Why so many people become disappointed with this community

These are questions we CAN all answer for ourselfs. I know I ha e personally asked them and have answered or found my answer to many.

Its difficult to explain.

Rosalyn J wrote: Its difficult to explain.

Sounds like a good tangent thread/group project to work on

Ill get to a keyboard at some point

Reliah wrote: So we should have no expectations, shouldn’t care about what others are doing, and should focus solely on our own path and why we do what we do?
So really the purpose of a forum, putting your lessons into it for everyone (of the proper rank) to see, and having a community centered around growth is for what? Why be here? I get personal growth and development and all that, but why does anyone need to post about it where others see it? Recognition? Validation? Why not just do it privately? How do we learn and grow from that?
Isn’t wanting recognition and validation (ranks) just as big of an ego trap as expectation?
And if we shouldn’t care about what others are doing in the negative light, why should anyone care what anyone is doing in the positive light? Why be a community at all? If we aren’t going to put effort into it and only focus on our own paths... how is that even a community? And then why even comment about anything at all?

I know all of this sounds really awful and like I’m trying to cause more problems than anything, but these are honestly things I wonder and have wondered about for a long time. And it seems like here and now is the best time and place to ask.

I think these questions are completely valid if one assumes that one's own single individual approach to a community ought to apply to everyone's. I would not prescribe my approach to anybody else. And I think this is a large point of consideration here: There are people here who on one level or another continue to fall into prescribing their own approaches and ideas to everyone else (ie. what is "Jedi-like" and what is not). If you are one who is of the character to call out others in a community to make sure they are keeping to whatever standard you think they should, that is your decision for you. It is a burden you can only put on yourself. I also don't think its as black and white as "having no standards at all" and "everyone can just do whatever and have no consequences". But what we again and again keep running into is an ironic situation of "issues" appearing almost exclusively where and only when there is someone literally striving to call them out. Obviously this doesn't mean that there are never any issues when nobody is around to spot them. It's just a matter of what kinds of issues, how often they develop, and how trivial they are. If self-fulfilling prophecies aren't being made by them, small trivial hiccups that might have already happened are otherwise blown up into full-scale conspiracies, which ultimately does turn into larger issues.

All this aside, if you were to ask me my completely blunt opinion on this place, then I would flat out say yes, this whole jedi charade to me, now comes off as a way for people to feel special in their lives where they don't feel special otherwise. For some, there is nothing wrong with this when its genuine in nature. It is sometimes quite needed to help give us confidence that we can make it through whatever issues in life we are having, to believe in ourselves.

Unfortunately, this same thing can be and often is also used by people who flock to this place to use this for selfish, ignorant, and even vindictive reasons. People from the SJW movement, special snowflakes, and various other call-out cultures, mainly people who just aren't being mindful of whatever personal issues they are going through tend to come here and use their problems on blaming others at any opportunity to make them feel "right", in a community they can paint as "wrong". One can't do this very easily when being drowned out by the outside world, but when you come to a humble place like this, you get many opportunities to flair your chest up and make yourself sound a lot bigger and more informed than one usually tends to be. In that light, we get the usual case of "calling out the corrupt council", and attempted "revolutionaries of the better more right path", whose voice is not likely to get heard much elsewhere. But in an online forum where people are told "everyone here can be a jedi/hero", you pretty much arm them with the stage to project whatever personal issues they have wherever they'd like until they get banned.

This is part of what helped me reframe my own presence here at the temple. But that view is my own, and its a reflection of what I have experienced here. It is obviously not necessarily reflective of everyone's.

Proteus wrote: But in an online forum where people are told "everyone here can be a jedi/hero", you pretty much arm them with the stage to project whatever personal issues they have wherever they'd like until they get banned.

This right here is pretty dead spot on too

I'm curious, and I'm thinking out loud here, but I'm wondering if you can break this down into ...IDK spiritual types for lack of a better word?

For example, there are 3 different ..."types" of ways to believe in Jediism, those who follow it for the philosophy and way of living, those who follow it in the spiritual aspect of connecting to something bigger, and those that do both.

In addition to that there seems to be 3 different types of people who seek a belief system, those who just want to learn the path and everything about it, community is irrelevant, those who come for the community aspect of it, and those who seek both

And in that you have opposites that clash:

Philosophy -	Philosophy and Spirituality -	Spirituality
Self Exploration -	Self and Community Exploration -	Community Exploration

Two different scales, opposites that conflict with each other....

In any belief system I feel we all approach it for various reasons but it always comes down to the final few, being some type of plan or way of life you wish to follow, and some sense that plan will reward you in some fashion, whether it be by recognition of accomplishment, recognition of completing some type of self placed goals, or acknowledgement of some kind for some reason. You want to know that what you are doing is right for yourself, and its impossible..literally impossible to know that for 100% certain without some type of feedback from someone or something else. You can assume that your capable of doing this on your own all day long but at the end of the day if what you do is 100% alone and for yourself then your not leaving any mark of any kind on the world at all, and that is kinda opposite of any belief system I can think of. One of the most fundamental parts of jediism is self-lessness which involves interacting with someone else, so it seems contradictory to me as an opinion that while we don't seek acknowledgement or recognition, we actually do to some extent to know that our selfless acts are good selfless acts, even if we don't want money or fame for them. There has to be some part of that there no matter what.

So when you look at these disappointment replies and viewpoints from the various people generous enough to share here, I think its because the clash of "types" of ways to learn, experience, and share.

Proteus in my opinion and I could be wrong but members such as you and loudzoo tend to be more on the self exploration side of things and a stronger sense of philosophical way of life, me I'm very much a community with a mix of way of life and spiritual in that I'd prefer to be in a community of like minded people. I don't feel like that's a fault I feel like the "Expectations" issue is more of a frustration that said community doesn't exist, and I'm trying to fit into an area that I don't fit into well as an interim. That and as in my previous post this temple's front facing view is much different then what it actually is so hence the disappointment and frustrations.

Now what to do with this theory, where do I(we)(you) go from where who knows...

...and that's the biggest question a modern day Jeddist has to answer, what and how for themselves , never for the whole or any one else but simply...them. Each will be as different as fingerprints. What will -you do, almost always make and creates a different type of faith or path rather than what can WE do. A bit of self responsibility goes further than some questions can be asked. Just my own opinion as we are all able to have our own , but think about that if ya can.

What I do here, is observe the narrative of this community where I learn a lot about how people in general tend to work in different social scenarios, and based on what I see and learn, I calibrate where I want to stand in it. If I see that a lot of back and forth noise is only making it all more difficult, then I back away, stay quiet and observe - because a lot is happening, a lot of information is being presented (in actions, attitudes, and social tone even more than just verbal content). I take time to process a lot of that and to decide how I feel about it and what new things I have come to understand that I never realised about people before. But well, I do this in other areas of my life too. Sometimes I go through very cynical phases about it, and other times I go through very optimistic phases about it. Over time it balances out as just information without judgement, and it is only at that point that I feel unbiased enough to be ready to share that information if someone asks for it.

Expectation vs reality is certainly at the heart of the issue. I’m not blaming expectation as a whole, but I do believe that we should be aware of how much we invest in our expectations. The Temple was created by and is sustained by people. People are not perfect. That being said I do not believe the Temple is immune to change. In fact there has been quite a bit of change since I’ve started here.

I think one of the problems is that people do not know how to transition from the disappointment. The Council is always willing to hear proposals and propositions on how to make things better. This is different than someone spelling out their wishes in a thread and expecting it to be utilized. The idea should be well thought out and preferably vetted. It also helps to understand going in that not everybody agrees and the proposal in its current form might not find the support that was hoped for. Often times I have seen people grow frustrated over lack of change when we hear just as many voices saying they don’t want that kind of change. We often find no win scenarios in our mission to serve, where no matter the decision we will face distrust and voices of frustration.

So I do partially agree with many of the replies here. I believe that a majority of our focus should be on ourselves. I also believe in the power of community and would like to see us come together. I don’t see this happening as long as we let our expectations run so rampant. Whenever you have a large variety of people you will have disagreement and an equally large variety of views. In the fiction Odan-Urr, known for revising the code, said “Certainly a Jedi should know the Code, by word and by heart. But every Jedi is in some fashion negligent, from the lowest Padawan to the highest Master. Consequently, were some to demand, ‘What is the true meaning of the Jedi Code?’ the Jedi who promptly answered would be rare indeed.” We all have our own experiences and our unique outlook. We may share our views closely with some and may be drastically different from others. Yet we are all together in this community.

I believe that Ren is taking over as the acting secretary to the Council. So if anyone does have some ideas to help improve the Temple, please feel free to iron out the idea and present it to him.