Ethics in Star Wars

[Ratman_tf]

I just watched Star Wars yesterday with my kids and within the span of two hours droids are treated as property, heroes, friends, and pets. Luke goes from buying literal robotic slaves to depending on them to help blow up the Death Star in like one hour. In fact he seems slightly more concerned that R2-D2 got blown up during the attack than his childhood friend (Biggs) getting blown to smithereens. And yet, he sort of just says, oh well, can you fix him, when they get back to base.

There's like no possible ethical system you can possibly apply here except pure schizophrenia.

I see it as pre-modern rather than schizophrenic. A lot of people see the high tech and terms like "Senate" and think of this as a post-Enlightenment society. However, I think Lucas sees it as a science fantasy epic closer to Ben Hur or Gladiator. The Galactic Senate is parallel to the Roman Senate, not a modern democracy.

There are queens and princesses and slaves and barbarians and cults and monsters and so forth. In ancient times of the real world, people could care for and even love slaves without being opposed to the institution of slavery.

I wouldn't say it's realistic or perfectly consistent, but the original trilogy premise of being an unenlightened society isn't schizophrenic. I think they're great fantasy films.

But the films never dwell on these topics. It's the fans who read slavery into droid ownership.
I think Lucas dipped into a bunch of sources for inspiration, and hodgepodged them all together. Robots are cool, and give them personalities because that's cool too.
Is droid ownership slavery? Huh, never thought about that angle. Here's a space battle! Kapow! Woosh! Blammo!

[Ratman_tf]

Star Wars is philosophically incoherent on several points, and droids are one of them, so it's best to take the MST3K theme song approach.

^^ THIS ^^

If you follow the rabbit hole of droid ethics in Star Wars, you end up at the same place that decided orcs are racist.

Yep. There's a video on youtube about "The Tragedy of Droids" by Pop Culture Detective. I haven't watched it because I suspect it's a tiresome discussion about droid slavery, and Pop Culture Detective is the creation of Jonathan McIntosh, the guy behind Anita Sarkesian, and a hardcore progressive knucklehead.
But this whole "Orcs are racist! Droid ownership is slavery!" all comes from the same place of inserting a certain brand of activism into pop culture.

At this point, it's fucking tiresome.

[jhkim]

I see it as pre-modern rather than schizophrenic. A lot of people see the high tech and terms like "Senate" and think of this as a post-Enlightenment society. However, I think Lucas sees it as a science fantasy epic closer to Ben Hur or Gladiator. The Galactic Senate is parallel to the Roman Senate, not a modern democracy.

There are queens and princesses and slaves and barbarians and cults and monsters and so forth. In ancient times of the real world, people could care for and even love slaves without being opposed to the institution of slavery.

I wouldn't say it's realistic or perfectly consistent, but the original trilogy premise of being an unenlightened society isn't schizophrenic. I think they're great fantasy films.

But the films never dwell on these topics. It's the fans who read slavery into droid ownership.
I think Lucas dipped into a bunch of sources for inspiration, and hodgepodged them all together. Robots are cool, and give them personalities because that's cool too.
Is droid ownership slavery? Huh, never thought about that angle. Here's a space battle! Kapow! Woosh! Blammo!

I agree that the films don't dwell on these topics, and it's hodgepodged together. There's lots of things that the creator didn't think about. It seemed to me that your original post implied that the creator were thinking deeply about things, because of the claims about storytelling devices.

I don't think the creators intended either:

• Droid personalities are an intentional allegorical storytelling device. The real droids are non-sentient machines without personality.
• Droids are an intentional allegory for slavery.

Rather, I believe the creators just didn't think these things through. So the question is, how does one regard this? There are plenty of other issues in Star Wars that don't fit with modern ethics:

• Human slavery is treated as normal in the prequels. The Jedi don't keep their own slaves, but they don't advocate against slavery in other communities.
• Clones are treated similarly to droids, despite being biologically human. They are born in a factory, force-trained as soldiers and conditioned to obey. The Jedi accept these people conditioned from birth as their soldiers.
• The Jedi in the prequels take children as toddlers away from their families, teach them not to form attachments or worry about their loved ones, and train them to fight.

With all these, I think the creators just didn't think things through. But then, if one is playing an RPG set in the Star Wars universe, how does one approach it?

I've generally played it straight. Droids are as they are shown in the movies, and societal attitudes are as they're shown in the movies. I've had droid PCs in a number of Star Wars games, for example. When I do that, their being treated as property inevitably comes up. I handle it like I would if I playing in a Roman-era historical game, say. Droids have personalities, and they are property.

[Valatar]

Realistically, I think it would be unfeasible for there to be a particularly ethical galactic government in the first place.  If you have hundreds or thousands of species on countless worlds, there is little common ground to agree on what is proper behavior.  The Turtloids of Gromulon 6 routinely eat their children, do we legislate against it?  The Republic clearly gave no fucks about slavery, seeing as it was going on and nobody so much as raised an eyebrow upon encountering it.  Jedi could roll into a bar and just start cutting off arms and tell the people in there to mind their damn business and nobody'd say anything.  I suspect that the Republic as a whole existed solely to control relationships between entire worlds/species and was not involved in regional laws in any way.

[Ratman_tf]

I agree that the films don't dwell on these topics, and it's hodgepodged together. There's lots of things that the creator didn't think about. It seemed to me that your original post implied that the creator were thinking deeply about things, because of the claims about storytelling devices.

My take on droids, and it's completely my take, since as I said, Star Wars is schizophrenic on the topic of droids being people or not:

Rather, I believe the creators just didn't think these things through. So the question is, how does one regard this? There are plenty of other issues in Star Wars that don't fit with modern ethics:

• Human slavery is treated as normal in the prequels. The Jedi don't keep their own slaves, but they don't advocate against slavery in other communities.

The Republic clearly gave no fucks about slavery, seeing as it was going on and nobody so much as raised an eyebrow upon encountering it.  Jedi could roll into a bar and just start cutting off arms and tell the people in there to mind their damn business and nobody'd say anything.  I suspect that the Republic as a whole existed solely to control relationships between entire worlds/species and was not involved in regional laws in any way.

Padme mentions that slavery is illegal in the Republic. Tatooine is a fringe world outside Republic juristiction.

And we in the first world turn a blind eye to child slavery and exploitation in order to get cheap good and resources for our consumer goods.

An outside observer might opine that Americans don't give two shits about slavery and simply outsource it to other countries.
I'll be some political pundits have made that argument.

And it's a good point that the Republic is not a monoculture. Aside from some very basic laws, like making slavery illegal, I also image they exist more to facilitate relations between members, and leave those members to govern themselves.

[Shrieking Banshee]

At this point, it's fucking tiresome.

I was about to make basically the exact same point. It's so fucking tiresome.

The Prequels Id say do have the nasty habit of wanting/eating the same cake. They want moral complexity but then also want to strip it out at the same time, but thats a separate problem.

[jhkim]

The Republic clearly gave no fucks about slavery, seeing as it was going on and nobody so much as raised an eyebrow upon encountering it.  Jedi could roll into a bar and just start cutting off arms and tell the people in there to mind their damn business and nobody'd say anything.  I suspect that the Republic as a whole existed solely to control relationships between entire worlds/species and was not involved in regional laws in any way.

And it's a good point that the Republic is not a monoculture. Aside from some very basic laws, like making slavery illegal, I also image they exist more to facilitate relations between members, and leave those members to govern themselves.

Agreed. The Republic seems extremely loose. It is even plausible for one member to militarily blockade another. i.e. The Trade Federation claims that its blockade of Naboo is legal, when they are both Republic members. (Picture New York blockading Rhode Island.) And the Jedi are suspicious but seem to buy this - i.e. they send ambassadors to negotiate rather than condemning the blockade on its face.

So at this point, I'm not sure whether we're disagreeing about the bigger picture.

Do you have a problem with droids in role-played Star Wars having personalities and intelligence as shown on the show?

I agree Padme says there are anti-slavery laws in the Republic, but more broadly, would you agree that the Republic isn't intended to be particularly modern and/or enlightened? i.e. My point about queens and princesses and slaves and barbarians and cults and monsters and so forth.

[David Johansen]

I think it's a very good point.  People are always quick to point at The Republic as a metaphor for modern America and its decline.  Particularly during the period of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when the decline into empire seemed immenent.

[Orphan81]

Ethics in Star Wars is the equivalent of looking for Ethics in Fairy Tales.

It's not to say they don't exist... but that the trappings are less important than the core story.

As much as I hate what Disney has done to the brand, before then I legitimately hated the majority of the Extended Universe (Not all of it mind you) and it's hardcore fans. Particularly people who categorized the Jedi as being 'evil' or tried to make some argument about "The Path of the Grey" being the true one.

The problem with trying to apply real world logic, ethics, and morality to the trappings of Fairy Tales, is that it misses the point entirely.

Take Little Red Riding Hood.
It's a story about not trusting strangers you meet on the road.

But we can be a Sophist and start getting into the nitty gritty... Why is the wolf the bad guy? The Wolf is obviously just a natural predator that wants to survive and eat... should we blame him for wanting to eat poor Red? Isn't the Woodsman who kills him the *REAL* Villain in this? The removal of the wolf probably upsets the whole natural eco system of the forest! The wolf helped cut down on the over abundance of Deer in the area, who will now be a hazard! And here you thought Red was the good guy, Ha!

It's the same bullshit, logic when applied to Star Wars.
"The Droids are enslaved, their fully functioning free thinking beings! And the people of the universe just disregard them and toss them away! Everyone in Star Wars is complict in slavery because of this!"
No... no they're not.... The droids are Pixies, Boggans, Brownies, Sprites, Goblins and the other helpful and sometimes harmful fae of fairy tales. They're window dressing, helpful faerie creatures that serve our main Heroes on their journeys. Sitting down and trying to think about who created the first Droids in Star Wars, and if they follow Assimov's three laws of robotics is entirely missing the point.

It's trying to treat the Star Wars universe as if it's Science Fiction..

STAR WARS IS NOT SCIENCE FICTION

It has the trappings, but it doesn't operate on Science Fiction rules or logic, and when you try and apply those types of things, it falls apart and it becomes stupid... and you end up with things like The Jedi being evil because they train children, and they deny basic human desires like procreation.

The Jedi are supposed to be a mixture of Kung Fu Shaolin monks and the Honorable Chilvearic Knights of old. They're supposed to be better than us, the epitome of what it means to be good and place others before ourselves.

You notice the original trilogy doesn't end with Luke Skywalker getting any bitches? But instead redeeming his father, and he does it without violence no less?

That's the point, Star Wars is a vehicle for telling morality tales and stories....

When these chuckefucks start trying to get into the nitty gritty of examining the trappings of the story... You should point at them and laugh for missing the forest for the trees.

[zer0th]

Ethics in Star Wars is the equivalent of looking for Ethics in Fairy Tales.

[...]

When these chuckefucks start trying to get into the nitty gritty of examining the trappings of the story... You should point at them and laugh for missing the forest for the trees.

Some of us are nerds and we can't help but discuss nerdy things as if they are serious business. Coming up with reasons within the fictional universe for why the windows in certain Star Trek starbases are three stories high is what keep us entertained.

[Ratman_tf]

The Republic clearly gave no fucks about slavery, seeing as it was going on and nobody so much as raised an eyebrow upon encountering it.  Jedi could roll into a bar and just start cutting off arms and tell the people in there to mind their damn business and nobody'd say anything.  I suspect that the Republic as a whole existed solely to control relationships between entire worlds/species and was not involved in regional laws in any way.

And it's a good point that the Republic is not a monoculture. Aside from some very basic laws, like making slavery illegal, I also image they exist more to facilitate relations between members, and leave those members to govern themselves.

Agreed. The Republic seems extremely loose. It is even plausible for one member to militarily blockade another. i.e. The Trade Federation claims that its blockade of Naboo is legal, when they are both Republic members. (Picture New York blockading Rhode Island.) And the Jedi are suspicious but seem to buy this - i.e. they send ambassadors to negotiate rather than condemning the blockade on its face.

So at this point, I'm not sure whether we're disagreeing about the bigger picture.

Do you have a problem with droids in role-played Star Wars having personalities and intelligence as shown on the show?

No. I have an issue with the topic of the ethics of droid ownership being analgous to slavery. I think the idea falls apart on examination because the concept of droid "personhood" is not sufficiently explored. Compare to Data or The Doctor in Star Trek, where the issues are brought up as issues.

I agree Padme says there are anti-slavery laws in the Republic, but more broadly, would you agree that the Republic isn't intended to be particularly modern and/or enlightened? i.e. My point about queens and princesses and slaves and barbarians and cults and monsters and so forth.

Orphan81 put it well. Star Wars ethics are Fairy Tale ethics. Even if we were to explore the "personhood" of droids (or clones) we'd have to do it from the angle of a fairy tale moral, and not a sci fi  approach of whether Star Wars is enlightened or not.

[Shrieking Banshee]

My beef with Star Wars is the confusing jedi execution. Brainwashing kids as unfeeling soldiers was always fucked up even as a kid. I don't care which religion it was based on.

[Ratman_tf]

My beef with Star Wars is the confusing jedi execution. Brainwashing kids as unfeeling soldiers was always fucked up even as a kid. I don't care which religion it was based on.

Like a lot of later Lucas ideas in Star Wars, I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, it seems like he's taking the line from Empire where Yoda says "He is too old to begin the training." literally.
On the other hand, it's not like they're trained to be "unfeeling soldiers". Young children are often put into martial arts programs, and sunday schools. Jedi are taught to love. They are also taught to resist attachment.

Imagine a guy pissed off that his wife slept around on him. Now imagine that guy with a light saber and force powers.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the pivotal moment for Anakin was when he went all force choke on Padme.

But the imagery of giving little kids light sabers to train with, weapons that are easily far more dangerous than real swords, just looks bizarre. Like training 9 year olds how on how to fire grenade launchers.

I probably agree with you, and just take exception at the line about unfeeling soldiers.

[Orphan81]

My beef with Star Wars is the confusing jedi execution. Brainwashing kids as unfeeling soldiers was always fucked up even as a kid. I don't care which religion it was based on.

Congratulations! You have failed basic comprehension! You're attempting to apply real world morality and ethics to what is essential a fairy tale.

Padawans are not "Brainwashed Child Soldiers" They are Squires and Iterant monks.

Jesus Christ this is exactly what I'm talking about when I mention some people take Star Wars WAY to fucking seriously and don't realize it uses fairy tale logic.

Ethics in Star Wars is the equivalent of looking for Ethics in Fairy Tales.

[...]

When these chuckefucks start trying to get into the nitty gritty of examining the trappings of the story... You should point at them and laugh for missing the forest for the trees.

Some of us are nerds and we can't help but discuss nerdy things as if they are serious business. Coming up with reasons within the fictional universe for why the windows in certain Star Trek starbases are three stories high is what keep us entertained.

There's a difference between trying to figure out why things work the way they do in Star Trek... a series that *IS* Science Fiction and attempts to have justifications for it's science and setting, no matter how hand waviey it gets... and trying to apply logic and reason for Star Wars which again *ISN'T SCIENCE FICTION*

Star Wars works on the rule of cool. That's it.... Do you really think George Lucas was worried about Droid rights or child soldiers when he created Star Wars? No... he put droids in because they were cool... He created Jedi because they were cool and fit the role of Mystic bad ass knights.

This is what I'm getting at... the moment you start applying the real world logic of snatching a child from their home to train them in a religious order to fight in religious wars... you're getting away from Star Wars....Kids want to be Jedi because you get cool powers and a light sword and you fight Evil... you get to be a Hero.

The reasoning behind the way things are in Star Wars is window dressing.

[Fheredin]

Star Wars was born of a genre kitbash, so it shouldn't really surprise you that it's philosophically inconsistent, but the treatment of droids isn't one of those points. In-universe, you have to have living biological tissue to a living being, therefore droids are not actually sentient, no matter how they behave. They are philosophical zombies. Normally you can't tell the difference between a philosophical zombie and a sentient being, but Star Wars is an exception of a universe because it has Force Sensitives, who can directly sense if a being is alive or not.

Most universes--especially science fiction-esque universes--do not have space wizards who can sense life. Star Wars does.

This isn't to say that Star Wars doesn't have ethical problems. The Jedi are hypocrites about many things because the Force is fundamentally not a good moral foundation which does not have a concept of individual rights, crime, justice, or rule of law. In-universe, those are things the Republic dreamed up on their own which don't really match with Jedi beliefs. Filoni has tried to put a pantheon of sorts into Star Wars to address this, with mixed success at best; Star Wars worked for the 70s generation because there wasn't a moral authority in it; just the Force. It doesn't work in the 2020s for the exact same reason; people resort to moral authority these days. So even if you use fairy tail logic as Orphan81 suggests, you still wind up with the conclusion that the Jedi are terrible because the Star Wars universe is fundamentally amoral.