Good Against the Living Wednesday, May 25, 2005

An interesting take from Orson Scott Card, courtesy of the neocon snarkmasters at Galley Slaves:

When the evil Palpatine says, “Good is a point of view--the Sith and the Jedi are almost the same,” we can dismiss this moral relativism as part of the deception of the dark side.

But in a pivotal scene, Obi-Wan says what amounts to the same thing: “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

Isn’t that odd? The only thing both sides agree on is that people who believe in absolute good and evil are bad!

I suspect that Lucas realized, after writing "Good is a point of view," that all his friends actually believed that. So he had to make it clear that moral relativism was the right way after all—so he had Obi-Wan say that absolutism was a Sith thing, even though in the actual story, the best of the Jedis show an unbending commitment to absolute Good.

It’s a terrible thing, I suppose, for a writer to invent a religion and then discover that he and all his friends are on the wrong side of it.

Card continues:

The Jedi may claim to be in favor of democracy, but in fact they function as a ruling elite, making their decisions among themselves. They occasionally submit to the authority of the legislature, and they seem to respect the rule of law, though whose law it’s hard to say. By and large, however, they decide among themselves what they’re going to do and when it’s OK to break the law and defy the civilian authority.

They are, in fact, utterly anti-democratic, like a militia that owes nothing to civilian authority.


Some of this echoes David Brin's old complaints about the series; the religious stuff is new and, I think, pretty damningly on target.

Did I mention I made Wrong Turn Jr. laugh--real ha-ha laughs--last night? This after Mrs. WTJ spent the whole day softening him up, of course. Fatherly accomplishments always take that caveat.

@ 7:20:00 AM,

1 Comments:

At 10:40 AM, Blogger Rob L. said...

Not to second-guess Lucas & his giant neck, but it seems like the Jedi Council is supposed to function like Plato's Republic - a ruling elite that is acting in the best interest of the citizens.

Has Brin said anything about the latest one yet?

 

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