fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, January 10]

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

Except for how his glance lingered on a couple of faces as his eyes widened slightly, 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.

"Over the summer 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 scars 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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"If something has to be done, then you do it. Sometimes that something is getting out of the line of fire," Anemone said, twirling her hair. "Deliberately being a martyr, that's just stupid. No one cares, and dead people can't change anything. You're just dead."

"Exactly!" Anakin said, beaming at her. "And for most of us, there's no coming back from being dead. You don't get a do-over because you were a moron."

"Still, if there's no one else to do the job, sometimes you have to do it. You can't just trust that someone else is going to handle it, that's just as stupid." Anemone wasn't being sarcastic, she leaned on her desk, completely serious. "Unless you're told 'look, there's a plan,' how do you know that it's pointless?"

"You start to get a feeling for it," Anakin said. "Trust your gut. When you get orders that sound something like "'and now we will take ten fighter craft and go up against a small, heavily armed moon! And by 'we' I mean 'you people'', it's time to take a good hard look at what's at stake and if it's worth being killed for."

Well gee, that didn't sound like a certain simulation from Flight class. Anemone tried not to dissolve into giggles. "Still, sometimes desperate gambits pay off. It's part of unconventional warfare - if you're opponent thinks it could never work, they don't take you seriously, and you win."

"A win's a win, but I'd prefer ones where it wasn't due to the enemy going 'no way he's that stupid.'"

Ethics [Thursday, January 10]

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