fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, February 21]

Current Mood: pensive

Entry tags:

ethics

Ethics [Thursday, February 21]

Anakin leaned a little uncomfortably against his desk as he waited for the students to take their seats.

"Today we talk about diligence, temperance, and forgiveness," he said quietly, "and we're going to use examples from last week's exercise to do so."

He flipped the hologram to life, focusing on a shot of Palpatine's face. "The goal was to save this man, the democratically chosen leader of your galaxy, at the cost--if necessary--of your own lives. After the first dozen or so droids shooting at you, you certainly had the option of retreating and leaving the mission for someone else to complete. So when does diligence turn to foolhardiness?"

The holocam switched to footage of two Jedi, blue blades flashing, taking on an older man wielding a red lightsaber. The older Jedi went ricocheting into a wall, then the second one, fire in his eyes, closed in on their opponent who dropped to his knees moments later with two lightsabers held to his throat.

The Jedi wielding the lightsabers looked an awful lot like their teacher.

"Temperance," Anakin said softly. "Do you kill him now? He's dangerous. He held the head of a galaxy-wide government hostage. He injured your partner. He certainly tried to kill you first. Or do you capture him and leave him to the whims of the courts?"

He shook his head. "Finally, forgiveness. You save the chancellor, at great personal expense, only to discover he's not the kind of man you thought he was. Your act of heroism has managed to make the situation at home much, much worse. How do you forgive yourself for it? Can you forgive the others who put you into that position?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Can you forgive yourself for making a wrong choice? Would you have chosen to save the chancellor if you'd known it was going to screw up the future?

Karal might just have been glancing at Anakin while he spoke. "You can only judge your actions by what you knew to be true when they happened, not what the passage of time reveals. There is nothing to forgive yourself for. To think otherwise is to hold yourself responsible for an inability to read the future," he said. "You did your duty. The actions of the man who was spared are not your fault." He was quiet for a moment. "And, with the choice to revisit the moment with the knowledge of what was to come, I would not kill him."

Edited 2008-02-21 10:21 (UTC)

"Why wouldn't you kill him?" Anakin asked.

He looked down for a moment before lifting his chin. "I could not kill someone," he said calmly. Karal could, if pressed - and, Sunlord, does Professor Skywalker ever do anything but press? - envisage dying to do his duty. He could never imagine killing. "Even if I could, that knowledge does not change any of what I said earlier. My answers stand."

"Wrong choices are only wrong choices if you know they're wrong when you're makin' em. Otherwise, they're just mistakes. You didn't know any better, then there's nothin' to go kickin' yourself for. If you knew full well and still let him run around causin' chaos, then you can kick yourself in the head all you like, yo." Reno wasn't half as cocksure answering this one as he had been the last two. "Either way, bein' miserable about it afterward ain't gonna change what happened. Probably nothin's gonna undo what happens later because of somethin' you did or didn't do. Kinda makes it... difficult sometimes, to get over it an' forgive yourself for it. But if you can't do that much, then you can't exactly function again, either."

Especially when you know you're just going to turn around and make the same bad mistakes all over again. And again. And again. Ad infinitum.

"I'm... not so good at forgiving myself," Lana admitted. "Other people, sure, but myself..." She shook her head again. "I'd probably go over it a million times and try to tell myself that I'd made the best choice I could at each stage and try to figure out what I could do differently next time."

"And how would that be helpful?" Anakin asked.

"Might keep me from making the same mistake twice," Lana said quietly. "I don't think anyone can get through life without making mistakes - some small and some big - but if you try to learn from them and change... Might help a lot in the long run."

"This is a mistake you don't get over," Anakin said softly, walking away.

"You can only work off what you know," Mel said with a shrug. "If the old turnip was evil and I didn't know, how was I supposed to know that rescuing him would cause problems? And if I knew it was going to screw things up by getting him out, I'd definitely leave him."

"If you thought something was for the best, you have to forgive yourself," Romeo said, a bit intensely for a classroom discussion. Really, was this entire session designed to hit too close to home? "The alternative guilt would end your life as surely as a bullet, and you are stuck in a waking death."

"If I'd known he'd screw up the future, I would've left him to rot," Wyatt said. "If not, well, then you clean up your mess and fix things."

"If I knew it was going to screw up the future, I would just stay home." He didn't bother answering the first question.

"You follow your orders," Anemone said calmly. "If a mistake was made, you weren't the one to make it. There's no reason to beat yourself up for a mistake that the people higher up than you were the ones to make. They sent you to retrieve the package, then it's their problem that they got conned."

"You do what you have to do at the time the moment requires it. If you later learn that the outcome of your actions were perhaps wrong, then so be it. But at the time, you acted accordingly and that is what matters. I could hardly feel the need to forgive myself when I feel I did what was right."

Rikku chewed on her lip. "You can't ever know for sure, can you? I mean. This was bigger than just him anyway. If you had left him there, maybe something terrible would have happened. Maybe everything would have gone crazy and ... you'll drive yourself mad with what-ifs. You did what you thought was right, you did what you have to do, and if there are new problems, you set about fixing those, not wishing to change what's done."

Can you...? Adah blinked. She wrote.

"No."

She crossed it out.

"~~No.~~ You have to, no one else--"

Stopped again. Crossed it out. A few times.

"~~No.~~ ~~You have to, no one else~~ I don't know."

"I'd forgive myself for making a mistake," said Hoshi. "It doesn't accomplish anything to carry that guilt around. But if I had known the chancellor was that bad, I wouldn't have bothered rescuing him."

"I've made my share of wrong choices in life," Eve said, for a moment thinking of how she'd run from Kristof instead of staying. "And I haven't forgiven myself for some of them. But at the same time, you can't let them paralyze you. You have to keep on living."

"I think I'd forgive myself after awhile because at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do," Summer said. "If I knew the future would be screwed up by saving him, I wouldn't."

"Right and wrong can be subjective concepts," Evey replied softly. "Preservation of life is never wrong, not when it's redeemable, but I don't think it would have been wrong to kill him on sight if his evil was known. I don't think there's much to forgive for a single misstep like that, if you thought you were doing the right thing. Intent is everything."

"It's not my fault if I didn't know. It's a mistake. Those happen. Now that I do know it's on me to clean up the mess, though. And if I'd known it was going to go all wrong in the future, then...I don't know. Does it get better in the immediate present?" She could always kill him later, after all.

"Not even a little bit," Anakin said bitterly.

"Well, then, if I already know, he dies," Jenny said in tones of 'duh.' "Is this before or after I've fought the droids and the crazy other guy to rescue him, though? Because honestly, I could've saved myself the hassle, but then I get the impression they're not the good guys either, so...bit of mess, innit?"

"Don't know about forgiveness. I figure I'd learn to live with it. Eventually. Sometimes that's the only option you get, right?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ethics [Thursday, February 21]

Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness

Re: Answer the discussion question: forgiveness