Another interesting point from Squander Two: "The only real problem with The Return Of The Jedi is the whole "I’m evil and I’m going to kill you but if you kill me then that’ll make you evil and then I win anyway" thing. Bollocks, more like."
Although Star Wars isn’t exactly philosophically rigorous, this seems like an interesting and significant dilemma to me – not just bollocks. It’s also got an obvious relevance to the current War On Certain Ethnic Groups Some Of Whom Are Terrorists.
Perhaps it would be interesting to survey people on their reaction to the plot of Return of the Jedi, and then correlate the survey results with their views on indiscriminately slaughtering suspicious-looking brown folk.
Update: probably ought to make clear that I don’t really think War on Terror fans are racists who "have been looking for an excuse to murder brown folk. Thank God those towers fell, eh?". That bit was silly hyperbole; the point was more one of whether massive and fatal angry retaliation, inevitably including civilians and the innocent, is a good way to deal with evil people who think slaughter is kinda groovy and that they’ll go to heaven if we kill them.
OK, to probably get far too deep and philosophical about the whole thing, I thought the point wasn’t just that Luke killing the Emperor or his father would make him evil, but that to do so he would have to give in to his rage and give up his self control, thus pushing him over to the dark side. It’s not the killing in itself that’s evil (if that were the case, then where does the destruction of the Death Stars leave our heroes morally?) but the method Luke would have to embrace to carry out that killing. It’s somewhere between ‘the end does not justify the means’ and ‘wrestle ye not with monsters, lest ye too become a monster’.
Indeed. I should probably have glossed S2’s comments to include "out of anger and vengeance", which only makes the WOCEGSOWAT comparisons more relevant.
jedi master
im ace
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