Details Magazine Article November 2013 Issue - Jedi Religion

Most of those are before my time. *sigh* Wish I knew more about them.

RyuJin wrote: If I were to pick 5 "pillars" from totjo ( I use pillars instead of "central figure")...it would probably look like this:

Br. John
Kana seiko haruki/garm
Neaj pa bol
Jon/tiamat
War beauty/akkarin

Of course that's tchnically more than 5....but those are the ones that were central before my arrival and during a good portion of my time here....

If I were to use only those that are currently active the list would look quite different...and despite my time here, contributions, and effort I still don't think i'd be comfortable including myself in that new list...I'm just a mindless little monkey that occasionally manages to do something smart...

Not trying to be rude but in that list there is only one person who has (almost) consistently been here to build what we have now, and that's br.John. Jestor on his own has easily done more than all these people combined to keep the place running.

:laugh: as I said if I were to use only those currently active it would look quite different ....jestor would certainly be on it, as would yourself...and akkarin would still be on it as would br.john

Without the contributions of many on that list we wouldn't have some of the strong contributors we have now...war trained v, who did a lot, tiamat trained mark, kana & br john trained me...akkarin has been here since the beginning and continues to soldier on

I don't see ToTJO as being anywhere near "evolving on it's own", Akkarin. You have members here that have come from different areas of the community, and whether any of you realize it- Opie has been a part of their evolution in some way. Whether it was more at a distance through others or an active participant in the person's life is a debate to be had, but he was still there in some form.

No Matter what, the most interesting thing to the general public would be the novelty of what we do.

I am glad the writers who came out at least took the time to learn about what we do as we do it, not a surface glace.

Instead of it being "look at these geeks!" it is becoming "look at these insightful geeks"

My preference though is still with Andrew Dickens Shortlist article.

Well, you have to look at what we have now and who made it happen. Akkarin registered a long time ago but was mostly inactive. He returned when I was already on the board of directors and finished his apprenticeship then. Perris was mostly absent as well. Hans did a couple of things which are now gone, garm, i have absolutely no idea, kana same as hans, tiamat I'm not sure, neaj has been mostly absent, etc.

If you look at what we have, degree scheme, clergy training, etc... They didnt make those things. Even the Doctrine is made by other people. The 21 maxims are mine (based on jediism.org), the tenets go back to jediism.org, the code is star wars, the 16 teachings were taken from jedi sanctuary (now rewritten by akkarin and alex and partially by myself), jedi believe was from a non-jedi canadian website (and I rewrote those too), the creed is adapted from saint francis of Assisi (adaptation made by a guy called Tom I think? Then modified by the council on two occasions)

If there's anything notable about totjo it's that there really is no central person at totjo, but a fairly large quantity of people involved in making it what it is.

Connor Lidell wrote: Most of those are before my time. *sigh* Wish I knew more about them.

You can always dig through the deepest levels of the forums...I learned tons doing that in my first few months...even stuff about the split, alter ego's, etc...and even opie's contributions to the general jedi community...in the few discussions I've had with him he always seemed complimentary of me....perhaps I only perceived it that way....in some ways he reminds me of ren :laugh: both can seem grating at times, but mean well, and do well in their own ways....I like and respect both...of course that's just me...

Each incarnation of totjo draws it's strength from a very wide base...and while the faces and names change many of the lessons passed on through apprenticeships have a lineage to those old names and faces...keeping part of the past alive and evolving towards the future...

No one member is truly more important than any other...the day that happens will be the day we stop evolving...

Back to the article...I liked it for the most part....and while he did take a few light jabs it wasn't bad....and we should all be able to laugh at ourselves on occasion...

It was a nice article. Thank you.