PT Star Wars ethics

No. Such has not been established. As Stover once said, Anakin could have fulfilled the prophecy in ROTS.

The rise of Sidious and the Empire would be due to the will of Sidious. Haven't we repeatedly heard of how the Sith impose their own will upon the Force?

 

Dark Lord said as much, iirc.

 

So if the Jedi imposed their will on the Force as much as the Sith did, is it possible they wouldn't have been screwed over?

It's a religious parallel I see; some people take religion into their own hands while others believe in the given faiths or the ancient texts and wisdom that has lasted for generations.

 

The force having a will would certainly seem to have implications for the Jedi, given what happened to them. And that their own "chosen one" played such a role in it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that they start worrying about misreading that prophesy right before they get decimated. I actually hope this is brought up in the next films.

 

The Ethics of the OR and the Jedi are pretty bad, judged by the standards in place in real life.

The clones are an army of slaves. They are born to fight, with no choice from birth

If they walk away, they're deserters, subject to arrest. See Cut, and how Rex almost turned him in. In real life of course, desertion is also a crime, but at least in real life they signed the dotted line, so on their own head be it if they desert and get caught and punished. They weren't born with nothing ahead of them but a pre-determined life of soldiering. The Jango clones were.

One of the core characters of TCW (arguably the closest thing the series has to a central character by its latter seasons) is a child soldier pressed into frontline military service by a fundamentalist religious sect. Joe Kony would be so proud...

Yes, said child soldier has very real superhuman powers.

Yes, those superhuman abilities do make her a valuable military asset looked at from a cold military POV.

But, No, they do not make it any less repugnant to actually send her into the teeth of total war. But send her into the teeth of total war is exactly what they did. Guess who was right there by Rex and Anakin when they had to frontally charge the machine gun nests on Geonosis...

We can only imagine hundreds of other padawans of similar age were also sent. And doubtless many of them were KIA. (How old was that kid that Savage Opress killed during his first anti-Jedi rampage? Not very, by the looks.) I wonder how they explained this to their families. Oh wait - they didn't have to. They are the Jedi Order, accountable to no-one, and they took those kids from their families when they were toddlers. Qui-Gon's dialog in TPM makes it seem the kids/parents do have a choice in the matter, but some other materials IIRC imply that Force-sensitive children can, under certain circumstances, be made wards of the state / Jedi Order, forcibly.

You have to kinda take a step back and see it as a fantasy of sorts, where rules are bent and not everything from real life applies.

 

Just because a Jedi is part of the Order doesn't mean they're required to go to the frontlines to fight as you're making it sound. There are examples of Jedi who acted as healers/medics, who remained behind as teachers, or who performed any number of jobs that aren't soldier/General.

Are we ever shown an instance where the Jedi take a child from its parents without their consent. I've heard that some Jedi were persistant in trying to convince the parents but never of right out theft of a child.

 

We see in TCW Movie when Ahsoka walks off the transport both Obi-Wan and Anakin are shocked at her age; they refer to her as a Youngling. Then in the Youngling Arc the droid makes a comment that the Jedi Students seem to be getting younger every so often. These Younglings were perhaps ten. They also said if I remember correctly because so many Jedi are dying on the battlefields they are forcing these Younglings to grow up faster then normal. The Padawan that was Savage's second Jedi victim can't be any older then twelve.

If the Jedi say that they allow some Younglings to choose whether to come with them or stay how much do they understand what that means? My oldest brother got on the bus ot go to school and when it stopped at his stop he didn't know that he had to get off. He just said "hey, that's the apartment building where I live!" Our mom called the school after she realized that son had failed to get off the bus, they radioed the driver and he took my brother home.

I mean at the age of three would you be able to understand that by going with this strange person that you would never see your family and friends ever again? Then what are the conditions of the creche? Some sources say that the Jedi rotate those that assist the children to prevent attachments. Another one i heard was that they use droids.

 

Lady_Misty: How much of "what you've heard" is creditable sources, though? I could make up stories about the Jedi kidnapping children, letting them cry in the creche without comfort and all sorts of similar, and if others liked the ideas and they started writing similar...pretty soon you might see "a lot of sources say..." show up.

I HAVE seen those ideas I listed above. Truly. I've also seen all sorts of variations on "bond communication" - from little, to hints of emotions, to sharing pictures, to actual communication in words - none of which has received GL's "stamp of approval" and Force knows I have no idea what he thinks of some of those ideas.

I have seen and adopted some themes that may or may not be true in my own fanfic (padawans live with the masters, for one innocous one, or that with strong bonds the master and padawan can communicate with each); I've seen Dooku's first name and Xanatos' last name sourced as creditable when it *came from fanfic* orginally and really should be credited to the original fanfic author.

(below not addressed to any specific poster)

I look Star Wars as this:

Movies trump all - that includes implied and implicit themes. Novels can help explain. EU can help fill in but "creditability" varies widely.

Larger themes: these are scifi fantasy space opera movies, not dramas. They require (IMHO, YMMV) suspension of belief on what would be real life isues like childhood slavery, clone armies, etc. (not that they aren't fun to discuss and philosophize over - I join in, after all) but they were never *meant* to be viewed from a real world perspective.

Believe me, if they were character dramas, I'd be all over them for the same issues many of you are - but not this genre. This is like fairytales where we don't question the tension between nobility and commoner and marriage is not "forever after" but a work in progress.

Of course, you don't have to agree and are free to view it from your moral perspective.

 

Most of what I see is on Wookieepedia. Some take it was law.

 

Well, I may be totally off base, but I tend to "not rely on* on the Wook although I'll reference it for ideas...is stuff on it "official" or can anyone contribute without citation?

 

While it's an unofficial wiki- it's fairly heavily moderated and usually unsourced contributions don't last long.

 

Well it's a good thing that this is a fantasy series. Otherwise the media watchdogs would be all over this.

Dave Filioni would probably be dragged into the Fox News studios or be harassed by Bill O Riley.

 

I agree. I think the fact that they questioned the existence of the order and the prophesy right before its destruction tells us that it could have been the will of the Force to have the temple ruined.

 

Taking children? Where are we told this? There is no evidence at all within the movies that parents are forced to give their children up. if you believe that they do then that is your take on it - but it isn't an a-priori element of the movies.

As for commanding a slave army? They didn't choose that. The Senate chose to utilise the clone army. The Jedi were expected to lead whatever army the Republic had. Whether the Jedi lead them or not the clone army would have been used by the Republic - so what good would the Jedi's refusal to lead that army have been to the clones?

As for unquestioningly fighting for one side against another....do they really do so unquestioningly? I think it is clear in ROTS that they are not at all sure that the war is as just as it is made out to be, or that it is as clear cut as originally believed. Without evidence though what are they to do? Betray the Republic?

As for how questionable it was that the Republic were the good guys...well, at the beginning it would have seemed to anybody in-universe that a cabal of corporate enitites who have coalesced behind a Sith Lord (Dooku), secretly built a huge droid army and spoken of forcing the Republic to come to terms by force of arms probably are the enemy of democracy and freedom.

See above.

I think (as I said) that by ROTS it is clear to most that there is something fundamentally wrong with the war. They are pretty sure that there is something fundamentally wrong about the power coalescing around Palpatine's office. Being pretty sure and actually having the evidence to do something about it are two very diferent things. In fact when the Jedi do act (ie when Mace goes to arrest Palpatine) the Jedi are castigated for that. So....what is it you expect them to do? Do you believe that if the Jedi didn't lead the clone army there wouldn't have been a war? No-one would die?

Now...were they wise old men or were they out of touch, isolated and sclerotic?

That's just a sweeping and ad-hoc presumption on your part. What evidence is there of this belief in their infallibility? They appear, to me at least, to be very wary of what is going on around them. "I sense a plot to destroy the Jedi" is hardly something something somebody would say if they were convinced of their infallibility...nor would the response to how to deal with that be "to a dark place this may lead us"...

You are mixing up propositions here. You implied they had no idea what was going on in the 'real world', but as I pointed out they were constantly out and about in that real world dealing with real issues - that is why so few were available for Geonosis. That much of what was going on because of Palpatine was behind the scenes and kept secret from everyone...that's the point..

As for your point about Fort Knox; How much gold do you think the US holds? You might be horribly shocked by the answer to that. If I told you that amount was zero (and ...well I'll let you check that out for yourself) who's fault is that? What goes on behind the scenes usually comes as a bit of a surprise to most people. Doesn't mean you're out of touch, just means that a deal of deception has been going on.

You've accused them of being incapable of change, which I showed was not the case. They are not inflexible. What is it you want them to question? Whether they should fight for democracy and what the Republic represents? Whether they should beliebve in balance in the Force? They seem, to me, to be constantly questioning what is going on and their place and part within that.

"A prophecy that misread, could have been". "Victory? Victory?....begun, the clone wars have", along with the quotes above regarding how to deal with the increasingly obvious frailty of the 'Republic good' position. Again I would suggest that we are shown a great deal of thinking about their place in the great scheme of things.

...and how un-shocked Qui-Gon is at Anakin and Schmi's life. You are going to take the shock of one character, not even in the movies, over and above what we see of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (in particular) being clearly at ease in the outside world and that, at the time of Geonosis the majority of Jedi were out and about in the galaxy dealing with real issues.

Plus...what do you propose this 'naval gazing' is? Isn't naval gazing over-thinking? And yet you complain about their alleged lack of thinking about where they may or may not be going right (or wrong).

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. And that, in a nutshell, is the fate of the Jedi. If they act against the powers that are fundamentally wrong, and obviously so, then they brought about their own downfall by acting against the Republic....if they don't act then they have brought about their own downfall by "unquestioningly" fighting for the Republic.

If they consider their position, think about what is going on then they are naval gazing; but if they don't then they are guilty of not thinking things through enough.

You mean...the Return of the Jedi? We are supposed to understand the Jedi were wrong by the Return of the Jedi and the defeat of the Sith? You've lost me.

Then in what way is Anakin redeemed? He cannot need redemption because he did onloy what he was destined to do? And...the destruction of the Wookies, all the deaths of the millions of sentients that you blame the Jedi for were...actually victims of the will of the Force. The Force required their deaths, required the destruction of Alderaan, the galaxy at war for year after year.....in order to cleanse itself of the Jedi? Maybe that's what you see but, I don't see it the same.

 

Anakin did seek counsel on what he did to the Sand People...he just asked talked to the wrong guy.

"Remember what you told me about your mother and the sand people." Big Papa Palps

 

only one kenobi is right about the Clone Army. If the Jedi didn't lead them someone else would have. Someone that didn't give a hill of beans for them (not to say that all Jedi cared *coughcough Krell coughcough*).

And yes Ahsoka is surprised by where Letta lives but in TMP Qui-Gon KNOWS how the poor live (the novel says that he had been on Tatooine some years ago) but Padme was shocked by the fact that there was still slavery because she thought that the Republic was all powerful. (according to either wookieepedia or the essential guides the Naboo shelter the young upcoming politicians to keep them pure/innocent and incorruptible). Qui-Gon had been doing what a Jedi should be doing instead of an army into battle.

 

The PT ethics discussion needs to be centered upon what transpired onscreen, lest we digress and end up in lockland.

 

Did they ever film that sequence where he helps the wounded Tusken Raider?

 

If we want to stick with PT ethics that's fine....except that they're non-existent in the movies. They only exist in other material.

 

Hmm, I wouldn't doubt it if they did. I was amazed of how much of the OT was filmed that I never knew about.

Well, anyway, it would have been cool seeing some of the scenes that concern Anakin on Tatooine, scenes that happen way before Qui-Gon and co. showed up there to meet him.

 

Yeah, the EU is basically what makes the foundation of the Jedi "ethics".

 

I would suggest, rather, that what colours many perceptions of Jedi ethics is EU. The ethics are not explicitly rammed down our throats in the movies, but there is plenty to be going on with. This especially true when one takes into account the OT along with the PT. Anakin gives us a few little gems throughout the movies, though it is clear that he doesn't really get it - and/or that he is willing to...bend them to fit his own purpose (the influence of Palpatine?)

 

Is there something to even be seen?

Granted I haven't watched the prequels in a while (I'm awaiting the shipment of the DVD box set), but I certainly can't recall the likes of ethical behavior being discussed in the prequels. Aside from the whole "Jedi shouldn't aimlessly kill any no matter what species" thing. If we're gonna go into the debate on the slavery army of the Clones, there's not much to go on in the movies.

 

They used a slave army. There really isn't much else that needs to be seen, it was an inherently unethical act. As I said earlier, given that they have no moral highground from which to judge anyone. Anakin's breach of ethics in having a secret marriage pales in comparison to that.