fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, September 6]

Anakin walked into his classroom precisely on time and gave the students assembled there an appraising glance.

It wasn't possible to tell what he thought of them.

"I'm Master Skywalker," he said in a voice that was intended to carry, "this is Ethics, and we're going to skip the introductions--I'll figure out who you are--and move straight to our first discussion."

He paced around the room, cloak flaring out behind him, as he handed out the syllabus. "Today's topic," he said. "Self sacrifice: knowing the difference between saving people and being a pretentious twit."

"Any time I ask a a group of people what they would do to save someone they love, they all blither on about how they would set the world on fire, lie, cheat, steal, kill, die, et cetera, et cetera. I've been at this school too long to believe that half of you haven't already been put into this situation and I'm in no mood to hear adolescent ramblings about how wonderful you were or might hypothetically be. We're going to ground it in reality.

"A month ago there was a woman who was in charge of this school. She had been placed in power legitimately, was allowed to punish in accordance with that power, and began pushing the boundaries of her authority almost immediately. She called students to her office, punished them for slights genuine or imagined, and began escalating the severity and frequency of her punishments, going over the line into what was no longer acceptable."

Anakin crossed his arms over his chest, the scar across his face very evident in the light coming through the window. "It eventually took a team of highly qualified adults to take her out. Today's topic: when do you draw the line? When do you admit to yourself that a problem cannot be solved, that to sacrifice yourself isn't a statement, it's merely pointless? How long does it take for you to check your ego?"

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Sokka raised an eyebrow at him. "Have you ever BEEN on a battlefield?" he asked. "If you start thinking 'Oh, I'm not going to go out there unless I'm 100% SURE I'm not going to get killed,' you've already lost. You might as well just LET the army into the city."

Anakin visibly bristled. "Have I been on a...I've been fighting a war for most of my life! Only the insane or the stupid go into anything hoping they'll die. I was wondering why you seemed to think that warriors were immune to self-sacrifice."

The bloody battlefields of Jabiim flashed before his eyes. He shoved the memories ruthlessly aside.

"Hoping??? I did NOT say 'hoping'! When you're a warrior, you walk WITH death, not INTO it. I just meant that not everyone on a battlefield is a pretentious twit."

"I've discovered that depends entirely on the battlefield," Anakin said dryly. "You wouldn't believe the number of Jedi-killing droids I killed because certain warlords were too dumb to listen to the latest intelligence. As with life, there's a mix of the great and the too stupid to be believed. Which side of the line would you rather be on?"

Sokka bit his lip in thought. "Whichever side the good guys are on?"

"That can depend entirely on your point of view," Anakin said unhelpfully.

Sokka blinked at him, but then remembered some of the people he'd had to deal with back home. Especially the soldiers in Ba Sing Se. "Well, if you can't TELL who the good guys are, then you get on the side that isn't the bad guys." He shrugged. "And if you can't tell who the bad guys are, then they probably shouldn't be fighting in the first place and you should try making peace."

Anakin smiled. "Well put."

Ethics [Thursday, September 6]

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