The moral philosophy of Star Wars

There may be some spoilers here, but nothing major.

I've really only heard one person mention this issue, and that was in the Feminist Frequency review by Anita Sarkeesian:

http://feministfrequency.com/

She had a point. On her larger point that a lot of these things fall apart if you think about them, I am going to disagree on that, because as I think about them I can find ways that they work, whether that requires a fair amount of fan effort or not. However, clearly not all lives are valued equally.

When I first saw the original movies I thought the Storm Troopers were robots. Actually, I think I thought that Darth Vader was a robot too. Their only visible humanity was when the two troopers were talking about the new models of some kind of ship (or something, it's been a while), but it went right over my head then. (Remember, I was five.)

Even under that viewpoint, I'm sure I would have been upset about the death of C-3PO or R2-D2, and there were plenty of non Storm Troopers on the Death Star as well, all of whom would have died (not too mention that poor Dianoga), so yes, we are accepting the deaths of the bad guys with no thoughts of moral complexity and I went along with that.

Later we find out they are clones, but there is no reason that having identical genetic material would prevent the development of unique personalities. My younger sisters are identical twins. Their DNA is identical, and they were raised pretty much the same too, but they are still their own people. So, if the source of future troopers later becomes seized children and conditioning, I suspect there was a lot of conditioning with the clones as well.

I don't see a conflict that someone who balks at mowing down unarmed villagers willingly shoots people who are coming to kill him. What the movie doesn't get into is that there probably would be guilt later, especially for Finn who has not previously only been moved by the death of one storm trooper, but who also spent so much time with them as a unit. There would be an emotional toll, no matter how much sense it made to shoot in the moment.

The other thing that is interesting to me is that some of the early interactions give us a way of viewing the basic conflict beyond good versus evil.

The Empire/First Order were big on conformity, no matter how it was accomplished. Signs of deviation get you sent to reconditioning. The very uniforms are designed to hide the wearer's humanity, because humanity is a foolish and treacherous thing.

In contrast, our first contact with Rey shows her coming to BB-8's aid, and her complaint against the attempted captor is that he doesn't have regard for anyone. It is easy to believe she will refuse to sell BB-8 later, and that she will see Finn for a person when he comes along.

In addition, Poe Dameron also sees Finn's humanity. He won't call him by a serial number, but gives him a name. (This reminded me of Geordie and Hugh from a different franchise.)

One interesting thing about that is that while the Rebellion/Resistance is primarily humanoid, I don't recall any other life forms on the other side. Yes, Vader was willing to hire various others as bounty hunters, but only humanoid Boba Fett got to ride along with him.

You can view the struggle as one of individuality versus conformity. The state wanted to crush the individuals, and then when they were no longer the state they still tended in that direction. The Rebellion has room for individuals; when they become the state, do they lose that? Historically it happens a lot.

One of the most interesting ideas I have seen about the movie comes from Gail Simone, who suggested that psychologically Kylo Ren is a school shooter. Seeing his blowups, that makes sense. It makes him a different sort of villain from Darth Vader and perhaps one that makes more sense for our time period.

That sort of personality could easily fall on either side of a dispute, but one thing about being open to individual differences is that it makes it a lot easier for you to feel peace. If you don't trust that others can vary and that it can be all right, that tends to inspire fear. It can even inspire hatred.

Fear is the path to the dark side.