The Freelan Series Code vs. the Jedi Code

Warriors of different kinds need different codes

A recent essay on Substack by the Brothers Krynn lit a spark in my brain. The essay addressed the Jedi Code, part of the literary and film realm occupied by Star Wars. Aspects of that code are somewhat at odds to the foundational idea, i.e., the code, of my Freelan series of novels (not yet published) which comes, of course, from my own philosophical core. Time for a deeper dive. There is no assessment of right and wrong here—simply a comparison of ideas. (Note: despite the difference in their literary genres, both Star Wars and The Freelan Series present the basic good versus evil plot dynamic.)

The Jedi Code

Per the Krynn essay, there are three principles in the Jedi Code:

1.      Peace over Anger

2.      Honour* over Hate

3.      Strength over Fear

* the spelling used in the Krynn essay and in a lot of countries except the U.S.

How the Essay Explains Them

·    Peace — guarding righteousness, never seeking power or vengeance. “Jedi must always seek to disarm conflicts, to resort to diplomacy and to keep situations as calm as possible” and this “requires immense self-discipline and poise.”

·    Anger — the antonym of peace.

·    Honour — never striking someone down in anger, smearing another person, or otherwise behaving in a less than an ideal manner.

·    Hate — something the Jedi fear, “an emotion that could subvert an individual into something they are not”, darkening champions or turning them into monsters (such as Darth Vader, aka “Dark Father”). The essay states: “Hatred kills goodness. This is fact. Honour redeems them.”

·    Strength — “courage in the face of darkness…hope over despair, and goodness over evil.” Frankly, I like this with some reservations.

·    Fear — darkness, despair, evil, weakness.

Words matter to writers. So do ideas. And, as a writer and philosopher, I see each of those principles in the Jedi Code to be worthy of rethinking. You, dear reader, can make what you want of either or both.

The Freelan Code

In the fictional nation of Freelan, individual rights, including property rights, reign supreme and there is one guiding principle—the Freelan Code:

You are free to exercise your rights
so long as you do not infringe on the rights of others.

Without the second part of that code, you had hedonism and anarchy. Neither represents true freedom.

Let’s say you want a cake with some words written across the top in icing. The words you want are so offensive to the cake maker that he/she refuses to make the cake. Is your right to free speech being infringed by the cake maker’s refusal? Or does he/she have the right as the owner of that property/business to refuse? Recent court cases have actually gone both ways.

In Freelan, the choice is clear: no one has the right to force another to do something, so the customer finds another cake maker. And, of course, a rational cake maker will have a sign that says, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

A Deeper Dive into the Jedi Code

Now, on to the Freelanian view of the Jedi Code principles in the Krynn essay.

So many words have built up certain connotative (usually emotion laden) meanings around them, like a sticky ball rolling through lint. “Peace” is one of those. So are “anger,” “strength,” “hate,” “honor,” and “fear.” The Krynn essay illustrates some of this “lint.” A step back and an unemotional viewing reveal the ball below the lint covering.

Peace is so often assigned some very warm, fuzzy ideas, but it is simply the absence of violence. Desirable, yes, but not at the cost with which it is usually tagged. Also, the antonym for anger is not peace but reason. So a better principle is “Reason over Anger.” (In fact, reason is the antonym for most emotions.)

Consider this: A bird in a gilded cage is peaceful, protected from cats and other predators. One might think that the bird has an ideal existence, yet it is lacking something essential to us sentient beings: freedom. It gets its food from the being who had caged it as well as its vet care and clean newspaper on which to deposit the results of its digestive process. If that being is good to the bird, its life will be as pleasant as life in a cage could be. If that being is not good to the bird, its existence will be more hellish than life in the wild, dodging those predators. The bird’s welfare, therefore, is dependent on the nature of its cager. And some birds (and most of us sentient beings possessing free will, aka volition) languish even with the most thoughtful care simply because they aren’t free.

In Freelan, peace is nice, but not at the cost of giving up freedom, no matter how kind and good the cager is. Peace is seen as a much lower value than freedom, which Freelanians are ready to take up arms to keep. How can someone have free speech without freedom? How can someone have the right to his/her life and property without freedom? And that freedom is under constant assault in the real as well as the fictional world. Peace is not the goal. Freedom is. We all should be ready to fight to get it and keep it. My heroic characters in the Freelan novel series do just that.

Anger always gets a bad rap. It is a strong emotion that can, but not necessarily does, lead to violence. It’s a primal emotion that can be very useful. We must be angry at times, just as we must be calm at other times. You can be angry when you see someone abusing another. You can be angry when someone tries to stomp on your rights or engages in personal attacks. The key is how you act when you are angry. Do you let reason control that anger and temper your response? A violent response is not always necessary, but is certainly not out of bounds. In the Freelan series, the anger against an overly controlling government culminates in a face-to-face confrontation and then a short time later in a legal action. Without that anger, there would be no Freelan.

Honor (American spelling) has certainly collected its share of lint as it has rolled through the years. But the chivalric meaning, which seems to be what the Jedi Code is embracing, is rather misleading. Think of honor as being truthful. So it certainly involves not smearing someone. My heroic characters are truthful when the situation warrants. (Yes, there are times when truth is not warranted or even a good idea, such as answering that age-old question, “Does this dress make me look fat?”) They have to dissemble at times, though, so that their plans to achieve their freedom are not prematurely thwarted. Context matters, both in life and in Freelan.

Hate has gotten a very bad rap lately—lots and lots of dirty, grimy lint on that sticky ball. But frankly, hate is as justified and useful an emotion as love, sometimes even more so, and needn’t lead to negative and violent actions. I hate green asparagus with a passion, in part because it arouses a strong allergic reaction—almost life threatening. But reason means that I don’t go out and plow over every asparagus field I find. And not to be trivial, I also hate those who endanger the lives of others—drug pushers, gang members who torture, maim, and kill, and so on. My reason, though, says to deal with them in a rational manner through laws. In Freelan, people are perfectly free to hate—to feel it, say it, and write about it. But when they act on it, including speech that can be slanderous and writing that can be libelous, in that negative or violent manner, they have violated the rights of another person, and that violates the Freelan Code. For example, me bouncing up and down on the seat of a tractor dragging those plow blades behind it through some farmer’s field would be a very clear violation of property rights. Also, me killing those drug pushers et al. would be a violation of their individual rights in most cases. As for hate killing goodness, again that’s a matter of context. The Krynn essay is partly correct. Those who don’t keep hate in its proper place could find it overtakes them like kudzu can overtake your garden.

Finally, Strength over Fear is pretty well stated in that essay, except for fear being portrayed as something purely negative. Fear imbues us with an adrenaline rush that can help us defend ourselves. A book published years ago titled Descartes Error shows how useful fear can be—“fight or flight.” We sense danger and face it or flee, depending on our abilities and level of courage. But it can also be a very positive motivator. Freelanians fear the loss of their freedom and are thus vigilant in its keeping, facing a formidable foe in World4All, an elitist/eugenicist organization bent on gaining control over them while gobbling up other countries on the planet. And that fear builds up their strength for that fight.

Final Note

Generally speaking, the philosophy that is the foundation of all the Star Wars stuff is overly simplified good-vs-evil and in some cases totally ill-thought-out, not by the Brothers Krynn, but by the author of that Jedi Code who seems to see the lint, not the sticky ball. All those soft, fuzzy meanings that we have attached to words like “peace,” “honor,” and “strength” as well as the dirty, grimy meanings stuck on “anger,” “hate,” and “fear,” must be stripped away so that we can see these so very important words in their proper and full context.

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to give such contemplations a turn in your writing!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

NOTE: None of my text or images are AI-generated. You can rest assured that I pulled it all out of that stuff in my skull called a “brain.”

Disclaimer: I get no compensation for links to other sites and/or products in this post or on my site.