CT Are all imperials sociopaths?

The average Imperial officer believed that the Empire brought order and stability to the galaxy that was beneficial for all, as opposed to the chaos of the latter days of the Republic and then the Rebellion. They definitely weren't all genocidal maniacs.

 

Yularen was a good guy.

 

Are all Imperials sociopaths?

No.

 

No not even close...

two great psychological experiments can help people understand how otherwise good, moral people,. can fall to commit evil acts when ordered by superiors to do so.
The great Stanford prison experiment (now released as a film)
And Milgram's electric shock test experiments

many good people, when living in an evil regime, overseen by brutal commanding officers, lose their will. Its a psychological mechanism present in the human condition that is hard to override, assuming one has been made aware of it in the first place.

 

I agree there are alot of non stormtrooper imperials shown in the OT who appear not to be clones.

Many of the officers did seem to have a elitist attitude, often calling non imps scum. I think some like Tarkin were in it to ride Palps coat tails to get cushy positions.

 

In a Galaxy as big as the one portrayed in Star Wars not all of the Imperials would be sociopaths. We even got to hear some of their conversations in ANH when Obi wan was sabotaging the Death Star and they seemed rather nice. The top officials we see around the table and the military tacticians certainly were Tyrants. Even they though were taking their orders from the Emperor as he was the ultimate power crazed Sith..

 

Of course not. Most of them are probably just average, not-particularly-evil people who are nonetheless complicit in evil acts because it's human nature to go with the flow and not rock the boat as long as you can justify to yourself that things aren't that bad.

True sociopaths are very, very rare. Just as true saints are very, very rare. Most people are somewhere in the middle. Not that good, but also not that bad. Decent folk.

 

If you really think about it, the Empire are actually the good guys and the Rebels are just terrorists who want to destroy the law and order of the Empire. The majority are probably glad to have that order.

 

Cushy positions, good pun.

 

Related:

While he's not at all my brand of politics, one of the authors that I think did a great job of treating this subject in his early work was Tom Clancy. His portrayal of the Soviet Union felt like he'd actually seriously asked himself "what kind of people would work for a totalitarian government?" and come up with an answer that respected the fact that these people were still people, without ever losing sight of the fact that the system they were serving was, in his view, horrifying. (As opposed to, say, Ian Fleming, whose villains are barely recognizable as humans).

And unsurprisingly, his answer ends up being "lots of different kinds of people." You've got the communist aristocrats who really believe everything about how awesome their system is, and who're sheltered enough that they'll never have to learn otherwise. You've got the careerists who don't really care about ideology at all, but will do what it takes to rise to the top of the system because that's where the power is. You've got the pragmatists who realize that the system isn't everything it's cracked up to be, but understand that it does no good to imagine how else things might be: that's the system you've got so that's the system you work with. You've got the soldiers who may or may not like the political system but who figure it's their duty to protect the nation regardless of the government it's got. And you've got the occasional reformers, who understand the flaws in the system but want to change it from the inside (to something that'll be different but, it's noted, not necessarily in a way that the reader would agree with).

I suspect the same applies to the Empire; the old Star Wars EU definitely operated on this notion, and the new one seems to as well. The motives of different Imperials in both cases basically covers the entire spectrum.

 

I think you hit it on the nose. In fact, I remember reading the book Death Star (I know I reference this one a lot, but it WAS a great one!), where it mentioned specific things about certain imperial officers that were in charge of things like for example, operating the superlaser controls. How they felt about carrying out the orders to destroy Alderaan, apprehensions they may have had, and what they thought of themselves after it was done, etc...

 

Probably not 100%, but a very high %. They have to be. They have to do things like kill innocents out in the desert. Jawas? Dead. The Stormtroopers are the incarnation of the police robots from THX 1138. they are a part of a tyranny. Recall The Running Man. There is the line "better here than in the streets." In other words, better under our control than on their own in this terrible world. Our control is for their own good.

 

I would guarantee a lot of Imperial Officers and Politicians are. In the end, all of them are just pawns to Palpatine. Imperials aren't encouraged to be unique, they are broken and molded to be Palpatine's puppets.

 

Judge Lazar wrote

If you really think about it, the Empire are actually the good guys and the Rebels are just terrorists who want to destroy the law and order of the Empire. The majority are probably glad to have that order.

Unfortunately deleted from the final film (ANH), but interesting nevertheless:

BIGGS I feel for you, Luke, you're going
to have to learn what seems to be
important or what really is important.
What good is all your uncle's work
if it's taken over by the Empire?...
You know they're starting to
nationalize commerce in the central
systems... it won't be long before
your uncle is merely a tenant, slaving
for the greater glory of the Empire.

Technically speaking, the People of North Korea also have a lot of order, but I doubt they are really happy with their lives.

 

The average stormtrooper probably does get a lot of 'brainwashing' in the training process - probably not as extreme/explicit as what Finn and the F.O. guys apparently underwent but more being barraged with propaganda and speeches about how wonderful the Empire is and how terrible/evil their enemies were. Basically sort of desensitisation to get them to shoot and follow orders and not actually think about it too much.

There will be a few die-hard true believers who do the really nasty work but it's a bit like the real-life Wehrmact/SS split in Nazi Germany - the vast majority were conscripts/recruits who paid lip-service to the politics but basically did their jobs as soldiers like those of any country, whilst a cadre of more fanatical ''elites'' did most of the evil that is associated with the regime.

 

We see a bit of this desensitisation (training pilots to fire on disabled unarmed ships and destroy them) for TIE pilots in the Rebels Season 3 episode The Antilles Extraction.

 

Yes. They are. All of them. It's true.

 

Not all Imperials are sociopaths, but all sociopaths are Imperial.

 

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Jabba the Hutt is one (i don't like the humanity shown in him in the clone wars film) as well as Luke Skywalker. The guy laughed as he blasted stormtrooper pilots who didn't know any better.

 

Like I just said in the other thread, I wouldn't exclude the possibility that he just got overexcited about his (newfound) skills he wasn't previously aware of in the Falcon's gunport.
Besides, him and Han are fighting for their survival, so I'd probably be equally excited if I just contributed to our chances of survival.

 

Antisocial (sociopathic) behavior is encouraged in the Empire due to Palpatine's desire to manipulate Imperial officers against one another with their own selfish desires. Darth Plagueis felt that manipulating people to become extremely egotistical, murderous, sycophantic, etc. would have been a foolhardy way to run the Empire. In fact, Plagueis would have preferred to not rule over an Empire in the sense that we see in the Classic Trilogy. He would have preferred to control the mundane world and its citizens and military officers by giving them some of what they wanted more often. This was out of a genuine care for those he intended to rule, even if he did consider himself superior to all beings in the galaxy as much as any other Sith Lord before him. It's just that Plagueis, much like Thrawn, was a more practical man. Darth Sidious Palpatine, by contrast, was a true sociopath (antisocial personality). He was a malignant narcissist who enjoyed manipulating people to death, and this was his method of staying on top of the pyramidal structure of the Empire. We can see his sadistic and manipulative side well in ROTJ, of course, but he's basically an Eldritch Abomination in human form in the old EU. You get some of that with how eager he is to replace Vader with Luke in the film, and you get the sense that he could have just stopped Luke's heart beating if he so desired. He preferred to watch him die slowly. Vader is the tragic antagonist, and Sidious is the true sociopath.

Now, anyway, Tarkin and many other high-ranking officers could be compared to sociopaths if they, ya know, killed millions of beings without remorse or empathy. However, this is comparable to how Count Dooku cut off his own empathy to become a block of ice. That's Tarkin and certain officers in the Empire in general....excluding the hot-headed Motti who is kind of an idiot, not to mention a sexist.

 

I keep thinking about the deleted scene in ROTJ where Jerjerrod is ordered to fire the DS2 on the Endor moon in order to destroy the rebels, and he protests because there's an entire legion of the Empire's best troops who've also landed there... I realize it's a deleted scene, but would clearly demonstrate that there were some Imperials that weren't up to following orders no matter how heinous - without engaging their own logic and moral code - even if it differed from the Emperor's or Vader's.

 

But he wanted peace in the end. Is that evil?

 

Hard to take him seriously with that nefarious smile after that quote in ROTS....