I don't really have problem with the concept of Sith per se. Only how it has been portrayed in movies and some other sources. Like when playing KOTOR, you get dark side points when you force choke random people for fun. Thats not evil, its psychotic behaviour. I think D&D had a pretty good alignment system with Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil. Palpatine, Darth Vader, Darth Caedus etc, could be considered Lawful Evil. Even tho Darth Vader and Darth Maul display some Chaotic Evil tendencies, but at the end of the day they follow their own very strict moral code, believing what they do is right.
Any morality is complex to define, especially when it is fictional. However, there are some acts that human have considered "evil" or "cruel" in most ages. You can further cloud the topic to a emotional base that can include sense of righteousness, religious views or philosophy (or any -ism). For me, being "evil" essentially always comes down to a fact that you are wilfully doing something wrong even tho you very well know it is wrong, and by doing so causes harm to others.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
You know, to bind it back to SWTOR: I am a bit wary of Biowares ability to really make believable evil. Let me bring 2 examples.
First, in Dragon Age Origins, I was supposed to gather help against the Darkspawn and recruit all kind of people. One of these were under siege in some city, forgot the name, so it was logical to help. Not out of goodness, necessarily, but because you NEED every hand and sword. Now, those men in the city have no armor and bad weapons, but there is a blacksmith, who in turn only forges armor and weapons if you promise to look after his lost daughter. Then Morrigan bitches against that and gives you -10, because she is selfish "evil". And that is where I thought "WTF"? Because even for purely selfish reasons: we NEED those men, and we need them in best armour to fight the threat! There was no alternative. And on top, I needed the XP, which of course I can not say.
Second, an exmple Daniel Erickson told about in an interview, explaining the Sith ideology. You are, as Sith, educated by a mentor. Later on a higher up Sith sees you potential, wants you as pupil, and orders you to execute your first mentor. WHY? It just makes no sense even as evil! He is not the "darwinistic weak" who "needs to be wiped out", because he succesfully did what is his function: finding potent recruits! So he is actually good at what his job is! And you just kill a teacher so the Empire has to educate a new teacher. Waste of money and investment! And there would be a plethora of ways to prove your power. It is just where even as evil it makes no sense to me. Killing people just to show how evil you are is not evil, it's just psycho-nuts!
Morrigan isn't really evil. She is, again, a social darwinist. She doesn't help the blacksmith because she believes that helping him will weaken him and as such is actually hurting him.
Morrigan genuinely believes saving the blacksmith's daughter will hurt the blacksmith.
If you've went through most of Morrigan's conversations you'll notice she has a very clear picture on how the world's supposed to be. And if anything happens outside of that, like feeling love towards the PC, she gets highly uncomfortable.
The blacksmith's not supposed to get help, that's not how Morrigan's world works. When you do help him she doesn't like it because it just makes her uncomfortable, she's very strict in her beliefs.
Even when she's forced to ask the PC for help against her mother you'll notice her tone of voice changes and she's not really comfortable getting help. Because that's not how the world's supposed to be, but she's got no choice so she forces herself.
As to your second example, in any society like the Sith's not all will be 'good' citiziens (good as in upholding the Sith ideology). Some will be genuine psychopaths. And in a Sith society the difference between good citizen and psychopath is a small one and as such quite hard to detect. Not to mention that the psychopaths fulfill a usefull role of predator in the Sith's social eco-system. If you aren't smart enough to defend yourself from psychopaths you die. And if the psychopaths aren't carefull enough and kill too many or the wrong people they die.
Just look at any 'evil' societies in our history. Most of it's members will uphold the ideology and follow it. But there will be a pretty decent amount of psychopaths who feed off the system and use it to cover their own psychopathic tendencies.
I don't know if you've ever seen "Schindler's List" but there's one camp commandant who isn't really a Nazi, he's a psychopath. He doesn't really follow the Nazi ideology, he just wants to be feared and respected. He goes out shooting Jewish prisoners from his balcony whenever he feels like it all the while being infatuated with his Jewish housekeeper. It's probably known that he's at least a bit psychopathic, but he fulfills a genuine purpose in the system so he's kept around even if there's a bodycount.
That higher up could easily be a psychopath as well. But as long as he fulfills a very usefull purpose and he keeps his victims to those who don't matter all that much his superiors keep him around. That recruiter isn't all that important; Sure, he does his job. But he's replaceable. At least more easily replaced then the psychopath. So the system keeps the psychopath around and allows him to kill off the recruiter.
We are the bunny. Resistance is futile. ''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\ ( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o) (")("),,(")("),(")(")
You have forgotten one point, moral, the Sith do not follow any standardised moral conduits and thus are dubbed as Evil. That is one point in the relation between a certain individual being considered good or bad, morals.
I think the problem is that the "Dark Side" was mean to encase all that is evil and the "Light" was meant to encase all that was good and each side had to make those "moral choices" which would cummulatively shove you back and forth. In MMO's there are few who just want to be pure evil - which is what you get in the "Dark Side". Some make romatisize that the Dark Side always had an aspect of the Light in it (yin and yang) but I believe it was much more of a clear cut situation in the story.
So I really think there was some modification made to allow more of a yin and yang aspect of morality to seep into the two factions so the audience would be split a little more evenly.
I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
Morrigan isn't really evil. She is, again, a social darwinist. She doesn't help the blacksmith because she believes that helping him will weaken him and as such is actually hurting him.
....
I think that a problem we all have is that we try to "paint" a person as good or evil, but this isn't really the way it works. The way I see it, ACTIONS can be good or evil, but a person is just a person. A person can do many evil things and you could call this person evil, but you run into difficulties when the entire complexity of their life is brought to light.
For example, consider a boy who kills his brother because they were fighting over a girl as teenagers. This seems pretty evil, you would probably say this is an evil boy. But then imagine that the boy feels terrible for what he did and decides to spend his life trying to make the world a better place. He joins the peace corps, donates all his money to charity, and in the end, he winds up saving hundreds of lives.
Now, was this person evil? Certainly the murder of his brother was evil, but his other actions were undeniably good. So it's difficult to just label him as evil.
Further, what if the boy had died shortly after killing his brother. You might call him evil then because his life consisted of not much more than murdering his brother. Would he be evil then because he never had a chance to redeem himself? What if he intended to redeem himself but never got the chance because his life was cut short?
The point is, it isn't simple. You can't really label Morrigan as evil, she is more complicated than that. But she definitely DOES evil things.
I think the problem is that the "Dark Side" was mean to encase all that is evil and the "Light" was meant to encase all that was good and each side had to make those "moral choices" which would cummulatively shove you back and forth. In MMO's there are few who just want to be pure evil - which is what you get in the "Dark Side". Some make romatisize that the Dark Side always had an aspect of the Light in it (yin and yang) but I believe it was much more of a clear cut situation in the story.
So I really think there was some modification made to allow more of a yin and yang aspect of morality to seep into the two factions so the audience would be split a little more evenly.
I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
Actually Anakin brought balance to the force, not Luke.
I always thought that the whole Dark Side - Light Side thing was more a matter of selfishness versus a zen-buddhist style of harmony and balance, at least that's what Jedi reminded me of, how Lucas portrayed them and their doctrine in the first movies.
Dark Side would be where selfishness overrules everything else in the choices made, where as Light Side was more about being in harmony and balance within oneself and the world.
To illustrate: being selfish as a society could lead to neglect of nature and plant and animal life, selfishly using up resources until a point is reached that such a disruptive, selfish behaviour even threatens the whole earth and most life on it. The selfish path and ways of the Dark Side. While a Light Side approach would mean more consideration for the needs of others and the world we live in, it would lead to 'balance with the world'.
So not so much a Christian/religious view of morality, good and evil, but Dark Side versus Light Side more being about selfishness vs harmony/balance.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I think that a problem we all have is that we try to "paint" a person as good or evil, but this isn't really the way it works. The way I see it, ACTIONS can be good or evil, but a person is just a person. A person can do many evil things and you could call this person evil, but you run into difficulties when the entire complexity of their life is brought to light.
For example, consider a boy who kills his brother because they were fighting over a girl as teenagers. This seems pretty evil, you would probably say this is an evil boy. But then imagine that the boy feels terrible for what he did and decides to spend his life trying to make the world a better place. He joins the peace corps, donates all his money to charity, and in the end, he winds up saving hundreds of lives.
Now, was this person evil? Certainly the murder of his brother was evil, but his other actions were undeniably good. So it's difficult to just label him as evil.
Further, what if the boy had died shortly after killing his brother. You might call him evil then because his life consisted of not much more than murdering his brother. Would he be evil then because he never had a chance to redeem himself? What if he intended to redeem himself but never got the chance because his life was cut short?
The point is, it isn't simple. You can't really label Morrigan as evil, she is more complicated than that. But she definitely DOES evil things.
I think that's overall the OP's problem. He's trying to define both Morrigan and the Sith by their worst actions instead of the totality of their actions.
The Sith definitely do a LOT of evil things. But that's not all they do.
If you only look at their evil actions then they'll make a very implausable society.
But if you look at the totality of their actions they become a lot more plausable.
I don't think such a society could ever really sustain in reality, there's enough gaps in the ideology to fail. But as far as fantasy societies go I think it's actually one of the more interesting and plausible ones when comparing it to other popular franchises.
We are the bunny. Resistance is futile. ''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\ ( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o) (")("),,(")("),(")(")
You have forgotten one point, moral, the Sith do not follow any standardised moral conduits and thus are dubbed as Evil. That is one point in the relation between a certain individual being considered good or bad, morals.
Different morals are not no morals. The sith have a pretty stricth moral code that they follow, it is just drasticly different than most of ours.
I think you're right that we agree a lot, I think we are talking past each other.
I'm not faulting Lucas at all for not making "deep" movies, there is no way possible to fit all the lore that has added up over there years from the HUNDREDS of books and games into the movies. Even the longest running animes (600+ episodes, thats over 200 hours) can't fit the depth Star Wars has gained from it's long run.
What I am saying is that the perception of "Evil sith" is rooted in the fact that when we all first met them, in episode 4, they were very much evil. They were written that way through and through. You might be right, Lucas couldn't afford to go into depth about them, though I believe he hadn't even thought most of it up, for his first movie. But I'm not talking about his reasons, just that in the end, episodes 4-6 were about good guys vs bad guys.
These days it isn't like that, it has gotten deeper, but we all still hold that preconceived notion from the original that the sith are evil, even if has grown past that. That is working pretty hard against the sith.
I learned Star Wars when Jedi were an opressed... well not minority, 2 jedi vs 2 sith at the start, just an opressed group of people who were sagely, kind, and helpful. In episode 1-3 I saw the jedi as facist, raging assholes who kidnap children at the age of 3, but god forbid they accept an 8 year old who their brainwashing may not effect... and god forbid they save his mother either. Now compare that to Anakin and his slaughter of the younglings, both seem pretty awful to me.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
I don't think such a society could ever really sustain in reality, there's enough gaps in the ideology to fail.
I defy you to name one society that doesn't have tons of gaps in the ideology. People make things work despite their flaws because we havn't (won't) find anything without flaws.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
I think the problem is that the "Dark Side" was mean to encase all that is evil and the "Light" was meant to encase all that was good and each side had to make those "moral choices" which would cummulatively shove you back and forth. In MMO's there are few who just want to be pure evil - which is what you get in the "Dark Side". Some make romatisize that the Dark Side always had an aspect of the Light in it (yin and yang) but I believe it was much more of a clear cut situation in the story.
So I really think there was some modification made to allow more of a yin and yang aspect of morality to seep into the two factions so the audience would be split a little more evenly.
I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
Actually Anakin brought balance to the force, not Luke.
Granted, but he still basically did this by eliminating the Sith (the emperor and himself).
I think the problem is that the "Dark Side" was mean to encase all that is evil and the "Light" was meant to encase all that was good and each side had to make those "moral choices" which would cummulatively shove you back and forth. In MMO's there are few who just want to be pure evil - which is what you get in the "Dark Side". Some make romatisize that the Dark Side always had an aspect of the Light in it (yin and yang) but I believe it was much more of a clear cut situation in the story.
So I really think there was some modification made to allow more of a yin and yang aspect of morality to seep into the two factions so the audience would be split a little more evenly.
I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
Actually Anakin brought balance to the force, not Luke.
Granted, but he still basically did this by eliminating the Sith (the emperor and himself).
I thought he did did it by wiping out the Jedi: at the end of episode 3 there are two Jedi and two Sith.
I think the problem is that the "Dark Side" was mean to encase all that is evil and the "Light" was meant to encase all that was good and each side had to make those "moral choices" which would cummulatively shove you back and forth. In MMO's there are few who just want to be pure evil - which is what you get in the "Dark Side". Some make romatisize that the Dark Side always had an aspect of the Light in it (yin and yang) but I believe it was much more of a clear cut situation in the story.
So I really think there was some modification made to allow more of a yin and yang aspect of morality to seep into the two factions so the audience would be split a little more evenly.
I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
Actually Anakin brought balance to the force, not Luke.
Granted, but he still basically did this by eliminating the Sith (the emperor and himself).
I thought he did did it by wiping out the Jedi: at the end of episode 3 there are two Jedi and two Sith.
True, but at the end of episode 6 there is one Jedi and 0 Sith . According to the movies at least. And that's when Anakin's story really ended.
Elikal: "Ok, I get this. How much holiday and spare time do I get I mean, I want some times where I can peacefully have a coke, a burger and watch some old Golden Girls episodes
No more need be said, your fall to the Dark Side is complete....
Anyone and everyone can feel free to disagree with any or all of my opinions and observations whenever I rarely post them; it doesn't bother me one bit. Just know that I'll likely never respond to YOUR disagreement or personal attack, because I know better than to argue with idiots, especially upon internet Forums. See what I did there? -- Dinidain
Examples of an evil civilization in dominant leadership using corruption, fear, oppresion, hateful violence (including torture) exists right now, in the 21st century, right infront of us. There is close to literally a sith academy in the capital city of the country that runs the world (A hint? It's named after a shape).
It's hard to ignore that the majority of the world lives under the poverty line and in most cases it's just plain old slavery and their lives are controlled on a whim by mad dictators who take orders from a heirachy that seems to live in the shadows.
The only absurdities I see with the sith are their overwhelming need to focus their entire endgame plan on killing all jedi. A couple of guys here had a good point; The sith believe in self empowerment while the jedi believe in self surrender and in both cases it's via "the force". So considering the shared source of power you can probably assume that a connection to a polar opposite causes friction sort of like nuclear technology race.
The plausible and implausible evil already exist in their most villanous forms today and the fact that it's not widely recognized has always been a puzzle to me. It's more of a matter that the implausible is true and that facing reality is the the part left unrecognized. Anyhow, I think the sith version of evil is closer to.. evil simplified or..evil for dummies rather than a misrepresentation. On that note I'm not sure anyone does anything for unselfish reasons. You help someone because you want to or co-operate because you want to, in order to be unselfish you would have to surrender your will involuntarily like brainwashing.
In the case of the sith, at various times covert backstabbing was the norm, but in the rule of two, post bane era, you could argue that since it was expected of the apprentice to eventually kill the master it wasn't backstabbing at all but something else. I'm not sure if it's really backstabbing if it's wanted and expected, I'll file it into the weird category.
Reading the memiors of professional evil people like certain former VP's there is more then a glimpse of what we would judge evil. However, not being a professional evil person with years of experience doing evil stuff makes it hard to reproduce and represent it in any accurate capacity. Similar to any specialized field, unless you have first hand extensive knowledge then ignorance of the truth of the thing is the default state of mind.
Now add the mystical force into it and you have yourself some gumbo. As for human aspect, I don't know about the nature of living organisms other than they have the need to survive and reproduce. If behaviours all stem from a more complex version of those needs /shrug.
Bottom line is that worse men then the sith run our world now, so if it were the sith, maybe things might not be so bad?
BTW, how much of the nature of "the sith" are related to the original genetic race vs human nature?
There is close to literally a sith academy in the capital city of the country that runs the world (A hint? It's named after a shape).
'America' does not run the world... sure, some Americans are involved in running the world, but lots of nationalities are (as much as the term even means anything now). In the post government era the power does not lie in the hand of the visible agencies.
IMO, Lucas didn't really design a very sophisticated 3 dimensional model of human behavior into his story. Rather he presnted a much more shallow, 2D, comic book version of good/evil. That's why it's hard to swallow the Sith as a "realistic" model of a society. He further compounded the issue by injecting his own sorta pseudo-Eastern personal philosophy into the unvierse.... that is quite different from what individuals used to classical western models of good/evil can recognize.....not to mention the fact that it's not entirely internaly consistant across the story.
That aside something like Sith society (IMO) could be made to function with a few small but important changes. The social darwinistic aspect of said society is not unrealistic. What's unrealistic is that there doesn't seem to be any social constraints on the conditions under which internal conflict, aggression or betrayel occur. That's what makes it unstable and implausible. The idea that one would advance to a position of power/dominance by besting ones rivals/master is a well supported concept in animal (or social behavior).... but almost always there is some construct surrounding the socialy acceptable conditions/methodology which confine how, when and where that contest takes place.
For example "Trial by Combat" was a method of resolving certain types of disputes which as accepted and persisted throughout much of the historical middle ages on earth. At the same time, vanquishing ones foe by hiring thier servant to poison them before the combat would have been a socialy unacceptable excersize of that concept.
Likewise the Sith gaining power by defeating thier masters/rivals is an entirely plausable (if harsh) method of advancement for a human society.....not having any constraints as to how/when/where that method would be enacted would be what destabilized such a society.
For me sith and jedi are more akin to order and chaos then it is good and evil. In the sith your station is not determined by your master so much as your abbility to show he/she is weaker then you, where as in jedi your master or the counsel determines when you are ready to climb up into the next rank . Both systems have a structure about them, but one (the jedi) is more regimented and controled while the other (the sith) can change without warning. Trully bothof these are flawed in that the jedi will stagnate within the confines of their strutures and systems; yet the sith with collapse over time within their shifting and changing setting. Saddly good and evil are perspectives that are influenced by what the person precieving holds true, as such any act can be seen as goof or evil. Examples would be world war 2, the inquisition, or even the crusades can be both good and evil based on what side you were on. In the sith you learn and gain what knowledge and power you can from your master till you have gained alll you can, at which point you are able to succecced him in the order, as such you need to cement your relationship with him/her (both knowing it will come to one of you killing the other, yet you both needing each other.) to warrent them teaching you what they know while they use you to further their own aims as well. In alot of ways the sith are like a symbiot with one giving to gain a benefit from the other, but then becoming a parasitic relationship as one grows closer in power to the other.
Also not every failure or mistake was punishable by death merely those that warrented it, as if a sith killed every sobordanate he would have none to work for him as such it was more at his choice what to do. If you watch and read many sth lords allowed powerful or useful sabordantes to live after failing simply out of their worth to them. Also in a society that is based around being the best and furthering your aims you would naturally seek to learn and proform your tasks to the best you could even training to improve more offen. The other thing that makes sith society to me atleast seem stronger is that your average power within their ranks is higher since each person is much more powerful then thier counterpart in the republic, also sicne more weaker jedi are trained it actually reduces to a large extent the power fo that group with one sith being eual to several of tthese weaker (potentially) jedi.The sith did also have a unifying element in that they wished to avernge their loss in the last war they had with the jedi, and so they had a single enemy to unite them in a cause that focued there efforts.
'Evil' does not exist... it is just an invented subjective label.
Nothing exists. Everything is an invented subjective label.
Thank you. Vesavius is just arguing semantics now, which adds nothing to the discussion. The OP premise isn't flawed at all as he simply put forth an idea and has been pretty open to outside views.
+1 for what a forum topic should be.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
'Evil' does not exist... it is just an invented subjective label.
Nothing exists. Everything is an invented subjective label.
Thank you. Vesavius is just arguing semantics now, which adds nothing to the discussion. The OP premise isn't flawed at all as he simply put forth an idea and has been pretty open to outside views.
+1 for what a forum topic should be.
lol he just supports what I was saying, he dosen't disprove it. I agree with him.
Maybe before you get critical about people 'derailing' you should check your own posts that do nothing but flame and drag it down the road of a personal squabble.
FYI, saying the entire OP is flawed IS adding to the discussion on hand. I even say WHY is it flawed. I am sorry you do not approve, but next time try not to be a hypocrite about it?
No he doesn't support what you are saying. Your attempt to invalidate an entire argument with the remark that a word is "subjective" is silly. He points out that it is silly by stating that if we decided to follow your logic every discussion in the history of mankind would be invalid because we use language which is just a bunch of invented subjective lables.
I've done zero derailing thank you, as I've found the entire thread before your posts quite interesting. Please take your Ad Hominem out of this somewhat insightful thread.
If you are going to accuse me of doing nothing but "flame and drag it down the road of a personal squabble" please support your claim or report it to a moderator. Your strawman argument does nothing to support your claims.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
I just can not find it plausible or believable that a society could exist on a concept where every single individual fights only for himself, his own benefit and backstabs everyone at every opportunity.
You should try sitting in on an executive MBA ethics class some time. aka: "Greed is good 101"
Comments
I don't really have problem with the concept of Sith per se. Only how it has been portrayed in movies and some other sources. Like when playing KOTOR, you get dark side points when you force choke random people for fun. Thats not evil, its psychotic behaviour. I think D&D had a pretty good alignment system with Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil. Palpatine, Darth Vader, Darth Caedus etc, could be considered Lawful Evil. Even tho Darth Vader and Darth Maul display some Chaotic Evil tendencies, but at the end of the day they follow their own very strict moral code, believing what they do is right.
Any morality is complex to define, especially when it is fictional. However, there are some acts that human have considered "evil" or "cruel" in most ages. You can further cloud the topic to a emotional base that can include sense of righteousness, religious views or philosophy (or any -ism). For me, being "evil" essentially always comes down to a fact that you are wilfully doing something wrong even tho you very well know it is wrong, and by doing so causes harm to others.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Morrigan isn't really evil. She is, again, a social darwinist. She doesn't help the blacksmith because she believes that helping him will weaken him and as such is actually hurting him.
Morrigan genuinely believes saving the blacksmith's daughter will hurt the blacksmith.
If you've went through most of Morrigan's conversations you'll notice she has a very clear picture on how the world's supposed to be. And if anything happens outside of that, like feeling love towards the PC, she gets highly uncomfortable.
The blacksmith's not supposed to get help, that's not how Morrigan's world works. When you do help him she doesn't like it because it just makes her uncomfortable, she's very strict in her beliefs.
Even when she's forced to ask the PC for help against her mother you'll notice her tone of voice changes and she's not really comfortable getting help. Because that's not how the world's supposed to be, but she's got no choice so she forces herself.
As to your second example, in any society like the Sith's not all will be 'good' citiziens (good as in upholding the Sith ideology). Some will be genuine psychopaths. And in a Sith society the difference between good citizen and psychopath is a small one and as such quite hard to detect. Not to mention that the psychopaths fulfill a usefull role of predator in the Sith's social eco-system. If you aren't smart enough to defend yourself from psychopaths you die. And if the psychopaths aren't carefull enough and kill too many or the wrong people they die.
Just look at any 'evil' societies in our history. Most of it's members will uphold the ideology and follow it. But there will be a pretty decent amount of psychopaths who feed off the system and use it to cover their own psychopathic tendencies.
I don't know if you've ever seen "Schindler's List" but there's one camp commandant who isn't really a Nazi, he's a psychopath. He doesn't really follow the Nazi ideology, he just wants to be feared and respected. He goes out shooting Jewish prisoners from his balcony whenever he feels like it all the while being infatuated with his Jewish housekeeper. It's probably known that he's at least a bit psychopathic, but he fulfills a genuine purpose in the system so he's kept around even if there's a bodycount.
That higher up could easily be a psychopath as well. But as long as he fulfills a very usefull purpose and he keeps his victims to those who don't matter all that much his superiors keep him around. That recruiter isn't all that important; Sure, he does his job. But he's replaceable. At least more easily replaced then the psychopath. So the system keeps the psychopath around and allows him to kill off the recruiter.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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I agree. I always thought that the "Dark Side" was portrayed as more of a "corruption" of the pure (light side) force than the other side of the coin (balance).
They say that Luke brought balance to the force. But he did this by basically destroying the Sith (in the movie at least, I don't know what the books did). So if the state of balance is where Jedis are in absolute control and Sith are either destroyed or put into hiding, then I don't see how the light and dark sides can have a "yin yang" relationship.
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I think that a problem we all have is that we try to "paint" a person as good or evil, but this isn't really the way it works. The way I see it, ACTIONS can be good or evil, but a person is just a person. A person can do many evil things and you could call this person evil, but you run into difficulties when the entire complexity of their life is brought to light.
For example, consider a boy who kills his brother because they were fighting over a girl as teenagers. This seems pretty evil, you would probably say this is an evil boy. But then imagine that the boy feels terrible for what he did and decides to spend his life trying to make the world a better place. He joins the peace corps, donates all his money to charity, and in the end, he winds up saving hundreds of lives.
Now, was this person evil? Certainly the murder of his brother was evil, but his other actions were undeniably good. So it's difficult to just label him as evil.
Further, what if the boy had died shortly after killing his brother. You might call him evil then because his life consisted of not much more than murdering his brother. Would he be evil then because he never had a chance to redeem himself? What if he intended to redeem himself but never got the chance because his life was cut short?
The point is, it isn't simple. You can't really label Morrigan as evil, she is more complicated than that. But she definitely DOES evil things.
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Actually Anakin brought balance to the force, not Luke.
In Bioware we trust!
I always thought that the whole Dark Side - Light Side thing was more a matter of selfishness versus a zen-buddhist style of harmony and balance, at least that's what Jedi reminded me of, how Lucas portrayed them and their doctrine in the first movies.
Dark Side would be where selfishness overrules everything else in the choices made, where as Light Side was more about being in harmony and balance within oneself and the world.
To illustrate: being selfish as a society could lead to neglect of nature and plant and animal life, selfishly using up resources until a point is reached that such a disruptive, selfish behaviour even threatens the whole earth and most life on it. The selfish path and ways of the Dark Side. While a Light Side approach would mean more consideration for the needs of others and the world we live in, it would lead to 'balance with the world'.
So not so much a Christian/religious view of morality, good and evil, but Dark Side versus Light Side more being about selfishness vs harmony/balance.
Anyway, my 2 pennies.
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I think that's overall the OP's problem. He's trying to define both Morrigan and the Sith by their worst actions instead of the totality of their actions.
The Sith definitely do a LOT of evil things. But that's not all they do.
If you only look at their evil actions then they'll make a very implausable society.
But if you look at the totality of their actions they become a lot more plausable.
I don't think such a society could ever really sustain in reality, there's enough gaps in the ideology to fail. But as far as fantasy societies go I think it's actually one of the more interesting and plausible ones when comparing it to other popular franchises.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
Different morals are not no morals. The sith have a pretty stricth moral code that they follow, it is just drasticly different than most of ours.
@Popinjay
I think you're right that we agree a lot, I think we are talking past each other.
I'm not faulting Lucas at all for not making "deep" movies, there is no way possible to fit all the lore that has added up over there years from the HUNDREDS of books and games into the movies. Even the longest running animes (600+ episodes, thats over 200 hours) can't fit the depth Star Wars has gained from it's long run.
What I am saying is that the perception of "Evil sith" is rooted in the fact that when we all first met them, in episode 4, they were very much evil. They were written that way through and through. You might be right, Lucas couldn't afford to go into depth about them, though I believe he hadn't even thought most of it up, for his first movie. But I'm not talking about his reasons, just that in the end, episodes 4-6 were about good guys vs bad guys.
These days it isn't like that, it has gotten deeper, but we all still hold that preconceived notion from the original that the sith are evil, even if has grown past that. That is working pretty hard against the sith.
I learned Star Wars when Jedi were an opressed... well not minority, 2 jedi vs 2 sith at the start, just an opressed group of people who were sagely, kind, and helpful. In episode 1-3 I saw the jedi as facist, raging assholes who kidnap children at the age of 3, but god forbid they accept an 8 year old who their brainwashing may not effect... and god forbid they save his mother either. Now compare that to Anakin and his slaughter of the younglings, both seem pretty awful to me.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
I defy you to name one society that doesn't have tons of gaps in the ideology. People make things work despite their flaws because we havn't (won't) find anything without flaws.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Granted, but he still basically did this by eliminating the Sith (the emperor and himself).
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I thought he did did it by wiping out the Jedi: at the end of episode 3 there are two Jedi and two Sith.
True, but at the end of episode 6 there is one Jedi and 0 Sith
. According to the movies at least. And that's when Anakin's story really ended.
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No more need be said, your fall to the Dark Side is complete....
Anyone and everyone can feel free to disagree with any or all of my opinions and observations whenever I rarely post them; it doesn't bother me one bit. Just know that I'll likely never respond to YOUR disagreement or personal attack, because I know better than to argue with idiots, especially upon internet Forums. See what I did there? -- Dinidain
Examples of an evil civilization in dominant leadership using corruption, fear, oppresion, hateful violence (including torture) exists right now, in the 21st century, right infront of us. There is close to literally a sith academy in the capital city of the country that runs the world (A hint? It's named after a shape).
It's hard to ignore that the majority of the world lives under the poverty line and in most cases it's just plain old slavery and their lives are controlled on a whim by mad dictators who take orders from a heirachy that seems to live in the shadows.
The only absurdities I see with the sith are their overwhelming need to focus their entire endgame plan on killing all jedi. A couple of guys here had a good point; The sith believe in self empowerment while the jedi believe in self surrender and in both cases it's via "the force". So considering the shared source of power you can probably assume that a connection to a polar opposite causes friction sort of like nuclear technology race.
The plausible and implausible evil already exist in their most villanous forms today and the fact that it's not widely recognized has always been a puzzle to me. It's more of a matter that the implausible is true and that facing reality is the the part left unrecognized. Anyhow, I think the sith version of evil is closer to.. evil simplified or..evil for dummies rather than a misrepresentation. On that note I'm not sure anyone does anything for unselfish reasons. You help someone because you want to or co-operate because you want to, in order to be unselfish you would have to surrender your will involuntarily like brainwashing.
In the case of the sith, at various times covert backstabbing was the norm, but in the rule of two, post bane era, you could argue that since it was expected of the apprentice to eventually kill the master it wasn't backstabbing at all but something else. I'm not sure if it's really backstabbing if it's wanted and expected, I'll file it into the weird category.
Reading the memiors of professional evil people like certain former VP's there is more then a glimpse of what we would judge evil. However, not being a professional evil person with years of experience doing evil stuff makes it hard to reproduce and represent it in any accurate capacity. Similar to any specialized field, unless you have first hand extensive knowledge then ignorance of the truth of the thing is the default state of mind.
Now add the mystical force into it and you have yourself some gumbo. As for human aspect, I don't know about the nature of living organisms other than they have the need to survive and reproduce. If behaviours all stem from a more complex version of those needs /shrug.
Bottom line is that worse men then the sith run our world now, so if it were the sith, maybe things might not be so bad?
BTW, how much of the nature of "the sith" are related to the original genetic race vs human nature?
"LOL"
Agreed.
The entire pemise of the OP is flawed tbh.
'Evil' does not exist... it is just an invented subjective label.
'America' does not run the world... sure, some Americans are involved in running the world, but lots of nationalities are (as much as the term even means anything now). In the post government era the power does not lie in the hand of the visible agencies.
Nothing exists. Everything is an invented subjective label.
IMO, Lucas didn't really design a very sophisticated 3 dimensional model of human behavior into his story. Rather he presnted a much more shallow, 2D, comic book version of good/evil. That's why it's hard to swallow the Sith as a "realistic" model of a society. He further compounded the issue by injecting his own sorta pseudo-Eastern personal philosophy into the unvierse.... that is quite different from what individuals used to classical western models of good/evil can recognize.....not to mention the fact that it's not entirely internaly consistant across the story.
That aside something like Sith society (IMO) could be made to function with a few small but important changes. The social darwinistic aspect of said society is not unrealistic. What's unrealistic is that there doesn't seem to be any social constraints on the conditions under which internal conflict, aggression or betrayel occur. That's what makes it unstable and implausible. The idea that one would advance to a position of power/dominance by besting ones rivals/master is a well supported concept in animal (or social behavior).... but almost always there is some construct surrounding the socialy acceptable conditions/methodology which confine how, when and where that contest takes place.
For example "Trial by Combat" was a method of resolving certain types of disputes which as accepted and persisted throughout much of the historical middle ages on earth. At the same time, vanquishing ones foe by hiring thier servant to poison them before the combat would have been a socialy unacceptable excersize of that concept.
Likewise the Sith gaining power by defeating thier masters/rivals is an entirely plausable (if harsh) method of advancement for a human society.....not having any constraints as to how/when/where that method would be enacted would be what destabilized such a society.
For me sith and jedi are more akin to order and chaos then it is good and evil. In the sith your station is not determined by your master so much as your abbility to show he/she is weaker then you, where as in jedi your master or the counsel determines when you are ready to climb up into the next rank . Both systems have a structure about them, but one (the jedi) is more regimented and controled while the other (the sith) can change without warning. Trully bothof these are flawed in that the jedi will stagnate within the confines of their strutures and systems; yet the sith with collapse over time within their shifting and changing setting. Saddly good and evil are perspectives that are influenced by what the person precieving holds true, as such any act can be seen as goof or evil. Examples would be world war 2, the inquisition, or even the crusades can be both good and evil based on what side you were on. In the sith you learn and gain what knowledge and power you can from your master till you have gained alll you can, at which point you are able to succecced him in the order, as such you need to cement your relationship with him/her (both knowing it will come to one of you killing the other, yet you both needing each other.) to warrent them teaching you what they know while they use you to further their own aims as well. In alot of ways the sith are like a symbiot with one giving to gain a benefit from the other, but then becoming a parasitic relationship as one grows closer in power to the other.
Also not every failure or mistake was punishable by death merely those that warrented it, as if a sith killed every sobordanate he would have none to work for him as such it was more at his choice what to do. If you watch and read many sth lords allowed powerful or useful sabordantes to live after failing simply out of their worth to them. Also in a society that is based around being the best and furthering your aims you would naturally seek to learn and proform your tasks to the best you could even training to improve more offen. The other thing that makes sith society to me atleast seem stronger is that your average power within their ranks is higher since each person is much more powerful then thier counterpart in the republic, also sicne more weaker jedi are trained it actually reduces to a large extent the power fo that group with one sith being eual to several of tthese weaker (potentially) jedi.The sith did also have a unifying element in that they wished to avernge their loss in the last war they had with the jedi, and so they had a single enemy to unite them in a cause that focued there efforts.
Thank you. Vesavius is just arguing semantics now, which adds nothing to the discussion. The OP premise isn't flawed at all as he simply put forth an idea and has been pretty open to outside views.
+1 for what a forum topic should be.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
lol he just supports what I was saying, he dosen't disprove it. I agree with him.
Maybe before you get critical about people 'derailing' you should check your own posts that do nothing but flame and drag it down the road of a personal squabble.
FYI, saying the entire OP is flawed IS adding to the discussion on hand. I even say WHY is it flawed. I am sorry you do not approve, but next time try not to be a hypocrite about it?
No he doesn't support what you are saying. Your attempt to invalidate an entire argument with the remark that a word is "subjective" is silly. He points out that it is silly by stating that if we decided to follow your logic every discussion in the history of mankind would be invalid because we use language which is just a bunch of invented subjective lables.
I've done zero derailing thank you, as I've found the entire thread before your posts quite interesting. Please take your Ad Hominem out of this somewhat insightful thread.
If you are going to accuse me of doing nothing but "flame and drag it down the road of a personal squabble" please support your claim or report it to a moderator. Your strawman argument does nothing to support your claims.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
You should try sitting in on an executive MBA ethics class some time. aka: "Greed is good 101"
seems to me good an evil is just a matter of perception being that one mans "good" can be another mans "evil" and vice versa
evil n good is just a label, seems to me evrything is just one large shade of grey
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.