Love articles like this. https://futurism.media/star-wars-the-sith-are-the-good-guys-and-the-jedi-are-the-bad-guys?utm_content=bufferc6cb0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

What a waste of time. He makes a few (very weak) arguments for why the Jedi and Republic are not shining beacons of goodness, but then he argues that the Sith are the good guys just because they are open and honest about not being good guys. To say that this makes them good is not a conclusion that even follows his own weak logic.

If you really want to boil it down, George Lucas explained the dichotomy as this: Selflessness vs Selfishness. You can find a bunch of videos of him explaining it online.

So the Jedi aren't necessarily knights of good but knights of selflessness and the sith are knights of selfishness. The jedi are considered good because they think of themselves as good, they generally did good things for the galaxy and the protagonists of the films are jedi, so they take on the "good guy" role. This does not make them the epitome of goodness, nor does it make them infallible. The sith are selfish because they are always in a pursuit of personal gain, personal pleasure above all else, not caring who gets hurt along the way. Their contributions to the galaxy were almost completely negative and evil.

I think the author of that article is unfamiliar with the large body of atrocities committed the Sith, in the EU.

22 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

What a waste of time. He makes a few (very weak) arguments for why the Jedi and Republic are not shining beacons of goodness, but then he argues that the Sith are the good guys just because they are open and honest about not being good guys. To say that this makes them good is not a conclusion that even follows his own weak logic.

And he somehow seems to overlook the Sith's habit of murder, lying, slavery, subjugating entire planets to their rule of law at the end of a gun. But hey, they're good guys because they are at least honest about their feelings right? *rolls eyes*

We are far too tolerant of shallow, addle-minded, immoral nonsense.

I do not love the diatribes of brilliant morons.

Having endured them, you can never-ever get the time back.

All you are left with is fouled tripe and idiotic ranting.

The Jedi make some deeply flawed moral decisions, but the Sith are definitively evil .

4 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

And he somehow seems to overlook the Sith's habit of murder, lying, slavery, subjugating entire planets to their rule of law at the end of a gun. But hey, they're good guys because they are at least honest about their feelings right? *rolls eyes*

The Jedi carry lightsabers that are used to maim and kill, at the jedi's discretion. The Jedi don't just lie but manipulate your mind to ensure you fall for the lie. The Jedi live in a galaxy full of slavery and do not stop it, while taking children away from their families to join their cult. The Jedi created and led a clone army with little regard for their rights as living beings, forcing world's that wanted to leave the republic to kneel.

Let's call the Sith 'morally black', and the Jedi 'morally grey' then.

Now wondering about that 'morally white'. Now where could they be? (Not being sarcastic, but going with this flow. We all know Qui-Gon to be defiant, willful, cheating at dice games, ignoring slavery because it's the cultural thing there, and way more. And that's just one example of a whole order.)

Sith, good guys, hmm, flat outright no. The paragon of the dark side , Sheev Palpatine, set two whole sections of the galaxy to war with each other, with the sole intention of getting himself into a position of unlimited power. Does this sound like the actions of a good guy.

If you think the Sith are good, and people generally think of themselves as good, the author probably thinks that the stuff the Sith pull are things s/he would do, too. Meaning that this article gives terrifying insight into the mind of a total sociopath.

I'm sure that a lot of the people/culture's/ideologies that I think are evil are considered to be good by those who hold that belief.

Even the Nazis at their worst probably considered what they were doing as good, in the same way that the emperor thought bringing peace to the galaxy (at any cost) was a good and noble purpose.

Even today there are societies that engage in slavery, ethnic cleansing, repression and the murder of civilians. The Sith are the same, but with superpowers.

Just because I consider those things to be evil doesn't mean that everyone does.

One of the great rules of fiction: No villain looks in the mirror and sees a villain. Every villain considers himself the hero of his or her own story.

Which means you can get great mileage from disregarding this and having villains who not only admit that they're villains, but revel in it. Think about how many times a demon or vampire in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer self-identified as "evil." Some of those characters became pretty memorable for it (I'm looking at you, Spike).

Now, in Star Wars, with the Force, we have another neat little monkey wrench, courtesy of what TVTropes calls Fridge Brilliance.

The Force grants one power, if you know how to use it. Knowledge begets power which begets knowledge. In the RotS novelization, Palpatine even says to Anakin, during their conversation at the opera, that the Jedi use the Force to seek wisdom and gain power, while the Sith use the Force to seek power and gain wisdom. If knowledge and wisdom are linked to one's power in the Force, than ultimate power can only be gained from ultimate wisdom, and the ultimate wisdom is to know oneself, truly and fully. So, to achieve the highest peaks of Dark Side power, one must, at some point, look at oneself honestly, realize that by any moral metric one is EVIL, and be okay with that.

of course, evil is highly subjective.

A relatively innocent example; in a culture that never invented doors or other means to close off a home, entering it, perhaps taking something which they need, and simply leaving might be the cultural norm. Their laws might not know 'Breaking in and entering' or 'theft'. Less innocent; a primitive culture where the warriors are taught that eating the heart of a beaten enemy grants that enemy's strength probably has less of a fuss about 'cannibalism'.

This leads to Jedi being more of a morally grey faction in my opinion. "There is no ignorance, there is Knowledge". A Jedi needs to know about other cultures (and respect them). As such, a Jedi is not an enforcer of his own morality, nor of the morality of the culture he descends from (the Republic). This leads to situation where, by his own code, the Jedi might be forced to ignore behaviour he might deem immoral, because culturally it is acceptable to the one showing the behaviour. I shudder to mention Star Trek on this board, but a parallel is the Federation with its Prime Directive. No interference in, or contamination of the development of cultures that are not warp-capable themselves. With that in mind, a Jedi might actually hurt the interests of the Jedi Order and the Republic by interference in a situation that to him or her is culturally unacceptable, but locally a cultural norm.

Property crimes, such as stealing and trespass, are not normally considered the line between good and evil. This can be seen in the numerous examples of "good guys" that steal and trespass, but far fewer that are murderers, child molesters, or rapists. When you say it has to do with culture, then you are taking about malum prohibita offenses. Offenses that are likely to be considered "evil" regardless of culture are instead malum in se and you can search those terms if you want to learn more.

14 hours ago, mulletcheese said:

I'm sure that a lot of the people/culture's/ideologies that I think are evil are considered to be good by those who hold that belief.

Even the Nazis at their worst probably considered what they were doing as good, in the same way that the emperor thought bringing peace to the galaxy (at any cost) was a good and noble purpose.

Even today there are societies that engage in slavery, ethnic cleansing, repression and the murder of civilians. The Sith are the same, but with superpowers.

Just because I consider those things to be evil doesn't mean that everyone does.

I do not accept moral relativism or the moral opinions of those who espouse it. We can certainly make some allowances for differing cultural mores and interpretations vis-a-vis what is and isn't acceptable human behavior, but, as science learns more about the moral psychology of man we are increasingly finding that there are 5-6 cross-cultural moral foundations we all start building our moral systems from. The underlying moral "taste buds" of humanity are the same even though the moral cuisines we develop to satisfy them (malum prohibita) may vary to a certain extent.

I would encourage you to read "The Righteous Mind" by Johnathan Haidt. He does an excellent job demonstrating this with research. And, for the record, he is neither religious nor conservative. He is a progressive-voting atheist. Not every moral premise is relative or a matter of mere opinion. Some foundational moral premises (malum in se) are found in a super-majority of human cultures throughout history. When that is the case those premises are not mere social constructs, but rather a part the evolved moral compass that enables humanity to survive and thrive. They are a part of what makes us human and the behavior of those who violate them can, quite accurately, be described as inhuman.

That the Nazis did not consider themselves Evil does not mean they were not, objectively speaking, Evil. Every man considers himself a Hero. Self-perception is, quite often, self-deception. Who cares if the Nazis didn't consider themselves Evil. Their choices were inhuman and unforgivable. They were sociopathic monsters. That they called themselves heroes doesn't call their inhumanity into question. As I said, and I proudly stand by this, our culture has grown far too tolerant of brilliant idiots spouting dangerous amoral apologetics for evil men and stupid ideas. Be they for Nazis or re-skinned Space Nazis called "Sith."

The only way they we can correct that is to stop giving gold stars for participation and start marking up their ideas with a red pen.

So taking infants away from their parents and as the grow older giving them no choice but to be subject to the will of the Jedi is pretty objectively an evil act.

On 10/1/2017 at 1:25 PM, Vondy said:

We are far too tolerant of shallow, addle-minded, immoral nonsense.

I do not love the diatribes of brilliant morons.

Having endured them, you can never-ever get the time back.

All you are left with is fouled tripe and idiotic ranting.

The Jedi make some deeply flawed moral decisions, but the Sith are definitively evil .

Amen brother

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

So taking infants away from their parents and as the grow older giving them no choice but to be subject to the will of the Jedi is pretty objectively an evil act.

If I recall correctly, it was the Sith that tried to steal children away from their parents in the Clone Wars show, to experiment on them and they hired bounty hunters to accomplish at least part of this task.

Jedi did meet with parents of Force Sensitive children but left the choice up to their parents or guardians for whether the child would be brought up in the order, kind of like how Obi-Wan didn't train Luke until he was both old enough to make decisions for himself and because his guardians were no longer in the picture.

Not to mention the fact that those children could indeed quit the order and go back to their family or even flunk out of "jedi school" for a few different reasons. The Jedi would still put them to work if they weren't competent enough to become a Padawan but again, choice seemed to always be left up to the parent or guardian.

Maybe the stuff you're thinking of is from Legends though? I'm not as familiar with that but I know the canon doesn't have Jedi stealing babies like the freaking hamburgler. That was actually what Palpatine did.

On 10/1/2017 at 1:03 AM, Eoen said:

I think the author of that article is unfamiliar with the large body of atrocities committed the Sith, in the EU.

Or even just in the movies. Did he forget about the Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War?

Aye, the imperial propaganda engine made people believe that the Jedi stole children; but they didn't.

Besides, just because one isn't a paragon of goodness doesn't make the other good. I could quote real world examples but likely couldn't do that without objectively saying everyone is evil, but the Jedi were a institution of learning and mediating first and foremost, their main problem was that they were so divorced from the real issues within the republic that by the time the CIS rebellion came; it was already too late to save the republic from Palpatines scheme. Pretty much their only hope was ousting the sith lord before he did that thing, and they failed.

8 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Jedi did meet with parents of Force Sensitive children but left the choice up to their parents or guardians for whether the child would be brought up in the order,...

Actually, the Jedi did appropriate children. The Bardottans considered the Order child-thieves and basically tried to have as little interaction with them as possible.

1 hour ago, Nivrap said:

Actually, the Jedi did appropriate children. The Bardottans considered the Order child-thieves and basically tried to have as little interaction with them as possible.

But was that based in fact, or in Bardottan misconceptions?

The only examples I can think of, from the films (because I don't give a dam* what the Legacy trash has established. 5 bajillion different authors writing published fan fiction, yeah, lots of disparity, big surprise there), of the Jedi taking children, is when Qui-Gon asks Anakin if he wants to go learn of the Force in Ep 1. And he asks, in front of Anakin's mother, they were both very aware of what the ramifications would be. And mom was on board, and eventually Anakin was too. And Luke and Obi-Wan too of course, though I consider that less of "taking a child" as offering a recently orphaned 19 year old, legally adult person a new course in life.

And I think the thing with Kannen and Ezra was a choice too right? I really don't remember the first few seasons very well, but I seem to recall that Ezra was chomping at the bit to learn, and Kannen was taking things slowly.

I didn't watch much of Clone Wars, which I do consider canon for the most part, as they've pulled plot lines from it into the new stuff, and the prequels too. Did they ever do a storyline about finding a young Force user, and the choice of whether that child should join the Order?

2 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

The only examples I can think of, from the films (because I don't give a dam* what the Legacy trash has established. 5 bajillion different authors writing published fan fiction, yeah, lots of disparity, big surprise there), of the Jedi taking children, is when Qui-Gon asks Anakin if he wants to go learn of the Force in Ep 1. And he asks, in front of Anakin's mother, they were both very aware of what the ramifications would be. And mom was on board, and eventually Anakin was too. And Luke and Obi-Wan too of course, though I consider that less of "taking a child" as offering a recently orphaned 19 year old, legally adult person a new course in life.

And I think the thing with Kannen and Ezra was a choice too right? I really don't remember the first few seasons very well, but I seem to recall that Ezra was chomping at the bit to learn, and Kannen was taking things slowly.

I didn't watch much of Clone Wars, which I do consider canon for the most part, as they've pulled plot lines from it into the new stuff, and the prequels too. Did they ever do a storyline about finding a young Force user, and the choice of whether that child should join the Order?

It is important to note that not one of the examples you give is a "standard recruitment" by the Pre-Order 66 Jedi Order.

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

It is important to note that not one of the examples you give is a "standard recruitment" by the Pre-Order 66 Jedi Order.

But my point is do we ever see a "standard recruitment" in the franchise? Because I can't think of any examples at all of the Jedi dealing with potential children recruits other than the ones I mentioned above. I'm genuinely asking if there were any examples in Clone Wars that would expand on this subject.