Lit The woman that broke the galaxy... and Palpatine!

The last decade has been a very clear indicator that some individuals need no trauma or other trigger to be truly vicious bastards. Worse, a good few of them revel in their cruelty and expect to be applauded for it.

 

Great post, another mythological tie may be not just Eve but Lillith. While she is demonized by some depictions, others cherish her as a rolemodel free and equal woman to man contrary to Eve who is a part of Adam and subjugated by him. In that regard the woman in question would be a good person, strong female character even, but be demonized from the Sith pov as a criminal that did them bad, while actually, a non-Sith pov would reveal quite a different picture. Just as you noted in your other examples above!

I do not know what decade you lived but the morons I witnessed all were full of trauma and triggers if one looks at their lives. Evil can't exist without that, nobody is born evil. And I'd hate anybody to claim that such exists, for that reminds me always of the talk of facism that degrades individuals and entire cultures as evil by blood/birth/etc. or dismisses disabled people and others as it takes away agency and just condemns instead of facing the problems and its roots and potential solutions. The quick and easy path of ignoring these reasons and solutions is the dark side, not those that are trapped within their own nightmare asylum and wheel they can't escape or don't even try to anymore but once might have.

 

You only have to look at numerous politicians Cole, especially in the UK over the last decade.

They weren't born evil no, but they certainly decided to be. They decided to be cruel and callous and nasty and were rewarded for it by too many people. They made political capital from inflicting pain on others, often on those who were poor or disabled and continue to do so.

But this probably isn't a good road to continue on so let's steer it away from the abyss. In story terms you have Anakin as the example of rise, fall and redemption-by-death. Having him contrasted with Sidious works well for it.

I don't think Sidious needs any explanation for him being the way he is save that he has a need to always be on top. It's why he despises the Republic and Jedi, they are rivals and barriers to what he wants.

If you're after a more satisfying reason for why Sidious is the way he is beyond 'born evil', it's there looking at you: Can't lose to anyone, never saw any reason to limit what he wants, sees everything and everyone in terms of use to him. Chances are he was this way long before Plagueis found him. It may well have been these aspects that drew him to Plagueis' attention.

 

To play armchair psychiatrist, if I had to “explain” Palpatine beyond him just being a fantasy devil stand-in, I’d say he probably had a combination of personality disorders that left him unable to feel empathy, guilt, remorse in addition to making him a narcissist and sadist. His privileged and wealthy upbringing probably enabled a lot of his behaviours.

There’s likely no traumatic, emotional event in his life. There’s probably no grand, tragic untold story of Sheev Palpatine being broken by the harsh realities of existence.

He was just born with a defective amygdala.

 

I agree that he was not evil thx to Plagueis but rather before him already to a degree. Still I think that even if he chose to be, and was not born like it, something shaped him, without that something being responsible for his actions. In fact I think, maybe Palpatine could have been a worse evil without Plagueis. Plagueis helped him realize that the "good Senator" personality, his true mask, was needed to get him further. He was not a good senator that got corrupted, but a bad person that learned to pretend. Still, how he got to be that bad person is interesting and why he chose to break bad in the first place.

I like that there is not ONE traumatic event or reason for his becoming like he is. No big turning point or marker like for most other villains. How about there being many small ones though, a sum of it all with no one clearly defineable as more important than the others? A man shaped not by cliché one event that changed his life, but rather showing how the sum of many tiny drops/picks and pains can hollow a stone/man way more than any major event. Kinda a more realistic approach to how he got to the point where he snapped finally.

 

I don’t think trauma, either as a big event or a series of events can create someone like Palpatine.

Vader and Maul, sure. Even at their worst you can see they’re individuals with emotional depth who have been damaged and warped into what they are.

But Palpatine? There’s no emotional depth to him at all. He reads more as a sociopath with a very shallow range of feelings that are mostly frustration when denied or joy when he wins. I don’t get the sense he ever had the capacity for more.

 

I think we’ve hit upon the crux of our disagreement here. You seem to be arguing that evil should never be understood as an ontologically separate concept from human failing and pathology. No one is “born evil” it’s a product of social injustice or trauma or pathology or sexual repression or resentment or any of the hundred other psychosocial explanations for human behavior.

Firstly as a religious man-I believe real evil exists, that aside, it definitely should in SW. Palpatine isn’t a product of trauma or psychopathology or an abusive childhood or any other “cause” of anti social behavior. He is evil, from birth. Because at the core of his being-he is malice and darkness congealed into a man. A Devil in human skin.

You might find this perspective un nuanced or barbaric or cruel or what have you. And that is your right-but I feel that SW benefits from cosmic malice, and ontologically separate “Evil” as a category that stalks the universe, not just trauma and psychopathology. Which modern fiction has quite enough of.

 

I wonder what religion that might be, because most modern religions posit a fall even for those considered most evil. Even if evil exists as a force, most religions do not posit that people are born evil. It’s a choice. What reasons push them to make it vary, but it is always something born from free will rather than innate in the fabric or reality.

 

I think we all agree that SW needs the contrast between Vader and Sidious. If we continue that theme we can arrive at:

- Anakin overcame numerous childhood traumas to become a very effective Jedi Knight. One for who it took a galactic war and the murder of his mother to break, with his killing his wife finishing the process.

- How to best contrast this against Sidious? There is no difficulty in childhood. Instead Sheev is the kid who never got told no, never had barriers set, found school too easy and starts seeing himself as superior and everyone else as inferior.

I think the charge that Sidious is shallow is accurate. There isn't depth to such people, they are nasty and cruel because they can be. They like the power trip they get from it. To invoke Arendt's famous line - evil is banal.

 

@Sauron_18 What did you imagine for how Palpatine met Plagueis and became a Sith Lord before the Plagueis novel was published? Did you think Palpatine was evil before he met Plagueis or did you think Plagueis convinced him to become evil?

 

I don’t think it was Anakin’s traumas or his pain that were the cause of his fall. He fell because he was selfish, like all people are, and he never really learned to get past that. I do agree that evil is banal in that it’s hard to act out of selflessness. It’s something the Jedi have to train for. But selfishness is just what comes natural. A Sith Lord is what happens if you give power to a regular person. So I don’t think Sidious needs to have a privileged background to be consumed by selfishness.

I think I just assumed he’d been trained from a young age. Since that’s what we’d been told about Maul, I didn’t picture a different scenario for Sidious. But I don’t think this anymore. I think the Jedi restrictions on age are mainly there because without early training, a Force sensitive becomes too vulnerable to the dark side, too selfish. So these restrictions probably don’t matter to a Sith, and Sidious could have a more interesting background.

 

It's not that they're needed on their own, but if you go with the idea of contrast then something is needed to provide that. If environment alone determined a person falling to the dark side Anakin should have already been a demon kid on Tattooine but wasn't.

 

Considering what happened in the Plagueis novel, i wonder if Palpatine still had a chance to become eventually a decent person in Legends before he met Damask or if he was already lost, one way or the other?

The family situation was very difficult for him. Apparently no one loved him or at least cared about him enough for him not to develop a deep narcissism and eventually become a psychopath. Maybe the combination of this with being born into a wealthy and influential house on Naboo also didn't help.

So i guess it may have already been too late for him at this point, or was it?
What would have had to happen for him to turn out good?

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Personally, I think being kidnapped as a baby and raised to be a Sith would be a more sympathetic backstory than him deciding to be evil as an adult. I feel like Lucas meant for Maul, Tyranus, and Vader to all be victims of Sidious in a way. In real life, Maul would be seen as a victim of child abuse, kidnapping, and a cult while Tyranus and Vader would be seen as willing accomplices to Sidious’s crimes.

 

Exactly. He most likely wasn't chosen because he was moral or brokenhearted. He was more likely someone who was already power hungry and so a good vehicle.

Knowing what we know about him and how he engineered his rise, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for him to have done that during all of it, possibly killing political opponents.

 

Satan in no form of Christian theology I am aware of-is treated as some sort of nuanced or sympathetic figure, Fall or no. Why else would God prepare the lake of fire for the devil and his angels if they were not utterly irredeemable from the beginning of time? Calvinist theology posits most of humanity is not of the "elect" and are fated for damnation-as they are utterly depraved and incapable of accepting the grace of salvation. So, yes there are plenty of religious concepts that posit evil as unchanging and fixed. As for the fabric of reality-I'd argue Gnosticism argues this-the material world is a cruel illusion, a lie and is "not good". That...said evil in western theology and philosophy is generally the absence of goodness or goodness lost and not a separate category in itself. SW dualism does imply this though-whether or not you take the dark side as inherently evil or simply representing that which is dangerous and predatory in all life. I'm fine with SW having Evil as a distinct metaphysical object or category, such as it is. Palpatine is evil, and not because of pathology.

That basically makes him a more menacing Joffrey Baratheon. A story of privilege gone to the head. Which isn't really interesting (or something really in line with SW' focus).

"Depth" strikes me as a bit nebulous as a concept-but if we mean having some sort of multi-faceted inner life that one can relate too and understand-then I do not believe this appropriate. Palpatine is human insofar as he as basic human biological functions and exists in time and place and has flesh and bone. But the core of the man-is not a man at all, but the "shadow".

Unless you really overlook the book's contents. Palpatine is a sociopathic teenager who despises his father for being a small minded provincial with no ambition or brains. And whose father more or less says "you are a born monster"-before Palpatine slaughters his entire family. Now to be fair-this isn't entirely mystical, we see palpatine enjoys podracing, and he has political ambitions and ideas. He's not some sort of overarching fog of inhuman hate or malice-but a man, or rather the skin of a man.

Palpatine fundamentally believes "power is what matters, anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool and a chump"-you either are pursuing power, defending your power, or you are a born slave existing to be exploited, dominated and disposed of. The Jedi are particularly contemptible because they have power but instead of ascending to the heights of rulership and giving commands defend the powerless, the weak, and the unworthy. This is what he takes as given obvious truth at the age of seventeen. He's going to laugh at anyone or anything saying otherwise.*

Ultimately-I am absolutely fine with Palpatine as a "devil stand in", indeed the closest thing SW has to a personified Satanic figure. But I realize that's not a chic or popular opinion in the current zeitgeist.

*Bane had a similar viewpoint, and I'd argue the Sith as a whole embrace this of amoralism. Morality is a lie, compassion a weakness, pity a chain around the deluded and the rabble-all that matters, all that is is the will to conquer, to live freely and triumphantly, to ascend to divinity, and to cast off the fetters that bind the strong and the great. This form of thinking is utterly incompatible with any sort of moral philosophy whatsoever, or indeed morality at all.

The fundamental dispute between the Jedi and Sith is between the above belief and the belief that service, selflessness and sacrificial love are worth following, pursuing and modeling oneself on.

 

Some versions do have him as "God's prosecutor" - Christian theology is something that has evolved a lot over time.

 

Why did you quote me as typing that? It was @Darth Invictus who typed that.

 

Copy-paste being tricky again - sorry - fixed it.

 

In the book of Job-Satan is an accuser. This is hardly Satan being good. He gets summoned as any other Angel-gets asked to give an account of himself and makes a wager with God-namely that Job's faith is because of his prosperity, and not truly sincere. God indulges the wager and allows Satan to destroy his life to test his faith. Also Satan accuses the saints before God-but this is done out of malice, not commitment to justice. "Such and such Christian has sinned"-"They are washed with the blood and their name is written in the book of life"-being Jesus' response as the defense attorney if we use this analogy.

Satan's role in this regard reflects on God's sovereignty in Christian doctrine, Satan can accuse, he can provoke, and inquire-but he is ultimately still a subject to God's authority. He seeks to undermine and defame the saints. That's evil.

As for Christian theology, how do you mean? Nicene trinitarianism was more or less set in stone by 400 AD. There have been developments and divides since then, but orthodox Christianity's fundamentals remain the same now as they were in 100 AD.

 

Might be more "early Judaism" than "late Christianity" - but the point is that he's obeying his boss's orders in the early version.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/Satan

In its original appearance in the old Israelite faith tradition, "Satan" was actually a title — haSatan, or "the Satan". (The root s-t-n in Hebrew means "adversary" or "opponent", and ha is the definite article.) "haSatan" exclusively refers to the figure known as Satan, an angel who God commands to spread temptation among the human race, though in later tradition the being, and by extension the term, was broadened to refer to "yetzer hara", Evil Inclination, the counterpart to the Good Inclination, essentially making up Judaism's equivalent to the angel and devil on each shoulder (i.e., it is an internal rather than an external influence on human action). Without the prefix of "ha", the word "satan" was used to describe normal, human enemies, and was also used for mortal functionaries — often what would be called investigators or spymasters today — in the courts of earthly kings. However, on some occasions it also seems to refer to that spirit or angel in God's court who would test or question the faith of mortals. An analogy frequently used in rabbinical literature to describe this state of affairs is that of a prostitute a king hires to try to seduce his son: the prostitute, no less than the king, wants the son to pass the test and resist her advances, but is still obliged to work as hard as she can to make him fail because that's what the king wants.

 

What age of rabbinical literature are you referring too?

Anyways, this is very interesting, but it seems a bit off topic.

To reiterate, Palpatine's characterization does I think run into these deeper issues in literature and philosophy- @ColeFardreamer and myself being on two opposite sides of the debate. Straight up metaphysical evil, with no psychological humanization or some sort of story of pathology.

Basically it comes down to what you believe-both in terms of aesthetics, and the ultimate origin of human behavior. Which is, unfortunately not a reconcilable debate.

I do realize I'm arguing against the zeitgeist here, but I think having Palpatine be not evil in a straight up metaphysical or ontological sense is a betrayal of both the character, and SW' metaphysics as a whole.

 

Paradise Lost is quite sympathetic, and has even had influence over the church and theology.

But yes, in the Old Testament, Satan is not equates with the serpent and seems to be just doing his duty.

 

Yet also in the New Testament-Satan’s role as antagonist is explicit and stated many times, in the gospels, in very epistles, and the book of revelation. “That ancient serpent”-is used as a reference for Satan, I believe in Revelation 12. So…early Christians equated Satan with the serpent of Eden by 96 AD.

 

@Darth Invictus

I meant that no currently practiced religion sees human beings as being evil from birth. Born in sin, perhaps, but not evil in a real sense, because the act of being evil is the exercise of free will to turn away from good. But I see your point about Palpatine being human in name only. I don’t necessarily agree, but that does clarify your position, so thank you!

But I will say that although most canonical Christian texts do not really focus enough on the fallen angels to make them sympathetic, the notion that they did fall is still there, thus clarifying that God did not make the universe evil, that this is a choice inherent in free will, even for the angels. Whether that makes them sympathetic or not is a different question, but I think the essential theological point is that even they were not created evil.

Star Wars isn’t solely Christian in its influences, but I do think this religion largely informs Lucas’s views. And I do think that even in Star Wars, Palpatine was likely not born evil. Of course, because Lucas only created so many stories, the absence of an explicit backstory for Palpatine does mean fans can interpret him as purely evil. But I think that, as with Vader and other villains, the implication is that he probably wasn’t always that way, and that it was his choices that led him down the path toward becoming the Devil for these stories.