"Only a Sith deals in Absolutes"

The one fast lightenup saber who give a choice its vader or anakin.

Obiwan spoke to open his eyes a last time and answer with act defending himself.

Who attack first in this scenario?
Do obiwan attack a disarm oponent?

Obiwan could not done better. Or anakin would kill him with no compassion.
Obiwan has join the Force like a free spirit for his loyalty.
He don't even suffer of the death... He just poof.

Exar Qel Droma wrote: Hi all, are there any ways around combat if an "absolute" is used?

i should have responded to this first

Seeker gave a good response

i would like to add to it

the basic idea in all moral situations is to be open to varying perspectives but wholly determined to rely on your own conclusions

the greater truth is that as a human being you ALWAYS have the choice of nonviolence

for some it is in certain instances not considered a choice

for instance if you are a warrior - war is your responsibilty - it is always appropriate to seek nonviolent resolution but in the case of someone who is determined to cause violence to those you are responsible for protecting

and non violent means are rejected by that person or persons

then as a warrior you are the one responsible for dealing with thier violence.

if you can do that in a non violent way, again this is better. but at the end of the day you have trained for and commitedyourself to the cause of keeping your people safe from the violence of others and they are counting on you to do that - you have agreed to handle violence so that others may not have to - at least you have agreed to to the role and responsibility of being a warrior

for someone who has not accepted the obligations of the martial warrior then non violence is always an option and often a very noble one

you may decide that it is worth your life to stand in front of a column of tanks with no greater weapon than a bag of groceries, knowing that they will run you down and being of the mind that though you cannot defeat them you can force them to choose to respect your dignity or show the world the truth of their cause in your death

above all the key is to belive in the rightness of dignity and the value of life

above all belive in the rightness of dignity and the value of life

be willing to look for solutions even when no one else sees that there are any

remember that whatever you do
it is you who has to live with you - youre the only one that you cannot walk away from, for that reason you are the final arbiter of what is appropriate or inappropriate for you to do in any given situation

a specific tactic for dealing with absolutes is to consider "what are the actual goals being pursued?"

sometimes even good and well meaning people fall into acceptance of absolutes because they either have poorly defined objectives or because they have accepted (usually ASSUMED) that there is only one way to achieve their goals and that it involves violence

so generally speaking there are two kinds of absolutist propositions - the first and "best" is a result of not knowing a better way.

this is a situation where if a plausible non violent resolution can be provided it will be fairly considered and implemented because the involved parties dont really want the violence, they want the outcome that they belive can only be achieved with violence

the other leaves a warrior no choice because the violence itself is among the desired outcomes

basically if someone is determined to be violent then that is what they are going to do and your position is now a matter of how you activate yourself to that situation

this moment between kenobi and anakin is an example of that

---

@ gisteron

what i concede is that yes they all failed at recognising the problem

kenobi especially failed in.this
which he acknowledges

im not sure how that is supposed to translate into some great fault against them though - not in the context thats being presented here

child murdering sith apprenice vs person who isnt a child murderinv sith apprentice

hypothetically i would use the moment between them in a classroom setting to point outa few things to add insight and offer suggestion for the future

and yes i would stress the point that the letter of the law must be obeyed i.e. dont activate your light saber first

but i watched the scene a few times and its pretty clear that anakin is the one who frames the situation as being an unavoidable fight

to think that at this point obi wan wasnt aware of what happened with the children is imo not realistic within the framework ofthe narrative - i accept that i may be incorrect here because all i have to go on are the movies but obi wan while alderan was a whole planet, it also was a planet of strangers light years away and obiwan was aware of their deaths

why would we assume he was not aware of the deaths of who knows howmany force sensitive children who he had likely interacted with on a personal level and at least some of whom would have been capable of sending out a jedi version of the s.o.s.

and again thats the real issue here - it can be presented as if it was the jedi that were in the wrong but thats a blatant distortion of reality

tif there are bad guys they are the ones who choose to murder people

if the good guys are not quite as good at being good as is humanly possible this does not change the fact that they are still good guys

i dont think anyone would consider that obiwan would have been unwilling to let anakin surrender nonviolently

why should it be at all even considered that we would look at obi wan as if he were the one who forced violence?

anakin clearly states his intentions

again i agree that obiwan could have waited to activate his saber, i disagree that at this point it mattered

perhaps the minor point goes that obiwan erred but the context still overules any sense of him as being in any way responsible for anakins choices

and it was anakins choices - more than anyone else but palpatine himself - which created the situation

Personally, I ultimately agree that it wasnt a lesson.

In the Star Wars universe, Sith and Jedi fight, period.

Thats an absolute that stands true.

Both factions almost decimated a whole world in there campaign(Ruusan, even changing its landscape and climate), and they drag the universe in collaterally.

When the come into contact, they both seem to deal in absolutes that one cannot live, either individually, or as a group

Anakin was not the first Jedi to fall to the Darkside.

This is how it is written, and that is where it is doomed as a lesson,as the writing is absolute.

Sith and Jedi fight, they kill each other, collateral damage ensues.

It was the Jedi who banished other Jedi in the first place for exploring outside the accepted teachings of the Force, and they became the Sith when landing on Korriban.

This created a serious rift.

Anakin is but a small repeat on an individual scale.

Failure to understand, work with, listen to, or teach. Forcing him to hide a relationship, etc.

Its the same Story.

Star Wars doesnt go big on originality, which, if you look to campbellss work, you see its not original.

Game of Thrones starts of at "Happily Ever After" and shows that never lasts, and the Heroes arent "Light", etc.

Star Wars, aside from a few nonsensical sects of the potentium and such, stays fairly consistent and black and white.

I dont really get much in the way of morality lessons from SW.

I really dont see value in this as a lesson. Other parts? Books on Sith within there philosphy? Yes, but not every exchange is some deep meaningful lesson.

That fight was going to happen regardless of what was said.

That fight was canon as in episode 4, it is spoken of, so in the end, the dialogue was not going to be about grand meanings or de-escalation.

Gisteron wrote: ...but I have yet to hear an excuse for Obi-Wan's complete blindness to it and the utter incompetence of the Council which for all intents and purposes might as well have consisted of Grand Master Hindsight, Master Shoulda, Master Coulda and Master Woulda.

I think that is an important part of the story. Some say there is not much degree of separation between genius and insanity, and when the same concept is shunted over to 'power' and its use or abuse it might be close to what all that was about ^. Anakin was drenched in power for some nebulous reason, so the Jedi had no choice but try and trust since they'd already run into him (fates?) but also because the new unknown Sith threat might have scooped him up instead. Perhaps it says something about why the Order existed, to 'try' and help those with that power not fall. So it makes sense the 'most' powerful person might always be teetering on the edge while they are still working out there is no edge.

I guess the difference it points to is not a nature of the Force, but the orientation of the user - else I'd agree, if a 'dark side' represented a dark force as something tangibly distinct from a light force then it would have made more sense for them to detect it.

what is the key to saving someone at the precipice?

OB1Shinobi wrote: what is the key to saving someone at the precipice?

Dunno, maybe there are different mountains? Sounds like an advert for mountaineering! I think in most cases it's more ideal for the person so save themselves, but that doesn't mean being too proud to get/ask for help either. I think the movie's portrayal of Vader's creation was falling/tripped/pushed onto the precipice in a straddle position - no wonder he was angry.... and it wasn't until his son visited him and helped him get his other leg over till he was happy
:lol:
See drowning is not balance, floating is. Balance should not be about the waterline, but from the bottom to the top equipoised in mindfulness of the whole body, IMO. Sorry for switching metaphors, but stuck straddling a precipice might feel balanced, but the pain of it represents the power and the precipice represents the immobility. I find fluid to be a better dynamic for spiritual reflection because it has the water (subconscious) and wind (conscious) minds, which interact at one level, but the issues/complexities can then be sort of represent the terrain/landscape where these things go onto interact... cue water evaporation, transpiration cycle diagrams Haha. The key there is its always moving, but it's a pretty deep question. Can my answer would be Jedi training :woohoo:
I think Anakin would have been fine and excelled at the Jedi training myself, I dunno why they wrote it such that he seemed to be oblivious to every lesson he would have been schooled in for over a decade. He never was in the 'now' and always in the past
:S

Edit: this post reminds me of this pic, the 'fool' is Anakin I guess!!

Anakin light his saber long time ago before obiwan kenobi...
Anakin and the younglings : http://youtu.be/YnwkE4trA48

Now see this in complete.
Anakin cause his own death.
Star Wars Ep III: Obi Wan Kenobi vs. Anakin Skywa… : http://youtu.be/MaH8ChvupQk

Do Obiwan "try" to make open the eyes to anakin?
(I don't like the word "try"... Because actually more than once he "try" to make surrender anakin for his crime. Cruel crime)

In plus, you can find how fast anakin are to light and attack first. Obi knew that and loved him. Even in the end...
He don't kill him. Or finish him if you like more. He leave him with the poor choice of anakin the choosen one.

Adder wrote: ... I'd agree, if a 'dark side' represented a dark force as something tangibly distinct from a light force then it would have made more sense for them to detect it.

Thing is, they did. All the time. The audience knew it and the characters explicitly said how much darkness and dread they sensed all around them, in the future and particularly in Skywalker and Palpatine. Obi-Wan was genuinely blind, but the council was outright incompetent.
"We intercept and question people with force-affinity and particularly those we sense darkness in... except the currently highly influential senator by the perfectly unsuspicious name of Dr. Evil who cannot possibly be an actual threat to our order or the galaxy at large."
"Yoda technically said it is a bad idea to put the inexperienced and emotionally unstable Anakin Skywalker near to Dr. Evil because we know full well how easily darkness would rub off on him, but we, Yoda including, still agreed to do it anyway because our audience, who are smart enough for intergalactic politics and economics and shady intrigue, is still somehow too dumb and wouldn't know it was Darth Vader, a name he was explicitly called, unless they saw him in the black suit."

See what I mean when I say it was written backwards?

Speaking of the black suit: "If we make it part of the movie we'll have an excuse to put it on the poster and to make it licensed merchandise despite the fact it only appeared in one short scene containing a laughably clumsy blooper and some of the cheesiest dialogue since The Wizard Of Oz."

Gisteron wrote: Thing is, they did. All the time. The audience knew it and the characters explicitly said how much darkness and dread they sensed all around them, in the future and particularly in Skywalker and Palpatine. Obi-Wan was genuinely blind, but the council was outright incompetent.
"We intercept and question people with force-affinity and particularly those we sense darkness in... except the currently highly influential senator by the perfectly unsuspicious name of Dr. Evil who cannot possibly be an actual threat to our order or the galaxy at large."
"Yoda technically said it is a bad idea to put the inexperienced and emotionally unstable Anakin Skywalker near to Dr. Evil because we know full well how easily darkness would rub off on him, but we, Yoda including, still agreed to do it anyway because our audience is dumb and wouldn't know it was Darth Vader, a name he was explicitly called, unless they saw him in the black suit."

See what I mean when I say it was written backwards?

I always sort of viewed it as a lens to understand reality, so for me I'm not fond of taking things literally in that fictional universe sense. IMO, in each instance its about what's within a person, even the cave in Dagobah which was full of the darkside seems better interpreted as being a test of the persons character in the presence of power in a fearful/frightful location - and not actually 'evil energy'.

Not that I'm trying to reconcile my beliefs with the fiction (wait, yes I am), but I'd venture the Council's view of darkness before the rise of Vader was unexplained barriers, distractions and failures in systems which should not have failed with information at hand.. basically the breakdown of 'order' at the level they operated at - which would be a near God's eye view of machinations. Palpatine was clearly burning his bridges with Council by the time the Clone Wars had started, so I think he was running out of time but he had all the advantages and was moving accordingly. I don't think its necessary to blame the Council for havings its weaknesses played upon, because that was always going to be the risk of being so heavily involved in government - without actually controlling it.

When I stumble across some evil force, which isn't someones decision making (sane or not), then I might entertain a concept of a distinct dark force - but until then for me the 'dark side of the force' is the same one and only force. I guess it depends on someones view of the Force, as angry midichlorians could cause mayhem
:ohmy: