamentalist religious doctrine down their readers’ throats (e.g. http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781590525777). I’d even take something as wacky as Jediism over that any day. *cough*
Interestingly, if you watch “Mythology of Star Wars,” the documentary with Bill Moyers, Lucas himself denounces (in circuitous terms so as not to offend, it seems) the very notion of his films’ message being taken as religion, rather than simply getting people interested in spirituality.
I like the pop culture philosophy books! I think I also read the Harry Potter one.
Even though I don’t plan to read Introduction to Jedi Knighthood, I agree with the use of links as reference being a bit too short-sighted.
This is just plain weird. The force is a made up thing. So how can you base your beliefs around it? Oh hang on thats pretty much…
Well, this book does tend to focus its study on the history of noble traditions, like knighthood.
I think folks like to find something on which to place their moral compass.
Besides, they could just as easily decide to worship The Darkside.
For a book about using the Force, that is not about Jedi religion, check out Jedi Prep School at the Kindle Store. It’s not about Star Wars (and isn’t written “in-world”) but uses Star Wars references combined with martial arts references to discuss the Force as a real-life principle. And deeply sorry, this is a despicable plug for a book, but it seems to fit the thread.