Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Tho on the Jedi, they deny themselves things like marriage and committed sex because the Jedi as empaths are quite prone to negative emotions when it comes to loss more than the average person.

And the Jedi do see marriage as a kind of selfishness in some lore, as they see it as putting one person above the others, that's why it's forbidden.

Seeing all those dark siders who went to the dark side because of loss, can't blame em.

With that in mind, you can see how morality plays into it. If you are willing to twist the force into something that hurts and kills other people, then you likely aren't the most moral person.

well, sure. I agree it makes sense within the context of the force existing and being a living thing. But that reasoning is inherently only applicable to Star Wars— other universes didn't have a "force" which experiences harm when twisted to cause pain. Like, when we condemn the existence of the kkk, it's not because the emotion of hatred, inherently, causes pain to a sentient living magical field that permeates the universe. They're harmful for other reasons!

The point being, things which cause pain to the force and things which are morally bad for other reasons aren't the same thing, and there's no reason they should be. Or else you could just use the force as the arbitrator of objective morality— what's the answer to the trolley problem? Is utilitarianism correct? IDK, let's see which option makes your face mutate, that's the bad one

Edited by Tremmor19 on Mar 26th 2024 at 4:30:30 AM

Well mass murder causes pain to the Force as the very first movie shows.

Regular hatred doesn't cause the force pain. Jedi feel anger, Obi-Wan in particular spends most of his screen time in the second movie angry at Anakin's antics.

It's when you specifically use the emotions of hatred and sadism to force the Force to bend to your will is when it gets bad.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 26th 2024 at 4:32:19 PM

it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the morality of the force would be pretty similar to the morality of human society, since it's made up of living things. But that's different than being inherently correct. Most moral systems do agree that mass murder is bad

The Force being born from life, the only way to really hurt it is to kill a lot of living things.

Like, say, an entire populated planet.

I headcanoned that the whole reason the Force directly created a Chosen One to stop the Sith was because the Sith had finally started developing weapons that could destroy entire planets. At that point the Sith had become an existential threat to all life in the Galaxy.

Edited by M84 on Mar 26th 2024 at 4:36:58 PM

Yeah, the Force wouldn't have the exact same morality as human beings.

That said, even the Sith have limits to what their evil is. Even Palpatine makes it clear he's not one for Stupid Evil mass murder, even telling off Vader for constantly killing people, making it clear he doesn't want to rule a dead empire.

So there's limits to their mass murders. Gotta have people worshipping them.

The Force is what links all living things together.

If you think of living beings like cells in a huge body, then an act of mass murder or the destruction of a planet like Alderan, will be like forcibly (pun not intended) removing a layer of skin from your body .

Edited by jawal on Mar 26th 2024 at 8:41:35 AM

... if i used the force to consensually torture a masochist, would that push me into the dark side? answer is needed immediately, please, very important issue thank you

<Anakin Force Choking an officer>

Officer: Oh yes...harder...harder...

<Anakin decides to use the lightsaber instead>

Pretty sure you can use other things than the force to choke people or do BDSM.

But I'm pretty sure using force lightning for sex is not good for the force.

So do harsh planets with only little habitation not that connected to the force? Also did Dathomir have a history of mass bloodshed for it to be so heavily influenced and twisted by the dark side of the force.

Wasn't that due to Darth Plagues experimenting with the midi chlorians to influence the force, and the force creating a virgin birth in response? Though why didn't the jedi sense disturbances of such proportion when it caused the force to do something it has never done before.

Edited by xyzt on Mar 26th 2024 at 2:37:23 PM

Darth Plagueis the novel isn't canon anymore. That's why I came up with a headcanon explanation.

And yes, a lot of bad shit happened on Dathomir that led to a powerful Dark Side influence on it.

If a planet is so sparsely inhabited it's more or less just a big floating rock in space...then no. It's not connected to the Force that much. The Sith world Exegol in Rise of Skywalker is an outright dead world.

Of course they sensed it would happen. Why do you think there was a prophecy in the first place?

Edited by M84 on Mar 26th 2024 at 5:07:03 PM

While Darth Plagueis isn't totally canon, some parts are. Tho Anakin's birth still isn't explained.

And it's been pointed out that the Sith don't want to genocide all life. They want to rule over the remaining ones.

That's why Palpatine hasn't really gone all omnicidal maniac. His doomsday weapons are meant to solidify his rule, not kill all life.

Wasn't Nihilus from KOTOR 2 defined as being driven by his hunger for the force so much that he would try to drain entire planets off the force. He was very much a threat to all life in the galaxy. He is also one reason I am not convinced by M84's headcanon that only in Palpatine's time the sith got powerful enough to destroy planets. We had a Sith lord before Palpatine who was trying to destroy entire planets and unlike Palpatine, he wasn't just using it as a threat to rebels but wanted to destroy them to feed his hunger, making him even more of an existential threat.

Edited by xyzt on Mar 26th 2024 at 4:57:52 PM

Nihilius was an anomaly, not the rule.

And M84's headcanon only applied to the new canon. So cases like Nihilius and Lord Vitiate (who, iirc, absorbed the life force of an entire planet as his own) wouldn't count anyway.

I thought the kotor games were still canon given what I heard about Darth Revan still being a character in the new canon.

I mean, I guess if you consider The Old Republic MMO part of the new canon.

Besides, the Force did not need to create someone to slay Nihilus. The Exile was already there.

Darth Revan himself is, nothing about him (i.e. the KOTOR games etc) is.

Amusingly, one part of the Book of Sith implies Sidious had a low view of Nihilus for being consumed by hunger.

Evil Vs Oblivion at it's finest.

The fact that Palpatine named a ship after him, implies that Revan was a dark sider in KOTOR.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 26th 2024 at 8:01:57 PM

Revan accomplished quite a bit, so I could see Palpatine admiring Revan's rule as Sith Lord, even if he "unfortunately" went back to the Jedi.

Revan's strategy of "converting" many Jedi via torture, in particular, sounds like something Palpatine would respect. Isn't that how he and Vader trained the Inquisitors?

Edited by SilentColossus on Mar 26th 2024 at 1:37:35 PM

All that's canon right now is "Darth Revan is a person who existed at some point and the Sith Eternal named stuff after them".

That's it.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 26th 2024 at 6:35:28 PM

They are not; even Star Wars: The Old Republic which is still online, is not canon anymore.

..............

Even before Disney bought the franchise, Kotor 2 thems, were generally ignored in Legends.

The book Revan sumerize the plot as something like this:

"A Sith named, Darth Traya used the chaos following Revan's disappearance and gathered some followers to try and take over the galaxy, before being stopped by the heroic Jedi Meetra Surik, The End "

There is a short, six-page black-and white comic about Nhilus in Star Wars Tales.

Sion name is dropped once in Darth Plagueis, when referring to ancient Sith.

And the Exile appears as a ghost in Star Wars: The Old Republic and her name is dropped in a conversation with the Sith who killed her in Revan.

The deconstruction, themes, Kreia's philosophy, the Triumvirate "plans" (whatever those were), and most of the Exile's party members were never mentioned again.

Edited by jawal on Mar 26th 2024 at 6:52:25 PM

So I'd like to raise a topic about a trope.

Specifically What Measure Is a Mook??

I've seen media that takes pains to generally humanize people who are working for evil organizations to various levels of effectiveness.

One example is Final Fantasy VII remake, where the humanity of average Shinra employees are contrasted by their bosses. Most of them are generally unaware of the evil stuff Shinra gets up to on a daily basis, and are just trying to feed their families.

And this actually causes a crisis for Tifa, who doesn't like the fact that innocents are inevitably going to get caught up in their fight against Shinra. It's a fascinating moral conundrum.

President Shinra even points out that removing Shinra would also cause a LOT of long term damage to the planet and society since mako energy is the the primary resource of the setting, and Barret hasn't even thought about what to do in the event they do get rid of Shinra.

Which, Advent Children proves him right. Society is kind of in the crapper after Meteor and the loss of Shinra did hurt the recovery efforts.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 28th 2024 at 8:23:05 PM

Well...sort of.

Advent Children shows very, very little of the wider world. How's Junon or Costa del Sol or Nibelheim doing? We have no idea. All we do know is that Midgard itself is falling apart (probably because it's not livable without Mako energy so it's not worth fixing up after Meteor), but nowhere else shows anywhere near that level of dependence, even if they use the technology) and a new town is growing on the edge. The other thing is the geostigma, which the movie resolves.

Like...Meteor was really bad for Midgar because it was aimed directly at it. Everywhere else should be fine.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 28th 2024 at 8:18:47 AM