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I find it bit weird to derive any ethics from Star Wars. All characters change sides way too often (first rebels, then republic/empire, then again rebels, then
by jankotek 10y ago
I find it bit weird to derive any ethics from Star Wars.
All characters change sides way too often (first rebels, then republic/empire, then again rebels, then again republic...). Dart Vader commits genecide and destroys a few planets (including Leia's homeworld), but there is happy family reunion with Leia and Luck at the end... Jedis are good guys, but they never bother to send someone for Anakins mother, who is a slave...
I would not be surprised if Death Star construction was initiated during the Old Republic. The same way Clone Army was created by some Jedi guy.
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- erlehmann_ 10y agoI find it weird to derive ethics from fictional examples at all. The reason is “ex falso quod libet”, i.e. that one can derive any statement from a false (in this case, fictional) proposition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
- PythonicAlpha 10y agoFictional is not always "wrong" or "false" as you claim. There are so many fictional books which have so much to teach. You can think of Star Wars how you like, but condemning fictional stories as bad only because they are no "true" stories -- is very short-sighted in my eyes. (and in my opinion a totally wrong understanding of the principles of logic). There are also so many "true" stories, where you can draw the wrong ethics from!! (newest events included!)
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- Anderkent 10y agoThe problem of course is that even if some fictional stories contain the right moral lessons, the ones that would work out in the real world, you can't tell them from the ones that are 'wrong' and 'false'. At best you can find stories that tell lessons you already agree with. And while 'real' stories might still be doctored by the writer to send a particular message and mislead you to a conclusion, at least they're constrained by the facts.
- PythonicAlpha 10y agoEven, when you have a totally true and unbiased report of a true story, will it always lead to the right ethics? I very much doubt so. There where to many people living, that brought suffering to others without ever been punished. Many people that slaughtered others, where living a wealthy life till their end. And others, that did good, ended in poverty. No, "true" life sometimes teaches the wrong ethics. Or should we find our ethics in slaughtering each others?
- stale2002 10y agoJust because something is abhorrent doesn't make it "false". Bad people get away with terrible things all the time. No amount of moralizing changes this true fact.
- PythonicAlpha 10y agoI don't know, which kind of ethics you would prefer.
- stale2002 10y agoThe one that doesn't lie to me? Just because it is possible to get away with bad things, doesn't mean you should do them. A good ethics system should address this.
- bem94 10y agoI don't think the point is to actually derive ethics from fiction. It's the other way around. We express our ethics, morals and associated conundrums through fiction as a way of explaining them. This is especially important when those ethical problems are not always encountered directly or knowingly by the people who face them, in this case, by engineers who aren't fully aware of the societal impact of their work.
- halomru 10y agoBy the same line of reasoning it should be impossible to derive ethics from thought experiments.
- MereInterest 10y agoThe purpose is not to have a fictional work as some basis for deriving morals. Rather, it is to test our moral sense in extreme conditions, to see how it reacts, and to see whether the theory we have still holds up. As an example, consider theft. As a society, we have a strong aversion to theft. This aversion is enshrined in our laws, our religions, and even our grammar (e.g. "my pen" as opposed to "your pen"). So, we would consider "Do not steal." as a general moral guideline, functional in all scenarios. But we haven't tested it in all scenarios. Let's consider somebody who steals for the purpose of helping another, commits no other crimes, and dedicates his life to helping others, even when it harms himself. Would we still consider the theft to be immoral? I would say no, and showing such a case is the primary purpose of "Les Miserables". We have pushed our general "Do not steal." outside of usual usage, and have found that it does not apply at extreme cases. Similarly, the author of the article is saying that Rogue One is a good test of the existing moral principle "Do not build intentionally flawed buildings." This moral principle works in most day-to-day cases. However, in the case of building a Death Star for an oppressive regime, this moral principle may not hold.
- padobson 10y agoThe true dilemmas of life, ethical or otherwise, can't be expressed as inductive or deductive arguments. At best, you can put together an abductive argument that ends up looking like a pros and cons list - and even still it's a judgement call, and not one that's readily communicable to contemporaries or posterity. Buddha, Jesus, Plato/Socrates, Swift, Nietzsche - seriously, if you throw a dart at a random distribution of centuries, the greatest moral thinker from that century used fictional constructs of some kind to illustrate their point. The 21st century is not going to be any different. But there's an even bigger problem here that borders on illiteracy. Believing that ideas fleshed out in fiction serve no practical purpose completely ignores the history of all ideas, not just moral ones. Great fiction thinks. If you want to learn about love, read Shakespeare. Texts on the mating habits of higher primates are not going to help your romantic life. If you want to learn about friendship, The Lord of the Rings is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote. If you want to learn about government, Homer or Jonathan Swift can teach you more about the machinations of power than Machiavelli or John Locke. I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra.
- bem94 10y ago> I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra. Well said.
- EdHominem 10y ago> ___ is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote. You could replace that with "A Bucket of Clams" and the sentence is still true.
- padobson 10y agoHa! Have an upvote. But seriously, if you can't make friends with a bucket of clams, you're just not trying.
- ianamartin 10y agoWhat are you even talking about? Humans have always looked to fiction to derive morality. The ancient Greek Mythologies, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran . . . literally everything that most people value as presenting foundation for ethics and morality is completely fictional. And even if you take one or more of those documents to be literally true and a source of historical fact, even Jesus used parables--fiction--to explain moral principles. This is really one of the strangest appeals to logic I've ever encountered.
- bobwaycott 10y agoI think you're subtly contradicting yourself here. While humans have, for millennia, used fiction to enshrine and explain morality, I don't think a sensible case can be made for suggesting we use it to derive or define morality. Unless, as in the case of holy scriptures, one argues that adherents derive morality from that which has been enshrined in the fictional source. But still, the fiction itself enshrines the moral teachings, and readers derive whatever they do from it (and even then, inconsistently at best).
- gaius 10y agoThe Old Republic seems to be totally cool with the idea of slavery, Anakin's mother as you say, droids seem to be self-aware with personalities etc but are mere property, and so on. The Jedi were intent on preserving the status quo and not rocking the boat. Overthrowing it was absolutely the right thing to do.
- gonzo41 10y agoIt is the difference between RIGHT and WRONG vs right and wrong. Relativistic morality? (Its ok to kill this race because we are better than them) if you think of the self aware droids as cattle then its kind of a choie about what you like more. Cows are really nice animals in taste and temperament. Its about where you draw the line, and I guess in a way the jedi were being all realpolitik with how they deal with the galaxy. In earth scale I would say they best examples is States Rights vs Human Rights. At what point do we get involved with a country for their human rights abuses? I'm Australian and I would happily see a few of my politicians dragged off to the Hague to be hung for their treatment of refugees. so what do we do with, American and its spying and DPRK, the philipines, burma, iran etc etc. The interesting thing about the Star wars films is that the build up of arms by forces in the galaxy is allowed. I know in other series of sci fi (DUNE) there was a repression of technology past a point, if only to add some normal level to the battle field. If you start to develop capability eventually the end result is the use of it, Im supprised the empire could get away with the build up in secret. Anyway. Rouge one was a lot like the thin red line. so tip of the hat to the star wars people for making a wholly depressing and sad war film. -Also something i noticed, the UI and control systems engeneers in the empire a crap. its like a jobs for the boys kind of operation where everyone gets to do something. why is the antenna sighting control seperate from the transmission control. they are so tightly related. and also. The antenna is for space communications, visual sight of the dish isn't really needed as your not pointing at anything. Other than that everything was super realistic with the fish people and faster that light travel etc. :P
- Anderkent 10y agoThe manual controls for the library were the funniest thing ever. Oh yeah, the software can highlight the thing you want with a light. But moving a servo there is too hard, here, use these handles.
- lsy 10y agoIt doesn't seem that any particular ethics are being "derived" from Star Wars in the article. The author looks instead to be using the story as a jumping-off point for discussion of various issues and tradeoffs in the ethical space. In any case, the site is called "Sci-Fi Policy" which leads me to believe this kind of exegesis is their bread and butter. Perhaps they aren't usually making airtight arguments in their posts but I think the discussion is still useful and fun.
- pjc50 10y agoStar Wars is unusual in that it's an explicitly Manichean universe. The "light" and "dark" sides of the force are equated with good and evil, and assigned in a way that's clear both in and out of universe. It's not a universe of grey areas. (There's a lot of people trying to reinvent ethics and metaethics from the ground up in this thread, badly..)
- tsunamifury 10y agoThe entire meta-ethical point of the first six films is that the dark and light side are both in error and Skywalker brings balance to the force by being the first grey Jedi. So I wouldn't be so quick to judge.
- speeder 10y agoSadly Disney seemly want to make it pure manicheism again, probably easier for kids to understand and sell toys... I wish some of the movies would get stories inspired by Kotor series, where the author really wanted to make the wars in star wars resemble real ones, with no obvious good and evil sides.
- no_wizard 10y agoI'm personally hoping that with the success of these star wars stories that maybe they'll do what they let Marvel do with Daredevil/Punisher/Jessica Jones etc. and perhaps make a more serious (pure opinion here, btw) version of things in these universes like they have with their Netflix Collab originals. IMO they're the best thing in not just TV but all of the marvel universe right now (and arguably some of the best entertainment of this sort period, in my not humble opinion ;). Star wars could benefit sincerely from this treatment.
- emp_zealoth 10y agoWell, wasn't Rogue One exactly that treatment? It was a visceral and brutal experience (especially when one compares it to fable tales of SW). I left the cinema quite unsettled by how gray everything was, the sacrifices and commitment to the cause. I'd really love SW movies to be more like that, less bland and mentally lazy (AND NO MORE DEATHSTARS FFS)
- toxican 10y agoI'm in a post-Christmas hangover, so this seems like a great time for me to get pedantic about Star Wars stuff :) I don't think anybody really changes sides. Star Wars is binary...everything is good or evil. The Republic (good) gets transformed by Palpatine into the Empire (evil), which is opposed by the Rebellion (good), which in turn overthrows the Empire and form the New Republic (good) to replace the Empire. Then lingering forces from the Empire form the New Order (bad) and a relative peace exists until it doesn't. Are there a small number of people who do ethically questionable things? Yes, but for the most part everyone adheres to their good or evil classification. Darth Vader did help commit genocide, but I don't know that you could pin the blame for anything the death star did on him. Tarkin was the commanding officer and gave the direct command to blow up Alderaan. Vader was merely an enforcer detaining Leia and ensuring things were going according to plan. He's certainly got blood on his hands, but I wouldn't say he destroyed planets. AFAIK, Alderaan is the only one that got destroyed anyway. Part of being a Jedi is shedding attachment, which is all Anakin's mother ever was (as evidenced by their relationship essentially sending him off the deep end into a genocidal rampage). The Jedi would've had no way of knowing that his mother was in danger while it was happening. If Anakin couldn't feel it in the force, how could people with no attachment to her? Anakin is the only living Jedi to have even met Shmi Skywalker, after all (Qui Gon is dead, Obi Wan never left the ship). In episode III, it's shown that the death star was originally a separatist weapon.
- LoSboccacc 10y agorip expanded universe. sith where so much more nuanced.
- xenophonf 10y agoThere are worse criticisms of the Jedi than them being uncommitted to social justice---that dusty order of ascetics is an anti-democratic paramilitary that forcibly conscripts and trains child soldiers to engage in extrajudicial killings in the name of the Pax Galactica, a meritocracy rooted in the notion of genetic supermen. They are as vile as the Empire that succeeded them.
- the8472 10y agoMost superhero teams seem to operate on similar principles. And I would argue that this is somewhat justified because societies of muggles have not developed any mechanisms (organizationally and morally) to deal with individuals that fall several orders of magnitude outside the normal skillset of their species. Put differently: Considering that there would almost nothing mere mortals could do to stop superman from declaring himself emperor of mankind (several supervillains try to do just that after all) they are already showing remarkable self-restraint and ethical behavior simply by not ruling the planet through force.
- the_af 10y ago> Most superhero teams seem to operate on similar principles. Agreed. This is why deconstructions of the superhero genre, such as Watchmen (or even lesser ones, such as Superman: Red Son), are so appealing.
- PavlovsCat 10y agoI know it's still shocking to some, but the main reason people don't collect purses from elderly and disabled people they meet at night isn't because they might get caught, and it's also not because they're naive and passing up easy money. It's because they're holding on to something more valuable which they already have and are, which they would damage or even loose in the process. If anything, the main or even sole reason to want power over others is impotence and insecurity, and if you're immortal and can do whatever you want, there is really no use for that, only downsides. Unless one subscribes to the Dwight Schrute theory of super heroes of course, which says all super heroes are born out of childhood trauma.
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- Kihashi 10y ago> I would not be surprised if Death Star construction was initiated during the Old Republic. It actually was. In the prequel trilogy, we see that the Separatists have plans for it, which are then acquired by the Empire at the end of the film. > The first Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones showcasing the early development of the Death Star prototype, the Death Star plans were designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star
- SSLy 10y agoIs this an EU knowledge, or one after the continuity refresh?
- reboog711 10y agoI didn't see anyone say it yet; so The Old Republic is the name of the story-line that exists 3,000-4,000 years before the time of the Star Wars movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic The appearance of the Death Star plans in the prequel trilogy is not proof that development of the Death Star was started during 'the old republic'
- sandworm101 10y agoNot to mention the droid slave race, who are as human as any other characters yet are bought and sold as chattle. I am taken aback by the regular use of torture, specifically the depiction of how well it works.
- mtgx 10y agoIsn't the Jedi's goal only to bring "balance to the force"? So their mission isn't to "do good", but more like "not let there be any bigger evil than what already existed" (that would break the equilibrium of forces). At least that seemed to be the theory. In practice, they were mostly law enforcement agents of the Republic, until the republic turned into an "evil empire".
- sqeaky 10y agoI really find the opposite in Star wars (before Rogue One). Most of the villains are bad and most of the good guys are good. There are only occasional flip-flops and they are all major plot points to clearly indicate the transition. They keep the morality so easy the average 7 year old can follow it. They go so far out of their way to make it easy as to color code good and evil (what color is uniform? The lightsabre?). Compare this something like with actual moral issues like Schindler's List. The main character navigated a huge moral gray area. He couldn't make any proper kind of stand against the industrialization of evil in WWII Germany but he did what he to save what lives he could and that meant not saving some (to reduce suspicion). It also meant lying to all the people who accepted him as peers. He was a traitor all the Germans as he ran factories that hurt the war effort, He was an enemy of the allies because he ran a munitions factory. To the families of the people he saved he still might have been viewed poorly because his employees were functionally slaves. But the choice to enslave those people in safe working conditions and keep them alive and well fed saved them and to them he was a hero. There are tons of other movies, books and stories where the good guys are not clearly good and the bad guys not clearly bad. Consider Worm (Web serial), the heroes are jerks who sacrifice the lives of others and the villains are often just looking out for their own. Who is really good and bad?