Let’s see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?
Now I’ll concede at once that fear has been a major motivator of intolerance in human history. I can picture knightly adepts being taught to control fear and anger, as we saw credibly in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Calmness makes you a better warrior and prevents mistakes. Persistent wrath can cloud judgment. That part is completely believable.
But then, in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying — “If you get angry — even at injustice and murder — it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person! All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse. Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won’t be able to draw you back. You will instantly join your sworn enemy as his close pal or apprentice. All because you let yourself get angry at his crimes.”
Uh, say what? Could you repeat that again, slowly?
In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?
Lots of people in Weimar Germany got angry at the emerging fascists—and went out and joined the Communist Party. It was tough to be merely a liberal democrat.
I suspect you have your causation backwards. People created / joined the Freikorps and other quasi-fascist institutions to fight the threat of Communism. Viable international Communism (~1917) predates the fall of the Kaiser—and the Freikorp had no reason to exist when the existing authorities were already willing and capable of fighting Communism.
More generally, the natural reading of the Jedi moral rules is that the risk of evil from strong emotions was so great that liberal democrats should be prohibited from feeling any (neither anger-at-injustice nor love)
Now I’m confused. What is the topic of discussion? Clarification of Weimar Republic politics is not responsive to the Jedi-moral-philosophy point. Anger causing political action, including extreme political action, is a reasonable point, but I don’t actually think anger-at-opponent-unjust-acts was the cause of much Communist or Fascist membership.
You might think anger-at-social-situation vs. anger-at-unjust-acts is excessive hair-splitting. But I interpreted your response as essentially saying “Anger-at-injustice really does lead to fairly directly evil.” Your example does not support that assertion. If I’ve misinterpreted you, please clarify. I often seem to make these interpretative mistakes, and I’d like to do better at avoiding these types of misunderstandings in the future.
But I interpreted your response as essentially saying “Anger-at-injustice really does lead to fairly directly evil.” Your example does not support that assertion.
It certainly does. In reaction to one evil, Naziism, Germans could go and support a second evil, Communism, which to judge by its global body counts, was many times worse than Naziism, which is exactly the sort of reaction Brin is ridiculing: “oh, how ridiculous, how could getting angry at evil make you evil too?” Well, it could make you support another evil, perhaps even aware of the evil on the theory of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’...
I don’t know how you could get a better example of ‘fighting fire with fire’ than that or ‘when fighting monsters, beware lest you become one’.
Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.
And ignoring anger for the moment, Jedi moral philosophy says love leads to evil (that’s the Annakin-Padme plot of Attack of the Clones—the romance was explicitly forbidden by Jedi rules).
Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.
Not what we’re discussing.
And ignoring anger for the moment
Let’s stay on topic here.
Let me quote Brin:
In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?
How is my example—chosen from the very time period and milieu that Brin himself chose—not a ‘single example of that happening ever’?
In fairness to Lucas, Anakin’s love of Padme isn’t what converted him; it was Mace Windu’s disregard for the morality the Jedi professed to follow.
I regard the Jedi versus Sith as less “Good versus evil” and more “Principle Ethics versus Pragmatist/Utilitarian Ethics”—Anakin reluctantly embraced Principles until he saw that the Principles were ineffectual; even its adherents would ultimately choose pragmatism. It’s kind of implied, in-canon within the movies (the books go further in vindicating the SIth still), that Sidious’ master might not have been evil, per se; he sought to end death.
(2) It is possible to piece together acceptable moral lessons from Jedi philosophy, just like it is possible to have an interesting story of political intrigue in the world of Harry Potter. It just isn’t very true to the source material—neither original author would endorse the improvements.
Let’s see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?
If the memories of my youth serve me anger ‘leads to the dark side of the force’ via the intermediary ‘hate’. That is, it leads you to go around frying things with lightening and choking people with a force grip. This is only ‘evil’ when you do the killing in cases where killing is not an entirely appropriate response. Unfortunately humans (and furry green muppet ‘Lannik’) are notoriously bad at judging when drastic violation of inhibitions is appropriate. Power—likely including the power to kill people with your brain—will almost always corrupt.
But then, in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it
Not nearly as much as David Brin perverts the message that Lucas’s message. I in fact do reject the instructions of Yoda but I reject what he actually says. I don’t need to reject a straw caricature thereof.
“If you get angry — even at injustice and murder — it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person!
Automatically. Immediately. Where did this come from? Yoda is 900 years old, wizened and gives clear indications that he thinks of long term consequences rather than being caught up in the moment. We also know he’s seen at least one such Jedi to Sith transition with his own eyes (after first predicting it). Anakin took years to grow from a whiny little brat into an awesome badass (I mean… “turn evil”). That is the kind of change that Yoda (and Lucas) clearly have in mind.
All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse.
That seems unlikely. It also wasn’t claimed by the Furry Master. Instead what can be expected is that that opinions and political beliefs will change in predictable ways—most notably in the direction of endorsing the acquisition and use of power in ways that happen to benefit the self. Maybe the corrupted will change from a Blue to a Green but more likely they’ll change into a NavyBlue and consider it Right to kill Greens with their brain, take all their stuff and ravage their womenfolk (or menfolk, or asexual alien humanoids, depending on generalized sexual orientation).
Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won’t be able to draw you back.
Except that Lucas in the very same movie has Darth Vader turn back to the Light and throw Palpatine down some shaft due to loyalty to his son. Perhaps Lucas isn’t presenting the moral lesson that Brin believes he is presenting.
The proximate emotion that leads to Anakin’s fall is love. Even if we ignore the love-of-mother --> Tusken raiders massacre, the romance between Anakin and Padme is expressly forbidden because of the risk of Anakin turning evil.
If any strong emotion has such a strong risk of turning evil that the emotion must be forbidden, we aren’t really talking about a moral philosophy that bears any resemblance to one worth trying to implement in real humans.
I’m not saying that strong emotions don’t have a risk of going overboard—they obviously do. But the risk is maybe in the 10% range. It certainly isn’t in the >90% range.
Immediately. Where did this come from?
That’s probably an overstatement by Brin. But evil (Sith-ness) is highly likely from feeling strong emotions (in-universe), and that’s not representative of the way things work in the real world. It’s roughly parallels the false idea that we rationalists want to remove emotions from human experience.
Agreed generally, but will quibble about your last par. Vader’s redemption is being presented as a Heroic Feat, it is no more representative of normal moral or psychological processes in this universe than blowing up the Death Star with a single shot is representative of normal tactics.
People in Star Wars don’t really have political beliefs in any meaningful sense. The Star Wars universe is actual about a struggle between Good and Evil instead of being a struggle between two political factions.
Citizens of the US got angry after 2001. The US became a lot more evil in response to torturing people and commits war crimes such as attacking people who try to rescue injured people with drones.
The problem Brin is criticizing is that Good is entirely prohibited from feeling strong emotions. Brin explicitly acknowledges that strong emotions can lead to evil acts—he’s challenging the implicit idea that strong emotions must lead to evil.
David Brin
Lots of people in Weimar Germany got angry at the emerging fascists—and went out and joined the Communist Party. It was tough to be merely a liberal democrat.
I suspect you have your causation backwards. People created / joined the Freikorps and other quasi-fascist institutions to fight the threat of Communism. Viable international Communism (~1917) predates the fall of the Kaiser—and the Freikorp had no reason to exist when the existing authorities were already willing and capable of fighting Communism.
More generally, the natural reading of the Jedi moral rules is that the risk of evil from strong emotions was so great that liberal democrats should be prohibited from feeling any (neither anger-at-injustice nor love)
I don’t know why you would think the causation would be only in one direction.
Now I’m confused. What is the topic of discussion? Clarification of Weimar Republic politics is not responsive to the Jedi-moral-philosophy point. Anger causing political action, including extreme political action, is a reasonable point, but I don’t actually think anger-at-opponent-unjust-acts was the cause of much Communist or Fascist membership.
You might think anger-at-social-situation vs. anger-at-unjust-acts is excessive hair-splitting. But I interpreted your response as essentially saying “Anger-at-injustice really does lead to fairly directly evil.” Your example does not support that assertion. If I’ve misinterpreted you, please clarify. I often seem to make these interpretative mistakes, and I’d like to do better at avoiding these types of misunderstandings in the future.
It certainly does. In reaction to one evil, Naziism, Germans could go and support a second evil, Communism, which to judge by its global body counts, was many times worse than Naziism, which is exactly the sort of reaction Brin is ridiculing: “oh, how ridiculous, how could getting angry at evil make you evil too?” Well, it could make you support another evil, perhaps even aware of the evil on the theory of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’...
I don’t know how you could get a better example of ‘fighting fire with fire’ than that or ‘when fighting monsters, beware lest you become one’.
Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.
And ignoring anger for the moment, Jedi moral philosophy says love leads to evil (that’s the Annakin-Padme plot of Attack of the Clones—the romance was explicitly forbidden by Jedi rules).
Not what we’re discussing.
Let’s stay on topic here.
Let me quote Brin:
How is my example—chosen from the very time period and milieu that Brin himself chose—not a ‘single example of that happening ever’?
Exactly what we are discussing. Brin explicitly acknowledges the first point—he’s rejecting the second point.
That’s not a charitable reading of that point. In the real world, there are lots of different ways to be evil. In Jedi-land, evil = Sith.
Annakin opposes the Sith. Then he feels strong emotions (love of Padme). Then he becomes Sith. Not extremist-opponent-who-is-just-as-bad.
Opposing Nazis does not lead one to becoming a Nazi. Of course, in the real world, Nazi isn’t the only way to be evil.
In fairness to Lucas, Anakin’s love of Padme isn’t what converted him; it was Mace Windu’s disregard for the morality the Jedi professed to follow.
I regard the Jedi versus Sith as less “Good versus evil” and more “Principle Ethics versus Pragmatist/Utilitarian Ethics”—Anakin reluctantly embraced Principles until he saw that the Principles were ineffectual; even its adherents would ultimately choose pragmatism. It’s kind of implied, in-canon within the movies (the books go further in vindicating the SIth still), that Sidious’ master might not have been evil, per se; he sought to end death.
If there is only one way to be evil in Star Wars, then to become an extremist opponent of a different flavor maps back onto becoming a Sith...
Respectfully, I think we have reached the limit of our ability to have productive conversation.
(1) I don’t desire to have the “Who is more evil: Nazis or Communists?” fight—I’m not sure that discussion is anything more than Blue vs. Green tu quoque mindkiller-ness. The important lesson is “beware ‘do not debate him or set forth your own evidence; do not perform replicable experiments or examine history; but turn him in at once to the secret police.’”
(2) It is possible to piece together acceptable moral lessons from Jedi philosophy, just like it is possible to have an interesting story of political intrigue in the world of Harry Potter. It just isn’t very true to the source material—neither original author would endorse the improvements.
In short, I’m tapping out.
If the memories of my youth serve me anger ‘leads to the dark side of the force’ via the intermediary ‘hate’. That is, it leads you to go around frying things with lightening and choking people with a force grip. This is only ‘evil’ when you do the killing in cases where killing is not an entirely appropriate response. Unfortunately humans (and furry green muppet ‘Lannik’) are notoriously bad at judging when drastic violation of inhibitions is appropriate. Power—likely including the power to kill people with your brain—will almost always corrupt.
Not nearly as much as David Brin perverts the message that Lucas’s message. I in fact do reject the instructions of Yoda but I reject what he actually says. I don’t need to reject a straw caricature thereof.
Automatically. Immediately. Where did this come from? Yoda is 900 years old, wizened and gives clear indications that he thinks of long term consequences rather than being caught up in the moment. We also know he’s seen at least one such Jedi to Sith transition with his own eyes (after first predicting it). Anakin took years to grow from a whiny little brat into an awesome badass (I mean… “turn evil”). That is the kind of change that Yoda (and Lucas) clearly have in mind.
That seems unlikely. It also wasn’t claimed by the Furry Master. Instead what can be expected is that that opinions and political beliefs will change in predictable ways—most notably in the direction of endorsing the acquisition and use of power in ways that happen to benefit the self. Maybe the corrupted will change from a Blue to a Green but more likely they’ll change into a NavyBlue and consider it Right to kill Greens with their brain, take all their stuff and ravage their womenfolk (or menfolk, or asexual alien humanoids, depending on generalized sexual orientation).
Except that Lucas in the very same movie has Darth Vader turn back to the Light and throw Palpatine down some shaft due to loyalty to his son. Perhaps Lucas isn’t presenting the moral lesson that Brin believes he is presenting.
Drawing from Attack of the Clones:
The proximate emotion that leads to Anakin’s fall is love. Even if we ignore the love-of-mother --> Tusken raiders massacre, the romance between Anakin and Padme is expressly forbidden because of the risk of Anakin turning evil.
If any strong emotion has such a strong risk of turning evil that the emotion must be forbidden, we aren’t really talking about a moral philosophy that bears any resemblance to one worth trying to implement in real humans.
I’m not saying that strong emotions don’t have a risk of going overboard—they obviously do. But the risk is maybe in the 10% range. It certainly isn’t in the >90% range.
That’s probably an overstatement by Brin. But evil (Sith-ness) is highly likely from feeling strong emotions (in-universe), and that’s not representative of the way things work in the real world. It’s roughly parallels the false idea that we rationalists want to remove emotions from human experience.
Agreed generally, but will quibble about your last par. Vader’s redemption is being presented as a Heroic Feat, it is no more representative of normal moral or psychological processes in this universe than blowing up the Death Star with a single shot is representative of normal tactics.
People in Star Wars don’t really have political beliefs in any meaningful sense. The Star Wars universe is actual about a struggle between Good and Evil instead of being a struggle between two political factions.
Citizens of the US got angry after 2001. The US became a lot more evil in response to torturing people and commits war crimes such as attacking people who try to rescue injured people with drones.
The problem Brin is criticizing is that Good is entirely prohibited from feeling strong emotions. Brin explicitly acknowledges that strong emotions can lead to evil acts—he’s challenging the implicit idea that strong emotions must lead to evil.
Also, not my downvote.