Lit Chaotic Evil or Lawful Evil? Or perhaps Chaotic Good? Hypocrisy of the Sith

While not as "destruction-centric" Ruin may have had that narcissistic streak:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Ruin

 

The pre-TPM Sith, such as in TotJ, the Sith are Chaotic Evil but the film and TOR Sith are mostly Lawful Evil.

 

Huh, a solipsist may have been narcissistic.

 

I couldn't get at the Abel G. Pena stuff detailing Ruin - so had to rely on Wookieepedia - so was overcautious - hence the "may" when it should probably be "definitely did".

Dooku in the ROTS novel has an element of "sociopathic self-centredness and lack of true empathy"

He is the icon of the Separatist movement, its public face. He is to the Confederacy of Independent Systems what Palpatine is to the Republic: the living symbol of the justice of its cause. ​

This is the public story. ​

This is the story that even Dooku, in his weaker moments, almost believes. ​

The truth is more complicated. ​

Dooku is... different. ​

He doesn't remember quite when he discovered this; it may have been when he was a young Padawan, betrayed by another learner who had claimed to be his friend. Lorian Nod had said it to his face: "You don't know what friendship is." ​

And he didn't. ​

He had been angry, certainly; furious that his reputation had been put at risk. And he had been angry at himself, for his error in judgment: trusting as an ally one who was in fact an enemy. The most astonishing part of the whole affair had been that even after turning on him before the Jedi, the other boy had expected him to participate in a lie, in the name of their "friendship." ​

It had been all so preposterous that he hadn't known how to reply.​

In fact, he has never been entirely sure what beings mean when they speak of friendship. ​

Love, hate, joy, anger—even when he can feel the energy of these emotions in others, they translate in his perception to other kinds of feelings.​

The kinds that make sense. ​

Jealousy he understands, and possessiveness: he is fierce when any being encroaches on what is rightfully his. ​

Intolerance, at the intractability of the universe, and at the undisciplined lives of its inhabitants: this is his normal state. ​

Spite is a recreation: he takes considerable pleasure from the suffering of his enemies. ​

Pride is a virtue in an aristocrat, and indignation his inalienable right: when any dare to impugn his integrity, his honor, or his rightful place atop the natural hierarchy of authority. ​

And moral outrage makes perfect sense to him: when the incorrigibly untidy affairs of ordinary beings refuse to conform to the plainly obvious structure of How Society Ought To Be. ​

He is entirely incapable of caring what any given creature might feel for him. He cares only what that creature might do for him. Or to him. ​

Very possibly, he is what he is because other beings just aren't very ... interesting.​

Or even, in a sense, entirely real. ​

For Dooku, other beings are mostly abstractions, simple schematic sketches who fall into two essential categories. ​

The first category is Assets: beings who can be used to serve his various interests. Such as—for most of his life, and to some extent even now—the Jedi, particularly Mace Windu and Yoda, both of whom had regarded him as their friend for so long that it had effectively blinded them to the truth of his activities. And of course—for now—the Trade Federation, and the InterGalactic Banking Clan, the Techno Union, the Corporate Alliance, and the weapon lords of Geonosis. And even the common rabble of the galaxy, who exist largely to provide an audience of sufficient size to do justice to his grandeur.​

The other category is Threats. In this second set, he numbers every sentient being he cannot include in the first. ​

There is no third category.​

 

Why is chaos the only intention that is evil? I mean Palpatine wants to rule with ultimate power... he still has evil intentions and no desire to make the world a better place...

 

Not necessarily what I'm saying. If that's what was understood from what I said, then I apologize.

 

I'm about to read ROTS so I skipped over your excerpt. But in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, as well as the Clone Wars animated series, Dooku seemed quite human.

 

Guess what I am saying is that I find Palpatine way more evil than the Joker...

 

One of the few things I disliked about the ROTS novel was its characterization of Dooku. Admittedly, he's never been as well-fleshed out as he should be, but the other characterization he has gotten doesn't really match the vaguely Hitleresque sociopath he's depicted as in it.

 

I forgot to mention in my original post one of the main points I wanted to make about hypocrisy.

If you believe that other people exist, and you set out to destroy others in order to improve your own life, you are basically saying that life is good -- but only for you.
So, I just think people who are destructive in general are hypocritical (they value life itself but are destroying others' lives). To be a sith lord and not be hypocritical, you would have to be a pure solipsist.

 

How about - they don't "value life itself" - subconsciously they want to die - but they aren't prepared to kill themselves, so they kill others instead?

 

A few thoughts:

There are two ideological threads that I can see woven through the tapestry of Sith history, and if you want to apply D&D mechanics to things you might be able to get an approximation of 'Lawful Evil' and 'Chaotic Evil' from them. The one (more prevalent) ideology is self-aggrandisement, narcissism, desire for immortality and ultimately godhood, and on the Jedi-ish fringes of that we have those Sith who want to become god to forge galactic utopia, whether that be the transhumanism of the original Dark Jedi, or merely to bring about social utopia or guard against some greater threat (e.g. Jacen, Arkadia Calimondra and Revan). The vast majority of these are pathological narcissists and psychopaths; I maintain that even redeemed Revan was fundamentally sociopathic, for sociopath != evil. The zenith is in the likes of Darth Ruin, Daiman and Palpatine, and their solipsist or supremely narcissistic goals of godhood do become incredibly self-destructive, and thus similar to the second thread, rather like how there's more similarities between the extreme left and the extreme right than there is with the centre IRL.

The second thread is that which you could associate with 'Chaotic Evil,' and includes Odion, Darth Nihilus, Darth Phobos, Darth Jadus, the Dread Masters and a few others, including the Sorcerers of Rhand/Cronal and Abeloth if you look outside the Sith. They are either selfless Satanist-esque servants to destruction and the perpetuation of entropy, or at the pinnacle of evil, are eldritch abominations who are incarnations of destruction themselves, and no doubt attract the former kind of servant. Among the Sith, we only see Darth Nihilus satisfy the latter truly, although given what Kreia says (and fitting what Tales of the Jedi Companion tells us of the Sith species before the Dark Jedi), there were many an ancient Sith of this type, surpassing even Nihilus in terms of deific power and simultaneous mindlessness (and selfishness, distinguishing them from the Rhandites). But this is not black-and-white, and Darth I-am-the-dark-side Sidious is pretty close to being the deiform force of destruction kind, while Darth Jadus did what he did seeking to elevate his own station in the Sith Empire's mundane politics.

jedi_samuel I wouldn't say 'destructive people' are hypocritical (at least, not by virtue of them being destructive alone). A Sith Lord merely has different values, and seeks to satisfy them appropriately. They do not value life itself, but do very much value their own existence and desire to prolong it indefinitely, and there's no contradiction or logical incoherence in that, nor is such foregoing of ethics necessarily wrong in the sense of being 'incorrect,' just... different. And of course, to any moralist, evil, but incidentally so.

And as for the topic of Jedi vs Sith selfishness... I do have an essay floating around somewhere on why I find the Sith to be the good guys (or rather, to be a mite less bad than the Jedi).

 

I'd probably put Rokur Gepta of the Sorcerers of Tund in the second category:

The galaxy still believed that somewhere the hidden planet Tund was home to the mysterious Order. Only Gepta knew it was a sterile ball. Not so much as a tiny finger bone was left. The thought - the memory of what he'd done on that final day - filled him with delight and satisfaction.

Someday he'd do it to the entire universe!

 

Agreed. It makes me wish the origin of the Sorcerers of Rhand was given to be the ancient Sith species also, for the symmetry. It'd satisfy what Evil Never Dies and the TOTJ Companion told us of the pre-Jen'jidai Sith, as well.

 

I'm not sure where the essay is - but I found a short quote that seemed like a summary of it:

 

Thanks!

I found it, but it was on Reddit, not here.

 

this ties into the lie that corrupted Jacen Solo

 

They never say any such thing. In fact, they never denigrate "positive" emotions. They only forbid attachment among initiates.

 

Nice post, though I would definitely disagree with your stance on the jedi and also that the first type of sith lords do not value life (they do value theirs but through their actions show that they dont believe others should have what they have, which is life...)

 

Whether the first Sith Lords turned from their desires to create utopia and fell to selfishness is up for debate (although I will submit that the writings of Sorzus Syn in Book of Sith would suggest something like that), but that doesn't mean that conquering death, restoring dead worlds ravaged by war and generally creating utopia wasn't the original goal of the Exiles. It was.

We must also be careful when extrapolating certain disagreeable ideas of individuals and applying it to an entire Order. True, Sorzus Syn said some barbaric things about the weakness and exploitation of "inferiors." However, from what we've seen of them, the likes of Raana Tey were more barbaric in deed; does this mean we should view the Jedi as villains? Syn might have been the Atlas Shrugged-loving black sheep of a family of (imperfect, sure) utilitarians, but she never devised and committed genocide as a solution as the Jedi did following the Great Hyperspace War.

 

How much of that was Jedi, and how much Supreme Chancellor Pultimo?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pultimo

 

Varies depending on source, even within one work.

For instance, TOR focused on the Jedi initially, presumably in some effort to make the Sith somewhat sympathetic, but then swiftly backpedaled and assigned full blame to the Republic in the timeline videos, which is just nonsensical, given the extent to which the Jedi were involved in the conflict, that last time the Republic went beyond the Moral Event Horizon the Jedi entered recusal, and of course their involvement in the cleansing of Sith space having been established in earlier sources, even as far back as TOTJ Companion. I'm going to go with said earlier sources, given that TOR doesn't explicitly say the Jedi had nothing to do with it.

 

For me, the reason Sith are bad (not ALL of them absolutely evil, but bad people) is because their methodology is of the Dark Side, which is about strength and power and enforcing your own will on others, by force/Force or trickery or by fear and intimidation. Maybe they head down that path because they think they know better than everyone else, maybe they actually do know better than most other people but it comes down to subjugating the freedom and choice of other living beings. Sidious was not only willing but eager to wipe out the entire Jedi order simply so he could rule unchallenged, quite apart from the fact that every single death in the war was ultimately down to him as he was running both sides. The Jedi ideal (which not all of them live up to in fairness) is about compromise and peaceful resolution and everyone getting the best out of the situation, which is far more benevolent than any Sith we've seen so far. Jedi bend and break their own rules but the Sith really only have one rule when it comes down to it: I am more powerful than you, I am in charge, and they stick to it at great cost to anyone in their way.

 

I've been rereading the Bounty Hunter Wars series, and one of the things that caught my attention, was Xizor's perspective on Palpatine as a hungerer, as early as the A New Hope aftermath:

Xizor concealed a shiver of disgust. As far-reaching as his own ambitions were, they paled by comparison to Palpatine's. There was something in the withered figure that didn't just want to control the galaxy's sentient creatures, but to consume them the way a greedy Hutt swallowed its wriggling food. The small and weak ones will go first, thought Xizor. And then someday it'll be the turn of Vader and me. That would be the reward for their loyalty. To be consumed last ...

 

Another take on the sith and hypocrisy:

If the dark side is the power of darkness, blackness, death... the dark side users are hypocritical because they are glorifying death while striving to further live. (at least, this seems to be the goal of many of them)