vote_for_palpatine said:
Octorox said:
vote_for_palpatine said:
That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.
Because in the real world there are no heroes and villians. There is no black and white. Not to say that the psychology of the characters in the prequels was realistic or rational, it wasn't. But moral relativism is a fact. people's behavior is based on the their life experiences and circumstance, and the way you described moral relativism as "good guys = oppressors and bad guys=misunderstood" is a gross oversimplification and in itself black and white. No one is born into this world as "evil", we all have both good and evil in is, it's just that sometimes one side takes over. While the original "Star Wars" was pretty black and white, the OT as a whole was all about moral relativism. The old Jedi, caught up in their dogmatic way of seeing the world, were sure that Anakin was "evil" and thats that. Luke however, saw his whole person and knew that somewhere, the "good" in his father was there, buried deep down but there. When you reduce the human psyche to "good guys and bad guys", "us and them", you turn human beings into symbols, which is okay for pure popcorn entertainment and fictional characters but It's far removed from any remotely true representation of humanity or realism. You're dealing with archetypes or symbols then, not people. But I digress...this board is about Star Wars, not moral relativity...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p
I had no idea.
So then it must follow that mass murderers such as Stalin were not truly committing acts of evil - our biased, Western perception of what is good and what is bad made Stalin appear to be evil. He was, in reality, no worse than Roosevelt or Truman. I think I've got it.
There's no need to give me a sarcastic retort. I was just stating my philosophy. And yes, Stalin did a lot of terrible things. No one is saying Truman and Roosevelt were on the level of Stalin, they didn't assassinate mass numbers of people for not agreeing with them. I'm not sure I believe in complete moral relativism, there are certain values that all human beings share. But just because Stalin did awful things doesn't mean Russians = bad, Americans= good. It doesn't even mean that Communism = bad, Capitalism = good. Many brutal dictators have upheld regimes of neoliberalism and corporatism against the people's will and the CIA and American corporations have supported and equipped those dictators. Many brutal dictators have upheld regimes of communism and socialism against the people's will and the Soviets supported them. But I don't think we should just say "bad guy! lets blow em' up and be done with it!" I think we should take some time to look into the social conditions that allowed for that person's rise to power, allowed this terrible things to happen, and allowed for that person's psyche to be developed in that way. That doesn't mean that person shouldn't be stopped. They certainly should, of course.
Anyway, I don't really want to have a political debate. I'll admit that I'm not incredibly knowledgeable of such things, I'm only going on what I know. We are talking about fiction here, and you haven't addressed any parts of my answer that dealt with Star Wars, let's focus on that and how morality is presented in that piece of fiction.