Lit Serving the Empire with the Light Side

We do see the empire try its best to hide some the worst of its evil in both Catalyst and Thrawn, even in R1 they do thier best to cover up what actually happened on Jedha. It's not until Alderaan that the mask comes off as it were.

Sure a lightsider wouldn't knowingly serve the Dark Side, but if they were deliberately kept in the dark about the true nature of what they were doing, it could work, and we know Sidious adores turning good intentions into evil actions.

 

There's also the fact there's the Internal Reformer.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InternalReformist

While roleplaying isn't 100% possible in STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC, it was basically my justification for my LS Sith Lord. His view wasn't the Sith Empire was a good thing. Indeed, the game encouraged DS and LS both to view it as a tyrannical dystopia that was run by dangerously incompetent losers that were driving it into the ground. However, as far as the LS Sith were concerned, the solution wasn't to let the Republic conquer it (especially since in Legends, the Sith were slaughtered to the man in an act of galactic genocide with Revan's Flashpoint showing THE REPUBLIC IS PLANNING THIS AGAIN) but to eliminate the bad guys above you and take control to fix things.

One can argue the only reason the LS SIth is actually able to get away with being a decent person is they're STILL plotting against their superiors to take over. They're just doing it for different reasons than everyone plotting to take over because it's North Korea by way of Westeros.

 

Well this thread went quiet pretty fast. I guess the answer to the original question is:

No. Light-side Force Wielders use the good side of the Force. Good people cannot serve evil causes knowingly. The only possible scenario where a Lightsider could serve the Empire would be if they were completely ignorant of the Empire's true nature. At which point it may as well not be an Empire.

You can't serve evil and remain a good person. Not in Star Wars, anyways.

 

But who defines evil? Good and bad are inherently subjective.

 

I've covered that argument in my books, actually.

"Good and evil are points of view."

"That's not actually a rebuttal because it means that if I think you're evil it's true to me. Which I do, you murderous piece of garbage."

 

It's really not. But let's agree to disagree. We have very different viewpoints on this issue.

 

It's not an argument; it's a fact.

 

Good and evil is debatable. POV.

For example: Saving the planet is a priority. The forests must be saved. Say no to pollution. So is cutting down forests for farmland and build clothes factory so the people have enough to eat and warm clothes to wear.
Now which is good? Which is evil?

 

It's a meaningless fact. It's like saying love is an opinion. Yes, it is the single most important opinion you can have.

 

I think it is important to tag on that moral grey area and debatable morality do not make good and evil irrelevant nor totally subjective. Like the example above, their option is good or evil, hard choices do not at all mean good and evil are merely points of view. As a society we have decided that murdering someone in cold blood is wrong. Killing in self defense is a more complicated thing but that does not make freaking shootings any less evil. The fact that sometimes you may have to hurt the environment to help people does not at all change that there are certain things that as humans we have decided are wrong. The stuff that went down last night in Charlottseville does not become any less evil just cause sometimes moral compromises exist.

 

How can you factually define something as evil? You can only consider something evil. What's good and bad exists in the realm of opinions. Opinions are not facts.

 

Except given your morality is the only one you can talk about, your definition is the only one that matters.

In a universe where meaning is derived from consciousness, nothing has meaning but what you define.

Which, as Grand Admiral Jello says, doesn't matter in Star Wars since actions are good or evil regardless of how you define them because Light Side/Dark Side.

They're not even gods, they're just physical laws of morality.

 

Here's the thing, you are essentially saying to disregard social constructs such as morality in this discussion.......which is on a forum for discussion.....discussions which are you know a form of social interaction. We as a society decide norms such as good and evil, You are essentially saying to throw all that out cause it is not factually provable when the very words you are using to make your point are technically things created by people in order to communicate and are not really things that exist in nature. They are just as nonfactual as constructs such as morality. Just going "nuh uh" is not an actually argument.

To use my example from before, like an hour ago a person was killed in cold blood by white supremacists driving cars into a crowd of protesters. Would you say that person is evil for doing such a thing? Do you really really wanna say that calling that person evil is just an opinion?

 

Agreed. This is why it's so important that we don't just say "morality is just subjective" yes it comes from opinion, but it is built upon opinions people share for a reason. The existence of other "alternative" opinions on morality do not suddenly make them all right. Again that's how we have literal Nazis running around in America right now. Just saying that evil is a point of view makes it so much easier to forgive ones self.

 

Mind you, there are people who believe they are above good and evil. Also people who do think they're evil. The latter, ironically, require people who have some degree of remorse for their actions.

Palpatine wouldn't think he was evil and probably didn't since the concept is a lazy one in his mind. A concept created by weak minded fools to protect the weak.

Darth Vader, certainly, probably thought of himself as evil and hated himself for it. He just thought he'd do the horrible things necessary to bring order to the galaxy since he'd already irrevocably tainted himself.

 

Sometimes though it's not a matter of a point of view but somebody who is evil and either proud of it or doesn't care to offer a justification.

I'd say Morgoth from the Silmarillion meets the definition.
Palpatine if we go by the dark empire sourcebook didn't care for good or evil just power and whole lot of megalomania.


I could see the ancient Je'daii from Tython being willing to serve the empire-after all they were devoted to balance and so probably could see the value in it.

As for the Jedi-I don't think that's possible unless the ideology of the Jedi with regards to politics was very different.

 

Mind you, another thing to note "evil" is a Western concept which is very much a concept built around being a thing which should be destroyed as a taint to the human race. Other cultures have people who are out of balance instead. Sick in soul versus actively malevolent. Though that isn't a concept lost on Western philosophies either.

Part of what made Dragonlance iffy for some readers was that many people self-identified as Evil. It's just evil didn't mean what it meant in other cultures.

It was just a "side" in the cosmic struggle so there was no reason to be ashamed of it.

 

yeah but even if the specifics are different the idea of certain acts being wrong and those who commit them being punished is a throughline for the most part. Cultures still abhorred murder and whatnot mostly. And even then I think at this point pretty much the entire world has social norms as to what is evil or "out of balance" or what have you, that are pretty much consistent

 

This might work as a compass.

Is the things someone doing benefiting himself or others? Will eating more make oneself more full? Or will eating more means someone else goes hungry?

 

Good point. As a general whatever benefits people is good. of course grey area comes in and what not but something like robbing a business hurts the people who run it and disrupts the people who buy from that business. racism is wrong cause the people being treated unfairly are people and need to be treated with respect. Yeah stuff gets more complicated like the debate over the death penalty which is where it becomes more about human decency vs the hypothetical of more death.

 

Yeah certainly. That's what is so pointless to simply saying that good and evil are opinions. No duh, all morality is derived from centuries of discussion. Like I said earlier, pretty much everything we do is derived from social norms that have been built over thousands of years. Address these things from within the context of opinionated debates on ethics, simply put, the fact that things are subjective does not deter from the fact that the notions of right and wrong are important and needed for a functional society. That is unless you wanna live in a leviathan state of sorts.

 

I didn't try. I did.
Also, I like my SW black and white, thank you very much.