Coruscant (>1 trillion people) has less Jedi (10,000) per capita (0.01 ppm) than Marvel New York (~10 million people) has Spider Man (1) per captia (0.1 ppm)
You know, just for scale.
But the Republic doesn’t just expect Jedi to solve Coruscant’s problems, they expect Jedi to solve the entire Republic’s problems. (at least two orders of magnitude larger)
And certain so-called fans expect them to solve not just the Republic’s problems, but the entire galaxy’s problems. With no legal backing.
The galaxy has 3.2 billion hospitable systems (via The Visual Dictionary from 2017). There are ten thousand Jedi in comparison.
Coruscant alone had trillions (Victory’s Price), which is much bigger than our own Earth’s population of 7 billion, for scale. Let’s say 2 trillion, for a conservative amount. That means there is one Jedi for every two hundred million people. On Coruscant.
The last estimate of a galactic population (from The Essential Atlas, which is Legends, but even if the number itself changes, I think it’ll still be in the same ballpark) was 100 quadrillion sentients.
That makes one Jedi out of every 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) people in the galaxy.
Whatever authority the Republic granted them (which was extremely conditional and often didn’t matter much when the Jedi tried to do important things, to find better ways), there is literally no way the Jedi could solve the galaxy’s problems by themselves, they just did not have the numbers.
And that’s before like half of them died in the Clone Wars.
even more for scale: there are way more (self-identified) Jedi in just the United Kingdom on our real Earth than there are Jedi in-universe in GFFA
(like yeah i know it’s sort of part of a movement but that doesn’t defeat my point doesn’t it? there are more people who could be convinced into joining a movement within short notice in one country on Earth than there are Jedi in the whole goddamn Republic in Star Wars)
That’s what they get for selectively removing their genes from the general population (taking them as kids & [for the most part] having no families) less people capable of being Jedi overall.
The Jedi order also kept themselves small by continually rejecting candidates, several thousand a year I think, so the number of Jedi Knights is small (10k) but the number of Force Sensitives is much,much larger.
The Battle of Ruusan didn’t help either by apparently eliminating 99% of the Sith aligned talent pool too.
Star Wars really is a pretty gim dark setting on the verge of failure
Even disregarding the unsettling undertones in redroad’s post, it’s completely irrelevant to my point!
Jedi are not the only people who could solve problems! You shouldn’t need Jedi to solve problems!
If the only way the galaxy can survive is to have several order of magnitude more Jedi, it means that the other 99.9999999% of the galaxy has already failed.
Maybe focus on figuring out why 99.9999999% of the galaxy isn’t able to solve its own problems, rather than blaming a tiny group of people who are solving some of their problems, and then justifying it by saying, “well, maybe if they lived the way I think they ought, they wouldn’t be tiny!”.
Star Wars is also not a grim and dark setting, 9/10 times good wins and reigns, the wars, tyrannies, and unpleasantness compromises the tiniest percentages of the galactic timeline
The Jedi Order is a religious organization with a mission of public service which is legitimized by the Republic. They are not trying to create an armada and become an extremely powerful people- that’s not their bottom line. They are a culture with a genuine belief in helping others. The galaxy should be grateful for every tiny thing the Jedi ever bother to do for them. Blaming a people for not actively trying to expand to become powerful with the purpose of surviving conflict is, in a strange manner, upholding values of imperialism and separatism (in the purest term of the word I can think of, which is viewing people as inherently different, separate, and at a competition with others.)
Moreover, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say the Jedi are at fault for deliberately reducing the ‘gene’-pool for Force Sensitive people and then say they shot themselves in the foot by not taking in every Force Sensitive that asked to join and that there were actually so many more Force Sensitive people in the galaxy. Either there is a lack of Force Sensitives out there which you could theoretically try to blame the Jedi for, or there isn’t a lack of Force Sensitives in the galaxy.
I also want to take opportunity to express a personal frustration of mine. The Jedi ask for consent from the biological parents before adopting any children. The Jedi do not take in people they feel would not be suited for the lifestyle. These are not bad things, but it is effectively what they are being critisized for here. They are being looked down upon for seeking to continue on what they consider a worthwhile life philosophy rather than trying to accumulate power. However, I’ve seen the Jedi being critisized for the exact contrary reasons. I’ve seen people accusing them of “conscripting” all Force Sensitive children in Republic Space and even suggesting any consent is a result of mind tricks and Force manipulation, or accusing them of outright stealing babies (despite author commentary and interviews expressly saying this is false.) All those accusations built under the assumption that the Jedi must clearly want to accumulate power and grow the Order, and since they apparently want this, they clearly must be corrupt.
I’m tired of these contradictory stances to hate on the Jedi. It feels that no matter what the Jedi actually do or who they actually are, there is going to be people looking for a way to villify them for it. People saying the Jedi deserved their Genocide for either being corrupt and loosing their way and forcing people into their lifestyle, and people saying the Jedi deserved their Genocide for not being ambitious enough and not trying to get more people to live the Jedi lifestyle and not attempting to gain political power. Here’s an idea: The Jedi were victims of a targeted attack thousands of years in the making designed to wipe them out regardless of how they acted. The Jedi are not responsible for their own Genocide. Nobody deserves to be killed off like that, adults and children and religion and community and even from the face of history.
Revolutionary idea: Maybe responsabilize characters who commit acts of violence for that violence, like say, oh, I don’t know, Palpatine.
“Here’s an idea: The Jedi were victims of a targeted attack thousands of years in the making designed to wipe them out regardless of how they acted. The Jedi are not responsible for their own Genocide. Nobody deserves to be killed off like that, adults and children and religion and community and even from the face of history.”
gonna start moving away from ‘but the jedi did love!’ and more towards ‘not feeling love is not inherently bad’ when someone uses ‘the jedi didnt feel love’ as a reason for why they all deserved to die
“Blah blah jedi aren’t allowed to love or have families blah blah” they have used the word family for each other so many times in this show and I feel VINDICATED
