Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Ethics

Food is love, you guys! Hence, cupcakes. I love agreeing and disagreeing with y'all.

Speaking of ethics, on this week's episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (watch it for free), the Jedi bang heads with Chancellor Palpatine (surprise!) regarding a life form they find on a planet. The Zillo beast was thought to have gone extinct, but the Jedi discover a new one. A Zillo beast is wicked hard to kill, and very dangerous. Palpatine wants to bring the Zillo beast to Coruscant in order to study it and apply any research from its armor plates to the Clones' armor. Jedi say no, it's too dangerous. But okay, we'll do it, since the Chancellor is the boss. Sure. They bring the beast to Coruscant (the planet that is one giant city, if you don't remember), and (surprise again!) the beast escapes. Chancellor Palpatine tells the scientist in charge and the Jedi to kill the beast. Big Ethical Dilemma. The Zillo is dangerous, and killing lots of people, but it's the last of its kind!

Star Wars has always been really good at applying philosophical principles to popular entertainment, even in cartoons. Nothing like a little ethics to go along with your Saturday morning bowl of cereal!

1 comment:

  1. It’s an interesting conundrum as to whether or not it is justified to kill off the last of a species in order to better your own cause. On the one hand the species is doomed regardless, but on the other it is difficult to justify killing something just because it has something you want. You know that since Palpatine is involved the end result is only designed to benefit him in some form or another, so the writers have in a sense “rigged” the dilemma in favor of the Jedi’s point of view. Personally I feel that if your plan involves killing an uninvolved party then you screwed up somewhere along the line.

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