In the last couple of sessions, mind control has become more and more prevalent, and this has had a somewhat unsettling affect on me. Some of the mind control power usages, such as making somehow forget you were around for sneaking, is tame (for the purposes of our game), not for personal gain and is fine - using the power in this way is just another way of getting a job done. But when Ayla mindwiped the Slave Trader to not be the Slave Trader, I was struck with the thought: just what exactly makes that action a good side action or a dark side action? By using the power to change one's way of thinking or living, you are not just potentially helping yourself or others, but you are fundamentally changing the person you have affected -- in effect, you have forever changed that person's free will of choice. And that, to me, is what the fundamental question: what is more important, a person's free will or the enforcement of law for the greater society?
So where do we start? Let's go with good old friend Wookiepedia, without which I would probably be lost in a sea of confusion and misery. Surely Wookiepedia has an easy solution? Ah, but of course not. It states that taking over someone's mind (and then using their body) is a dark side power, along with Force Manupilate (making someone help you for your own goal). Force Fear (making someone) is dark side as well, as fear is associated with the Dark Side. So that's all and good, but what about free will? Well....there's not much. It is, by nature, a very circumstanial power and as a result, the Jedi Order is using the power for the greater good that it is fine......however, padawans are taught to think of their subject and the impact their manipulation could result in. An example that is brought in training is: you use your power to get past a guard, and you do your mission. But what about the guard? Might the guard might lose his job or be executed for failing in his duty, something likely in say a pirate group? Thus the Jedi Order is supposed to consider the opponent. But frankly, as there is no explicit policy, the Order is essentially saying that is ok to mess someone's mind, at least for the short term. But there is no real debate or issue raised about the long term usages or the philsophical insights into Free Will. For the Jedi, the Greater Good is what decides what is best.
Except that we see this sentiment ignored in other aspects of the Order, most notably the no-killing of a prisoner or unarmed opponent. Like anything, the Order is filled with contridictions. The Sith, thank goodness, are much simplier: do what needs to be done and be on with it. The Jedi are an order of law, first and foremost, an organization meant to keep the peace of the galaxy. But the Order allow, usually, the Repbulic to determine what needs to be done, or rather, what its viewpoints should be. It is rare for the Jedi to disagree with the Republic leadership, and when it does, it either leads to a good old fashioned war (Revan disagreeing with the Republic to not fight the Mandalorains resulting in the eventual 2nd Great Jedi Split) or major reforms afterwards (The Rossan Reformation, which signficently weakened the Republic's military forces, made the Jedi even more separate and smaller and created the foundation for the current Empire; also the Empire itself). The Jedi, while given a rather wide-berth of where and what to do, are, at the end of the day, merely agents of the Republic, accomplishing what no one else can. For the Order, the argument of, it creates the most benefit for the Galaxy by virtue of the Republic's approval and necessity can be done; it is also a very Utilitarianist idea.
Utilitarianism is a philsophy that makes sense in that fashion: do what is what is best for the most number of people (with best being defined usually by happiness). Ruining a slave trader's life by mentally screwing him over in this context is good because ruining one man's happiness is simply the cost of bringing happiness for several others. On the other hand, the worse parts of Utilitarianism is quite simply that it's very easy to justify some rather horrifying astrocities. Or for our purposes, the ruining of one's own free will.
The only real case that I know in the Expended Universe is.....Darth Revan (should of seen this coming), when the Jedi Council wiped his mind, made him essentially a new person, and tried to use him for thier own goal, aka, ending the war. Of course, this completely backfired, when Revan turned back to the Dark Side when finding out what had happened to him. The Jedi did it for the reasons above and botched the operation. But had the Jedi just killed Revan....then perhaps they could have saved the galaxy.
Which brings up the point of, what is more important, one's personality and free will OR one's life? If you live but don't know who you are, are you not effectively a new person? Are you, after a personality forced change, the old self, dead? I would say that effectively modifying a person's life is worse than ending someone's life.
For me, what comes to mind is an episode (albeit with a fuzzy memory) of Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex. In one episode, the enemy hacker is trying to kill the president of Japan and to do so, hacks into the brain (almost all brains in ghost of the shell have chips implanted) of an aide to attempt a simple killing via knife. The aide, afterwards, haivng his mind wiped (forever) can't remember anything; he has become an empty puppet. The government, looking for evidence, begins to investigate. They find another person related to the case, a simple happy guy working a trash route to make money for his girlfriend to come live with him; the hacker though has in reality created and overridden his old memories with his new life, so the hacker can move around the city better. The old identity, what it was, has been stolen and killed, his new one a complete fabrication. The man simply collaspses.....knowing that both lives are now ruined for him.
Western Literature and Ethics, in general, hold the elimination of free-will to be the "evil" choice; from the gazillion of movies (The Island, Star Trek and the Borg) to comics (Identity Crisis of DC, Professor X retcons of Marvel) to well, our world (The CIA's MKULTRA is now an universally condamned program), mind erasing or manupilation, even done with good intentions, always does not end well. And yet, there is an undeniable allure to the power of trying to make things better; after all heroes exist to overcome challenges to make things at the end of the day a better world (even if it is just for themselves).
I can understand the argument that ruining a person's life, erasing their identity to enable other lives; but I think, for me, what you have to understand is that by erasing or changing a person's identity, by changing what he or she preceives, by destroying his free will, this is the same as killing that person. So when Ayla changed the Slave Trader, she wasn't really, to me, changing him; he was killing him (his soul and mind at least) and making a duplicate. And I think that is what unsettles me. That's why, from this point on, changing a person, even for the better, is a dark side ability, and why you can acquire dark side points for doing so. (For those with several, well, go ahead and be crazy) But the ramfications to what you are doing to that person is, to me, too great to ignore.
Then again, maybe that's exactly what needs to be done in order to save the galaxy.....
If you disagree, please comment and I would more than welcome to debate with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment