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“Be Mindful of the Living Force”: Environmental Ethics in Star Wars

ELIZABETH F. COOKE

 

 

 

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, good and evil looked remarkably similar to the good and evil we see in our world today. Of course, most of the species, planetary systems, and technological gadgets are foreign to us living in the twenty-first century, but the basic values of democracy, equality, and justice are the same. And the epic hero, the Jedi Knight, shares the same characteristics of the warrior hero in Western culture since the Homeric Age. He’s a brave and skilled fighter devoted to a just cause, and, above all, a master over his mind and body. These common values at play in Star Wars allow the story to speak to us, despite such an unfamiliar backdrop.

But something else comes to light when the backdrop involves intergalactic travel, the power of the Force, Death Stars, the Dagobah System, Wookiees, Ewoks, and Gungans. We find that the Star Wars galaxy reveals a rich approach to environmental ethics—one quite relevant for issues in our own world. Environmental ethics is a branch of philosophy which uses ethical theories to solve very practical matters concerning animals, plants, and the environment as a whole. Now the environmental ethic at work in Star Wars is probably not readily apparent. After all, the Rebel Alliance concerns itself with only the humanist values of democracy and freedom. And the Jedi Knights, guardians of peace and justice, exemplars of all that is good, don’t seem all that concerned for animals or the environment. What set of values then can account for restoring balance to the Force which somehow includes all the different creatures, cultures, and planets? This issue requires our attention to the fact that the Force is indeed a living Force. And here, as Yoda would say, the answer to our question, we will find.

Wookiees and Mynocks and Hutts, Oh My!

Environmental ethics is concerned with the proper relationship between humans and their environment. Generally it asks what our responsibilities are beyond the human community and whether we owe ethical treatment to nonhuman animals, plants, and ecosystems. A central issue then is just what kind of value animals, plants, and ecosystems have: intrinsic value (as goods in themselves) or mere instrumental value (insofar as they’re useful for something else). Some environmental ethicists argue that the environment has instrumental value only. While humans may have intrinsic value, we give value to other nonhuman things by virtue of our valuing them. So everything from cell phones to lightsabers to the Mona Lisa has value only because humans deem it to. These environmental ethicists urge us to see that the environment offers us tremendous goods (food, oxygen, aesthetic enjoyment, and more) which are instrumental in pursuing our goals, but not in infinite supply. Thus, to protect our long-term interests and those of future generations, we should work to preserve the environment.

Other philosophers argue that this “resource management” approach misses the point of an environmental ethic. It’s criticized for being yet another “anthropocentric ethic,” which unjustly places humans at the center of what is to be valued.⁵⁶ One such critic is the contemporary philosopher Peter Singer, who agrees with the view that value depends on a conscious being (a valuer), who gives value to things, but disagrees that humans are the only beings who count as conscious valuers. For Singer, ethics is concerned with protecting the interests of others, which essentially requires working to increase others’ pleasure and alleviate their suffering. And he holds that “consciousness, or the capacity for subjective experience, is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for having an interest.”⁵⁷ This means that to have an interest, one must be capable of feeling (being consciously aware of) pleasure and pain. But of course many nonhuman animals have this ability. Animals too are conscious valuers and have interests—at the very least the interest to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Humans thus owe animals decent and humane treatment, just as we do other humans.⁵⁸ Singer argues that we have no good reason to extend ethical treatment solely to humans—a bias he calls “speciesism.” Speciesism parallels the injustice of racism by arbitrarily giving special status to the interests of individual humans (over and above the interests of other animals) just because they’re members of our same species. Singer’s point is that consciousness is what’s morally relevant, not membership in a certain species. And while there may not be an absolutely clear line of demarcation between animals which have consciousness and animals which don’t, according to Singer, all mammals and birds should clearly be included because they can feel pain. But then what are we to think of Luke Skywalker, who shoots womprats in his T-16 and even brags about it to his friend Wedge? Presumably womprats can feel pain, yet this is of no concern to our otherwise moral young hero.

The question of the ethical treatment of animals in Star Wars proves difficult, since the distinction between human and animal simply doesn’t hold—or at least not in the same way. After all, Yoda clearly isn’t human, but we couldn’t call him a “mere” animal either. And other nonhuman creatures like Watto the Toydarian junk dealer and Jabba the Hutt raise similar problems. At the same time, some creatures certainly behave like animals—for example, mynocks and wampas. So perhaps our question should be rephrased: Are “animal-like” creatures treated ethically by the “human-like” creatures?

We do see some humane relationships between human-like and animal-like creatures. Han Solo and Chewbacca have a kind of friendship, albeit not one of equals—a point parodied in the film Spaceballs. Chewie is like a pet dog—loyal, dependable, and even well-trained, but not completely so (apparently Wookiees just aren’t good losers, or so Han warns C-3PO while R2-D2 plots to defeat Chewie at a board game). But overall, Chewbacca is treated almost like one of us. And on the other side, ethical corruption in Star Wars is often illustrated through the inhumane treatment of animals by characters such as Jabba the Hutt and Count Dooku. Creatures like the reek, the nexu, and the acklay are unleashed on Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Anakin in the Geonosian arena as a spectator sport (like the lions of the ancient Roman coliseum). And Jabba casts a slave-dancer down to a dungeon pit to be eaten by the wild rancor. In addition to the potential harm to the human-like characters in these cases, there’s the questionable presence of exotic animals, far from their natural habitats, in circus-like roles serving humans (or the human-like) for entertainment as well as other purposes. These animals are “owned” and their natural functions (like eating meat) are put on display. As we’ll see, this is completely out-of-sync with the Jedi way.

Although there’s no mention of “rights” for animal-like creatures by the “good guys” in Star Wars, they can’t be guilty of simple speciesism. Surely something like inter-species rights is at work in the Galactic Senate. Members of different species work together, co-operatively for the most part, toward the same political and ethical goals. Their different appearances are so irrelevant for the purposes of democratic participation that different species intermingle as if they’re merely different cultures or ethnic groups. We see inter-species co-operation in the Jedi Order and the Rebel Alliance as well. What brings these creatures together is capability, rather than species. In particular, self-consciousness is important here. The abilities to self-reflect and rationally deliberate are the very conditions for participation in democracy, which has at its center equality, rights, and justice based on the intrinsic value of every human being or human-like creature. Here we see the very strong humanist element in Star Wars—with a reminder that “human” need not apply only to Luke, Han, and the like.

But many environmental ethicists would argue that the inter-species relations we see in Star Wars fall short of an animal ethic, since equal treatment and respect extends only to those creatures who are “human-like,” while there’s no mention of ethical treatment for the animal-like creatures. Star Wars seems to employ an anthropocentric ethic in that only human-like traits are valued—and only because they’re human-like. In the end, critics argue that an ethic which excludes nonhuman animals allows for their use or destruction in the name of human interests.

Value in Nature

Beyond animal ethics, the philosopher Holmes Rolston, III argues for the intrinsic value of both animal and non-animal life. If something is said to have intrinsic value, it usually implies that it should be respected and not used or destroyed. For example, the intrinsic value of each human being means that we owe respect to every individual, and are not permitted under any circumstances to practice slavery or use humans as test subjects without their knowledge and consent. In the same sense, Rolston argues that we’re obligated to respect nature due to its intrinsic value, rather than its instrumental value for humans. Humans don’t put value in the environment; it’s already there. All of nature is a productive and creative process and “there is value wherever there is positive creativity.”⁵⁹ Rolston reminds us that when we’re walking in the woods, far from other humans, something “tells us” that although no other human may walk this path again to see the beautiful flowers, we still ought not to pick them. Each flower struggles to survive, to defend its life, and we should not interrupt this process needlessly. The organism seeks its own good or telos, the natural goal of an organism, which requires different actions depending on its species—a plant photosynthesizes, while a wampa seeks and eats meat. And this process is itself intrinsically creative. If a plant’s stem is cut off, it will repair itself; it will work to recover in a way that a blaster or an AT-AT Walker won’t. Although plants and (some) animals are not conscious of this process, it’s the creative process, not the awareness of it, that has value.

By itself, this view would appear to be an environmental individualism, the view that we have ethical obligations to distinct individuals (in this case, each living organism) and not necessarily to species or the environment as a whole. But Rolston argues that ultimately each individual organism shouldn’t be seen apart from its relationships with other organisms, or from those processes which produced it—in other words, their ecosystem. The sea monsters in the waters of Naboo, for example, must be seen as part of their larger ecosystem, including the water, the caves, and the other organisms in the food chain to which they’ve had to adapt. An ecosystem isn’t simply a collection of interacting individuals, but a system of processes and relationships between different organisms; this system creates and sustains life.⁶⁰ Natural processes don’t just create organisms; they create diversity within species. And this ends up being good for the overall ecosystem. In this sense, ecosystems seek their own good and for this reason the ecosystem should be valued as well. So, while intrinsic value is typically considered independent of all else, Rolston insists that it be considered within a whole system. In other words, each organism has intrinsic value, but intrinsic value isn’t absolute value (as is normally believed).⁶¹ He says:

The dialectic of instrumental and intrinsic values, embedded in systemic value, is communitarian without subtracting anything organismic because it integrates organic parts in a community whole. Earthworms are of value because they aerate the soil for grasses and supply food for catbirds, but also because they have an inherent good of their own. Neither their instrumental value to grasses and catbirds or to the system, nor their intrinsic value in themselves—no single thing alone but the fusion of all contributes to integrity, stability, and beauty in the community.⁶²

This position, called environmental holism, maintains that the good of the whole biotic community requires recognizing the interdependence of organisms, and that the individual health and integrity of each organism depends on the health and integrity of the entire natural world.

So while the intrinsic value of living individuals militates against their arbitrary destruction or use, the fact that intrinsic value doesn’t imply absolute value means that sometimes our ethical obligations to organisms may be trumped by other obligations. Choices can be made as to the importance of competing values. For Rolston, there’s a hierarchy of value in nature, such that some values can be overridden by others. Respecting “nature” because it has value doesn’t mean respecting “equality” among all living things. A self-conscious animal, say a Wookiee, can be said to have more value than a less conscious animal like a mynock. And yet a mynock, insofar as it has an ability to feel pleasure and pain, will have more value than a non-conscious rock.

But while there’s hierarchy of value in Rolston’s philosophy such that more sophisticated organisms have more value, this doesn’t always mean “humans first.” As he says, “Humans count enough to have the right to flourish here on Earth, but not so much that we have the right to degrade or shut down ecosystems, not at least without a burden of proof that there is an overriding cultural gain.”⁶³ But although human interests will lose sometimes (when it comes to deforestation, for example), what we lose is also a good thing to lose, namely, the exploitative attitude toward nature. And what we stand to gain is a more harmonious relationship with nature.⁶⁴ Our obligation is to become responsible members of a human and biotic community. Rolston holds that many things need to be taken into account when making moral choices between individual animal, environmental, and human interests. For example, in our efforts to preserve the environment while pursuing human interests, special priority should be given to rare species, to species which play particularly vital roles in ecosystems, to biodiversity in the ecosystem, and to the process (rather than just the products) of nature.

Now when it comes to the Star Wars galaxy, environmental concerns aren’t exactly the first priority. Yet there is evidence of a respect for nature and life evident in the Jedi worldview.

“May The Force Be with You”: Lessons from the Jedi

On the face of it, the Jedi way has much in common with a kind of mind-body dualism, whereby one must overcome his biological nature rather than become unified with it.⁶⁵ After all, Yoda affirms to Luke that “luminous beings are we . . . not this crude matter.” Yoda further insists that we not judge him by his physical size and proves why in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. After death, a Jedi’s body may disappear, and indeed Obi-Wan Kenobi becomes even more powerful after he dies and loses his physical being. This seems to suggest that the Jedi are more like “minds” who temporarily learn to work within their bodies, as one might learn to move around in a car. At the very least, this means that consciousness, the mental life of the Jedi, is more than just biological matter.

But this isn’t the whole picture. After all, life creates the Force. “It’s an energy field created by all living things,” Obi-Wan tells Luke. The point is echoed by Yoda: “For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us . . . You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you . . . me . . . the tree . . . the rock . . . everywhere!” This isn’t so much the “mind-over-matter” picture as one of mind and matter interacting as two parts of a whole. A Jedi padawan’s task is to become more in touch with the physical world by being more at one with the Force—a task achieved through both physical and mental training. A Jedi must learn to feel the Force, rather than just think about it. This allows him to move physical objects without touching them, influence other minds, and “see” without looking.

There’s an important biological basis here. The Force speaks through living creatures and only to other living creatures. This may be explained by what Qui-Gon Jinn says to young Anakin Skywalker, that “midi-chlorians” are a microscopic life form residing in all living cells. We have a symbiotic relationship with them—“living together for mutual advantage.” As Qui-Gon puts it “Without the midi-chlorians life could not exist. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force.” This implies that we already exist in a symbiotic relationship with these messengers of the Force, and when a young padawan learns to quiet the mind he can learn the will of the Force by feeling it through the midi-chlorians in his cells. Control of one’s mind then is also control of, and a kind of listening to, one’s body so that mind and body can be one. So when a Jedi says, “May the Force be with you,” he really means, “May you be with the Force—and may you quiet your mind to listen to it, to be aware of it.”

Learning to listen to the Force also connects the Jedi with other living things, creating a kind of harmony with them. And in this sense, Jedi training is training in respecting nature—after all, it is a respect for the living Force. The Jedi learns to recognize symbiotic relationships of the natural world.⁶⁶ Once he learns this, he grows in wisdom by understanding the entire natural world and his proper place within it.

“Mudhole? Slimy? My Home This Is”: Jedi Living in the Natural World

The natural world confers powers of wisdom and balance, and it’s natural environments in which Jedi feel most at home. During the “dark times” of the Empire, the surviving Jedi retreat from the city-planet Coruscant to hide among the natural caves of the Tatooine desert or the swampy marshes of Dagobah. They live with nature, rather than against it, in sparse, simple dwellings.

And when a Jedi gets into trouble, he consistently finds an ally in the natives of some very natural environments. The “ecocommunities” of the Gungans and the Ewoks are very much at one with their environments. The Gungans are less technologically advanced than most other nearby cultures, while the Ewoks have virtually no technology. Ewoks live within the trees and their homes, clothes, and weapons are made out of simple materials directly from their environment. Right away Leia and Wicket the Ewok are natural allies against the stormtroopers. There seems to be no genuine evil found on Endor. Never mind that the Ewoks originally captured and planned to eat Han, Luke, and Chewie—it was nothing personal! In Star Wars there’s a big ethical difference between violence done out of duty or necessity (the Jedi and the Ewoks, respectively) and violence done out of anger or greed (Anakin slaughtering the Sand People in revenge and the bounty hunters, respectively).

Strangely enough, the Jedi are fighting to establish what these “natural” communities already have—a unity and harmony with the world. For if we asked ourselves what the galaxy would look like after balance is restored to the Force, we might guess that it’s a galaxy where democracy reigns, but an intergalactic democracy that lets eco-communities like the Ewoks and the Gungans live harmoniously and maintain their distinct identities as “peoples.” In other words, it would be a galaxy where harmony and diversity are supreme, which are the very ideals of environmental ethics.

Only biological creatures are in touch with the Force in this way. Here we learn of a key distinction between “artifacts” and “organisms” in Star Wars. And Rolston makes this same point, first made by Aristotle: A machine doesn’t have its own natural goal, but instead receives its purpose from humans.⁶⁷ A machine has no self-generating or self-defending tendencies. In our world, as of yet, only biological creatures have this. Robots can’t reprogram themselves the way that even earthworms or algae can in order to adapt creatively to a change in the environment.

And time and again we see that for all the threat and intimidation of the technologically advanced stormtroopers, battle droids, AT-AT walkers, and the Death Star, ultimately they can’t outdo biological creatures working in harmony. When battle droids collide with the Gungans, and stormtroopers with the Ewoks, the biological creatures always have the surprising advantage: They work with nature to defend nature, and nature is one with the Force. By doing this, they can respond to new and challenging environments. Jedi know this and while they use technology, it’s always in the service of the Force of nature. So, while the Dark Side moves closer and closer to overcoming the natural world, it fails in the end. When push comes to shove, the natural processes in the biological world can always overcome human creations of technology, even if it’s the “ultimate power in the universe”—the Death Star. As Darth Vader admonishes one Imperial officer: “Don’t be too proud at this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”⁶⁸

Culture versus Nature

Environmental philosophers differ when it comes to whether human culture is part of the natural world or is significantly distinct because it’s a product of deliberate behavior and not the spontaneous processes of nature. This is also left unclear in Star Wars. On the one hand, the Jedi are cosmopolitan. They find the city-planet Coruscant comfortable enough to base their Temple where they reside, meet, and educate young Jedi. On the other hand, many cities in Star Wars are full of corruption and decay. Obi-Wan warns Luke as they enter the urban world of Mos Eisely, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The upside of cities is that they allow different people to meet, live, and come together for intergalactic deliberations. The downside is that they offer anonymity which shelters and disguises dark characters, like shape-shifting bounty hunters and Dark Lords of the Sith. Consequently, in cities, people try to mind their own business—no one is bothered in the slightest by Han killing Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. And as Qui-Gon says of Mos Espa, “Spaceports like this one are havens for those who don’t wish to be found.”

Of course, for all the dangers of living in one of the major cities, the dangers of not living in them can be just as great—if not greater. The humanist values of the Republic, manifest in its anti-slavery laws, are simply ignored on Tatooine. The remote world, apart from civilization, can become its own breeding ground for evil. To reconcile the values in the natural world with the humanist values of the Republic, we might look to Obi-Wan’s explanation to Boss Nass, the ruler of the Gungans. In order to convince him that he should be concerned for the Naboo during their time of crisis, Obi-Wan reminds him that the Gungans have a symbiotic relationship with the Naboo: “What happens to one affects the other, you must realize this.” Later this natural alliance between the two peoples proves vital for saving both from the Trade Federation. Indeed, the Force’s fundamentally symbiotic relations exist not only at the microscopic level of the midi-chlorians, but among different cultures and forms of beings. As Padmé is quite aware, once this point is conceded, an even stronger organic relation is possible—one capable of fighting an entire droid army.

For an environmental philosopher like Rolston, natural communities are held together by causal relations, whereas human communities are held together by additional meaningful relations. ⁶⁹ Perhaps Obi-Wan’s description of the relationship between the Gungans and the Naboo is only a metaphor, since there’s a similar split between the natural world and the cultural world of the democratic Republic. After all, when traveling through the planet core on Naboo, Qui-Gon doesn’t make such a big deal when his little sea craft nearly gets eaten by a fish, which in turn gets eaten. “There’s always a bigger fish,” he says calmly. Yet, he wouldn’t so casually describe the Trade Federation’s pressure on the Naboo in this way. Despite his respect for the natural world, he sees that it’s governed by very different principles. By contrast, human-like relationships should be governed by democratic principles, which the Jedi regularly defend.

Restoring Balance to the Force

Rolston reminds us that even in a humanist ethic there’s still a sense that individual welfare is inseparable from the good of the whole, “recognizing on a moral level in human affairs the symbiosis in biology.”⁷⁰ But ultimately, the goal in environmental ethics is to balance the goods of human culture and the goods of the natural world. Achieving balance for humans is actually restoring balance, since it’s out of an intricately balanced natural world that we have evolved. Although distinct human communities and natural communities have developed, they’re not so different that they can’t live in harmony. Restoring balance to the Force, for the Jedi, must mean restoring balance within the entire living community—including cultural and natural worlds. Whether there exists a real or only a metaphorical symbiotic relationship between human communities may be left somewhat unclear in Star Wars. But in either case, restoring the natural symbiotic-like relationship is what the Jedi consistently work toward. It’s evident in all they do: deliberations among the Jedi and between other peoples, diplomatic missions, and sometimes “aggressive negotiations . . . negotiations with a lightsaber.” The Jedi see themselves as part of a greater whole with other living things. When Anakin begins to see himself as more important than the whole, he begins his break with the Jedi way. Conversely, the redemption of both Han Solo and Lando Calrissian comes about when they each begin to see their role in the larger cause of the Rebellion.

The Jedi worldview brings us toward an ethic which includes all living things. But unlike environmental ethics, here the interconnections are not just within ecosystems, but to the one living system of the Force. Ultimately, all living things are unified by the living Force, regardless of place. But an important general view of Jedi philosophy is shared with an environmental ethic, namely, that we should extend our ethical worldview to include all living things. The point of environmental ethics is just this idea of inclusion. Such a view reminds conscious beings of their dependence on the natural world and of the interdependence of all living things. Each individual, as precious as he is, is part of a greater whole. And as it happens, the reward is internal too. For if we’re all part of the living Force, then restoring its balance is also restoring the balance within each of us.⁷¹