An Interesting read

the story excerpt was interesting - the writing wasnt bad and the conceptualizing was quite good, i like the perceptiveness of it, but my reaction is that it is fundamentally misleading if placed against the vision that lucas put forward in the movies - i have no way of guessing your friends vision from so small a sample of his/her work

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anakin is responsible for what anakin did and palpatine is responsible for what palpatine did

one of the many lousy things that palpatine did was to manipulate a confused and vulnerable person into murdering a bunch of kids and betraying the people who loved him

palpatines guilt is greater than anakins because palpatines understanding and control of the situation was greater than anakins

"couldnt" confess? or "wouldnt" confess?

theres no way for us to know how obi-wan would have responded, im not sure how feasible any conjecture on that might be, and im not familiar enough with the story to take any guesses

but i am familiar enough to understand that any attempt to use the idea that "the jedi council didnt fully live up to its own high standards of ethical behavior" as evidence that "palpatine was as ethical as the jedi" is as fallacious as the idea that "palpatine is not responsible for what anakin did"

palpatine is clearly more responsible for the entire set of events, but im holding them both responsible for their own choices

i dont know what purpose something called a "DEATH STAR" might be built to achieve lol but i know a couple of the things that it was used to do; destroy the planet of alderan and act as central command for a campaign to terrorize and conquer the galaxy

and i know that when a tyrant goes on a campaign to take over the galaxy, some part of the galaxy is going to fight back

saying "well he made the DEATH STAR to protect himself from the people who didnt want to be enslaved by him" doesnt relieve him of the guilt of being a tyrant on a campaign to enslave the galaxy

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the economy of the agricultural south flourished under slavery and elements of the economy of south africa flourished under apartheid

didnt make slavery or apartheid ok

my gripe with the palpatine of the films is that the essential foundation of his view is that he is at war with everyone else in the world

his apprentices even: he makes them into slaves, and they stay slaves forever or else they find a way to outmaneuver and devour him

his first assumption is that it is even possible to totally dominate the external world, which is pretty arrogant of intself

but the next, worse than the first, is that it is appropriate for him to do so
which elevates him from narcissist to psychopath

and the result of it is that "not winning" amounts to the same thing as "losing"- if he doesnt conquer, he has lost, so no one around him has the choice of neutrality

and no one can support him once they understand him

except those who would accept their own slavery in exchange for the chance to have slaves themselves, or those who simply resent the world and are happy to participate in an event where they are allowed to in some way annihilate it, or who are caught up in the rhetoric and fervor that always accompanies movements of expansionism and conquest (ideologues basically) and those who just go along with the course of events because they see no way of extricating themselves

people who serve under these kinds of motives can be plenty effective, but they cant really be trusted, they have to be dominated

so the whole thing - the entire empire - is based on slavery, brutality, and coercion

he is an archetypal representation of power that has been corrupted by deceit and arrogance

he not only lies to everyone, but he values everyone in proportion to their usefulness in achieving his agenda - so he eventually sacrifices everyone - or at least he is willing to sacrifice anyone, no matter how close or loyal they were to him

that may not be the palpatine of the EU, but that is my understanding of the palpatine of the movies

my gripe with the palpatine of the films is that the essential foundation of his view is that he is at war with everyone else in the world

Well yes, he was the villain. The motivating factor in the story of which everything else revolved around.

What would Luke had done if there had been no one eo wipe out his aunt and uncle?

He had told Ben that he had decided to stay on the farm.

When your purpose and choice to act revolves around the decisions and manipulations of others, are you any less slave?

Khaos wrote: What would Luke had done if there had been no one eo wipe out his aunt and uncle?

He had told Ben that he had decided to stay on the farm.

well, being involved in the war was never NOT in the cards for Luke or Leia

so theres a choice right off the bat of how to examine that question; do we invent a different set of events to get him into the fight or do we allow a completely new hypothetical universe where he somehow existed but there was no war, or there was some way that he could have realistically not been involved in it

so taking the second option, because i think thats more interesting and more to the point of your question, even there was no empire to murder his family, no one really does get "left alone" in life - i mean to some or other degree there are always important issues and challenges in ones sphere

using what we know of him from how the story played out, its not unfair to think that he would have matured into a pretty awesome guy anyway - becoming a husband and a father and very likely a positive and respected influence in his community

if his family can be understood as decent people on a hostile world, there is every reason to expect that tatooine had other decent people as well

and since we know that mos eisly at least had its share of social ills - raiders and smugglers and "the vilest scum of the galaxy" or whatever

maybe he was pretty isolated on the farm but thats no reason to assume he mean would be forever uninvolved with the broader world

the contributions he could have made to that society are impossible to guess, but understanding the man that luke grew into it is not unreasonable to postulate that they would have been noteworthy and respectable in their own right

and its certainly true that we make the best of bad situations but that does not at all give us a means of justifying the imposition of bad situations on to other people

so to think that it was GOOD FOR LUKE that the empire murdered his family is difficult for me personally to agree with

i understand how one might reach that conclusion, but i dont think its the only conclusion one can reach or the best

Khaos wrote: When your purpose and choice to act revolves around the decisions and manipulations of others, are you any less slave?

well, good point

i think that, in a way, we could all be regarded as slaves - to our bodies and to our psychologies and our family histories and our era on and on

but our relationships to MOST of these forces is not one of deliberate enslavement - its simply the way the cards were dealt, so to speak

in palpatine's coercion of anakin it is easy to see how he deliberately coaxed the boy into isolating himself, as irredeemably as possible, from the few people who genuinely loved him

and thats an important consideration in the issue imo, padme and obiwan both had genuine love and affection for anakin - whereas palpatine simply coveted him as a means to his own path to supremacy

the jedi werent giving him a lot of choices either, and thats a fair topic in its own right, but it in no way justifies what palpatine did

i would say that our "purpose and choice to act" always revolve around the decisions of certain others - thats just a condition of being social animals

but given the choice between a context where there is love and affection between the parties, and a real commitment to respecting the best interests of each, BY each

or a scenario where the best interests of one another are implicitly and explicitly violable in pursuit of personal ambition

i do believe that the first is the better option for the participants and for the broader society which they affect and within which they exist