[member="Corvus Raaf"]
"Well, let's talk about the Code then, and history. As for your first concern...What differences? For the last two decades easily, I've seen the Code kept better outside the government that currently calls itself the Republic than inside it. Most of the Jedi who've left the Republic have done so because they couldn't keep the Code and remain part of that government -- and that includes most of your predecessors. Think of your recent history, Grandmaster. The government that currently calls itself the Republic didn't exist twenty years ago, and no Republic has existed in a serious way for centuries. It doesn't operate like the Old or New Republic did, it doesn't follow the same ideals or principles or practices -- all it has is in common the name. That is the argument you're up against, and I gotta tell you, it's been a compelling one to an awful lot of Code-abiding Jedi, including most of the people who've sat in your seat.
"Some other historical details from the holocrons. Relationships and families have been banned for roughly one thousand years out of the thirty-seven thousand years of Jedi history, and haven't been forbidden for close to nine hundred years. And even when that policy was instituted, it was because of political pressure, not because of doctrinal change. Doctrinal justifications were invented after the fact, in order to keep the peace in a specific set of circumstances. In short, that's not part of the Code, and can't be enforced as such. What it is, is a matter for individual conscience, with no stigma attached to the many, many Jedi from every era who've raised families. Ki-Adi-Mundi. Nomi Sunrider. And whether you realize it or not, Grandmaster, when you make that a difference worth switching allegiance for, you do stigmatize it.
"As for Skywalker's version of the Code, that was adapted, minimally, from one that was current and official when Kenobi was a Padawan, when the Republic was at its strongest. None of those changes had anything to do with the fact that the Code, both during the Republic's height and after its fall, didn't say a word about a single government and did talk about civilization, peace, and democracy. If you dig deep enough into the holocrons, there was even a thousand-year period where the Jedi left the Republic entirely, and actively worked to oppose it because of what it had become. Eventually they helped to overthrow it, and every Jedi since then has lauded them for their decisions.
"If you intend to be able to convince Jedi that the Code mandates them to serve, first and foremost, the tiny fraction of the galaxy that currently calls itself the Republic, you're going to need counterarguments to all of that. You're also going to need to overcome the example of Kenth Hamner, the Grandmaster who put that one government before the galaxy and was opposed and removed by the entire Jedi Order, including the whole Council, the previous Grandmaster, and the next Grandmaster. This is history; this is fact.
"What I'm trying to say, Grandmaster, is that when you reach out to other Jedi, you need to be much more clear that 'Republic first' and 'no relationships' -- and, in fact, pretty much every difference between you and the Jedi outside the Republic -- are matters of your personal standards, and not what the Code actually requires. History proves, completely, that pretty much every variety of Jedi Order we currently see is well within the standards of the Code. The only exception I can think of would be a couple of the fringe elements within the Silvers and your own group, just a relative handful of individuals who haven't grown up yet, and that whole Jedi Lord experiment from the thankfully defunct Ession Reformation. Jedi have always tried to 'make a hedge about the law,' creating rules and interpretations that make the Code easier to keep. Where Jedi arguments and schisms arise, it's almost always because those rules and interpretations conflict as different Jedi try to figure out how to adapt to changing times. I've been Master of First Knowledge and Keeper of Holocrons for the better part of a decade. Telling you all this is my job, even if neither of us like it much.
"And if you'll take my advice, don't let peripheral concerns become central; that way lies division where, by the Code, none needs to exist. There have been three serious Jedi schisms in the last decade, and we're on the edge of a fourth. There's also a powerful opportunity here to recognize each other as valid without trying to impose derivative standards on each other. I've made contact with Jedi of every stripe, in every faction, and I can tell you unequivocally that the vast majority of them follow the Jedi Code, with personal interpretations well within the bounds of validity. Once you get to know them and how they operate, you'll realize that the only part of this situation that's against the Code is the disunity that comes when those personal differences are labelled as something that makes them 'not true Jedi.' There is no chaos, Grandmaster, there is harmony. Every lesson of history points to that line being, primarily, a direct reference to unity. The kind of unity that comes from mutual respect and recognition between Jedi. That's what the Code demands, explicitly: recognition that we are all one Order under one Code, and that the lives we choose to lead are all, within common sense limits, valid for Jedi to lead. So for the most part, your first concern -- recognition of differences -- isn't and shouldn't be a concern. There will be minor matters of standards, but none of that is insurmountable.
"Those are the holocrons' answers to your first question. As for how to keep politics out of the Jedi Order as a whole, the Code answers that too. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. If peace is a Jedi's first duty, knowledge is the second. The Code requires every Jedi to become as informed as possible, investigate all questions, formulate their own opinions and take moral stances. The Code requires Jedi to make informed and principled stands, and to recognize that honest disagreements over matters of conscience are a sign of a healthy Order, so long as labelling isn't a concern. There is no chaos -- the Ossus Conclave established that the Jedi must be Jedi first and foremost, before any and all political allegiances, and that includes what calls itself the Republic now.
"But there is no chaos also requires that all the Jedi in that flattened command structure are perceived as having the agency to make their own judgments within the bounds of the Code, just as they're expected to talk out significant differences while still respecting each other as members of the Order, as required by any sensible interpretation of there is no ignorance. Those judgments include, must include, questions of liberty and principle and integrity that lie at the heart of a lot of political opinion. And while the Jedi have patience with each other's differences of opinion, they still put the Order first. That's why it's so vitally important to take the steps and have the discussions that may eventually lead to one Council, acknowledged by all -- because while every Jedi has the responsibility to make his or her own informed judgments, as mandated by the Code, they make common political decisions by common consent and by delegating their active authority to the Council. When they can. When the system works, when there is harmony instead of chaos, the Council makes the decisions in the political realm that are in the best interests of the Order's ability to follow the Code. So long as the Council makes decisions that make it impossible for the majority of Jedi to follow the Council in good conscience, there is chaos, and that needs to be rectified.
"A fourth schism in fifteen years can't be allowed to happen, not when the three that came before it were avoidable. All three, at their heart, were about the Republic's sins, and an Order that could only keep its oaths by leaving, and subsets of Jedi that called them oathbreakers for it.
"History, Grandmaster. That's the final word of the Master of First Knowledge, after seven years' consultation with the holocrons. We listen to history, or we die alone."