Thomas D. Harter
Imagine that the next time you are out in public you come across two people in a fistfight. Stunned and afraid, you watch, but do not intervene. Soon, one of the fighters gains the upper hand. The other attempts a counterattack but fails as the first brutally beats the other. The winner then calmly walks away while the fallen fighter cries for help. Moments later, emergency medical services arrive and begin tending to the beaten fighter, who's barely breathing and bleeding profusely with broken limbs. The fallen fighter is medically stabilized, given pain medication, and transferred to the nearest hospital.
Later, you see a news story about the fight and learn that the fallen fighter was operated on for many hours and survived. The beaten combatant needed both legs and an arm amputated and had to be fitted with prosthetics to regain the ability to move independently. The fighter's lungs were permanently damaged, and so he was given a tracheostomy (a procedure for attaching a mobile respirator) to breathe normally. The fighter also experienced severe throat damage, making it impossible to safely swallow food, meaning he needs a feeding tube to eat.
People are typically grateful for medical technologies used in the treatment of illness or injury. Without knowing any of the context of the case presented above, most readers would be astonished and horrified by the winner's actions – which appear callous or even malicious. And they'd be thankful for the medical providers and the medical technology that saved the victim's life and allowed him to function independently.
Yet, this is not how movie audiences are expected to feel about the onscreen fight between Obi‐Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith. Instead of viewing Obi‐Wan, the fight's winner, with horror as he walks away from a mortally wounded Skywalker (who'd become Darth Vader), audiences are led to feel both grateful that Obi‐Wan vanquished Skywalker and disappointed that Emperor Palpatine found him in time to allow medical technologies to prosthetically restore Skywalker's body.
Something's amiss. How can it be possible that on twenty‐first‐century Earth, technology is typically praised for helping people overcome illness or injury, while in Star Wars technology and technological innovation are generally treated negatively, as something to be feared rather than praised?1 In this chapter, we'll explore how Lucas has led Star Wars audiences astray into accepting false beliefs and fallacies about the value of technology, particularly in a medical context.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that addresses questions about how people should live and interact with one another. In its most basic form, ethics is the study of what it means to be good and to act rightly.2 Bioethics is the study and practice of ethics in a medical context, particularly how we should research, develop, and use medical practices and technologies to help others.3 An example of a bioethics dilemma: if two Rebel soldiers are wounded in battle but there's only one bacta tank available, who should get it? One person might answer this question by saying the solider who was wounded first should get the tank, while another person might argue that the tank should go to the solider with the worst wounds, or perhaps the solider with the best chance of surviving. Yet another person might argue that the only fair thing to do is randomly pick who the tank should go to.
We must look to facts as the essential starting point to answer questions like this. An important fact we know about the Star Wars films is that they are George Lucas's interpretative retelling of ancient mythologies that, at their heart, are about the idea that all persons have good and evil traits and that all people can freely choose how to act on them. We also know that Lucas intended that human relationships with technology would be a prominent theme. During a 1999 interview with journalist Bill Moyers, Lucas states, “One [theme] is our relationship to machines, which are fearful but also benign and … they are an extension of the human, not mean in themselves,” just as a lightsaber is an extension of its Jedi or Sith wielder.4 Although Lucas does not tell us what exactly he means by technology being an extension of persons, it's reasonable to assume that what he means is that technology has no inherent value, but instead has value only in terms of how it's utilized by persons.
In addition to facts, context is important when addressing bioethical questions. Different facts and pieces of information presented from different perspectives can change the assessment or outcome of a bioethical deliberation. Imagine an unmodified, sheathed lightsaber lying on its side. If looked at from either end, it appears circular. If looked at from the top down, it generally appears rectangular. But a lightsaber is neither a circle nor a rectangle, so neither perspective is a fully accurate depiction of the cylindrical shape of a lightsaber. Likewise, narrative stories only show the narrator's perspective but not necessarily the full picture. In Return of The Jedi (ROTJ), C‐3PO captivates the Ewoks with his rendition of the basic plot of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The movie‐watching audience knows and can verify the truth of C‐3PO's summary. The Ewoks, however, know nothing about the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion prior to C‐3PO's tale. The story the Ewoks hear is completely one‐sided; C‐3PO could be lying to them and the Ewoks would not know any better. Storytellers have great power over their audiences and can lead them in any direction they want, truth be damned.
Consider the misleading storytelling around the human relationship with technology in Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader. Lucas leads the audience to fear this transformation, conveying a perspective about the value of technology that stands contrary to its actual value in a medical context on twenty‐first‐century Earth.
Points of view matter. Star Wars fans know that truth all too well. If Lucas's goal was to explore technology as something “fearful … but also benign,” he succeeded but also failed. From his point of view, Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader is nothing short of horrific. After Anakin is seduced and corrupted by the dark side of the Force, he's confronted by Obi‐Wan on Mustafar. Obi‐Wan mortally wounds Anakin by dismembering him with his lightsaber. After telling Anakin how much he loved him and that they were “brothers,” Obi‐Wan leaves Anakin, screaming in pain, to die on the shore of the lava river. Emperor Palpatine finds and rescues Anakin, who's barely alive. We then see Anakin lying on a metallic table in a dark room being attended to by medical droids. His legs have been replaced with metal prosthetics, his left arm still missing. He remains conscious throughout the ordeal – thrashing his body and screaming in pain as the droids work on him, removing bits of charred flesh. That he remains conscious is an important nuance, as it depicts the medical process as something painful and harmful; the Emperor wants Anakin to suffer as part of his final transformation. As the droids complete their work and Vader's now infamous mask is lowered in place, his eyes open wide for a brief second, then narrow with sad resignation to his fate that he is, as Obi‐Wan later describes him, “more machine now than man, twisted and evil.”
Fear of technological transformation is well communicated in this scene. Technology as something benign is not. Despite Lucas's claim that he wished to show technology as “fearful but … also benign,” that is not the message audiences are left with.
The Anakin‐to‐Vader physical transformation scene is perhaps the starkest example in the entire Star Wars canon of the fearful side of technology. But maybe we are not being fair to Lucas. As he noted in the Moyers interview, he wanted to show Vader as a “repulsive,” “composite man,” who's “lost a lot of his humanity … so there's not much, actually, human left in him.”5 The Anakin‐to‐Vader transformation was Lucas's way of visually and viscerally showing Vader's transformation from good to evil. So it might be that Vader is the exception rather than the rule. However, throughout the Star Wars mythos, technology is rarely shown in a positive light. Rather, technology is something to be questioned, abused (as with the treatment of most droids), discarded, or feared.6 The Death Star (and its decimation of lush Alderaan), the cyborg body of General Grievous (which raises a question we'll return to at the end of the chapter about using technology to enhance persons), and the Imperial Navy are all examples of Lucas showing technology as fearful, but not benign.7
Conversely, what's “natural” and technologically unaugmented is treated as good, pure, or innocent; its loss is grieved. We see this when Obi‐Wan misleads Luke about what really happened to Anakin. Rather than be forthright with Luke that Anakin is Vader, he instead tells him that Vader betrayed and killed Anakin. To Obi‐Wan, the fact that Vader is “more machine now than man” is equivalent to Anakin being dead. The Ewoks, another example, are portrayed as simple, innocent creatures who literally live in treehouses. The Jedi wear earth‐toned, free‐flowing robes, and their entire mythos is about being in balance with the “natural” order – as we see both Obi‐Wan and Yoda adapt to their respective desert and swamp climates on Tatooine and Dagobah, while the Empire embraces technology to dominate and rule. Notice too how, after Luke loses his hand fighting Vader and it's replaced with a robotic hand, he hides it beneath a black glove.
There are two primary concerns with how Lucas portrays technology in Star Wars and specifically regarding the Anakin‐to‐Vader transformation. First, his perspective is built on the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy is the mistaken belief that because something is “natural,” it is necessarily also good. If this belief were true, it would mean that certain states of human existence that occur naturally but are otherwise undesirable are actually “good,” such as poor eyesight, poor hearing, headaches, or bacterial infections.
The philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) helps us understand why the naturalistic fallacy is an error in reasoning. Hume argues that it's logically problematic to jump from an “is” statement to an “ought” statement.8 “Is” statements are empirical; they tell us verifiable facts about the world, for example that Obi‐Wan left Anakin to die after their battle on Mustafar. “Ought” statements are value statements about how people should think or act given certain factual statements: Obi‐Wan should (or should not) have left Anakin to die after their battle on Mustafar. Because factual statements are value‐neutral, giving or attaching value to a factual statement requires showing how the concepts – the fact itself and the value someone gives to the fact – are tied together. The naturalistic fallacy wrongly makes an is–ought connection about what's “natural.” As an example, the fact that Force‐sensitive beings can serve the will of the dark side of the Force does not mean that they should. But in Star Wars, with few exceptions, what's “natural” is assumed to be good or valuable without clearly explaining why.
Via the naturalistic fallacy, Lucas conveys the false belief that most technology is “unnatural” and so is bad, harmful, or associated with the dark side. There are multiple examples ranging from the use of cloning technology to create an army and to allow Palpatine to survive his pseudo‐death in ROTJ, to the use of prosthetics to save Anakin's life and finalize his transformation into Darth Vader, to the creation of the Death Star and the Imperial Navy. Rarely does Lucas attempt to display the possibilities of technology as helping the worst‐off creatures in the galaxy. Imagine how different Star Wars would be if the films tried to show the Rebels using portions of the Death Star plans to create technology capable of growing food crops on Tatooine!
It should be clear at this point that Lucas's portrayal of technology in Star Wars is one‐sided and does not map onto twentieth‐first‐century reality, a context in which it has helped humanity overcome many natural obstacles that threaten the quality and length of many lives. In addition to mass production of clothing, food, and shelter, medical technologies – such as ventilators, feeding tubes, prosthetics, and cardioversion machines to help restore heartbeat – have helped people survive and recover from many potentially fatal events. It may be tempting to say Lucas's portrayal of technology is simply wrong; however, this would be too rash a conclusion.
Lucas is not wrong that technology can be fearful, but its value depends in part on how it's intended to be used. Even the use of some medical technologies that can extend life raise questions about whether they should be used in all cases. Many bioethical conflicts center around whether a seriously ill or injured person would want certain medical interventions used to extend their life, given potential trade‐offs. Some people are like Darth Vader and need a ventilator to support their breathing for the duration of their lives; but not everyone wants to be connected to a machine in perpetuity.
Lucas's portrayal of technology in Star Wars is biased against its true value in societies. However, to assume that because the use of technology is not always negative, it's therefore positive and should be used, for example, to enhance persons – like General Grievous – is also a fallacy, known as the technological fallacy. This fallacy, like the naturalistic fallacy, wrongly assumes an is–ought connection between technology and its value. People commit this fallacy when they assume technology is good or must be utilized. While it's possible à la Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to argue that technology has its own metaphysical reality and so has inherent value (for Heidegger, a negative one) that's independent of how it's used, it's also common to view technology as inherently value‐neutral, only having value in relation to its application.9
Whether technology should be used to save Anakin's life after his mortal injuries is a different question than whether technology should be used to “enhance” one's natural state of being, as in the case of General Grievous. Without medical technology, both Anakin and Grievous would've died from their respective combat wounds, but whereas the prosthetics of Darth Vader do not improve his abilities – and in fact, hinder his physical movements – Grievous's cybergenic body gives him physical and mental capabilities beyond the natural state of his original, non‐enhanced body.
Morally, some will make the argument that people should take opportunities to enhance themselves when they can. After all, we are typically encouraged to enhance ourselves through education, exercise, and healthy diets.10 However, there are serious concerns and risks with arguing that technology should be used to enhance persons. One worry is that technology used to enhance persons may lead to divisions of moral status: the enhanced may view themselves, or be viewed by others, as having superior value over the unenhanced, just as Clone Force 99 (later known as “The Bad Batch”) was engineered to be superior to other clone troopers.11 Even if enhanced persons aren't considered or treated as superior to the unenhanced, there are still concerns that enhancement could result in conflicts of interest between the two groups, resulting in rights of the unenhanced being restricted. The Sith are the embodiment of this concern: they believe that the enhancement of mastering the dark side of the Force gives them a greater standing among all other beings and entitles them to rule the galaxy.
Lucas's portrayal of technology in Star Wars is flawed. Despite claiming that he wanted to show technology as both “fearful … but also benign,” he fallaciously presents most technology in a negative light. Yet, Lucas's treatment of technology is not without merit. Embracing technology as inherently valuable is also fallacious. Instead, the value of technology should always be viewed in the context of how it's used. That Anakin was saved and his body restored after medical intervention is something that typically would be applauded, but how this event is portrayed in Revenge of the Sith generates the opposite reaction. Audiences are led to lament Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader and not condemn Obi‐Wan callously leaving Anakin to die on Mustafar.
Perhaps, though, showing Anakin's physical transformation and his need to rely on technology to survive is exactly the point. The Skywalker family – especially Anakin – is prophesied to “bring balance to the Force.” That Anakin and Luke are both maimed and need prosthetics shows that technology itself is value‐neutral; its moral value depends on specific context. While Star Wars is set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, context remains important for ethical decisions in our world, where rapidly advancing technology can blur the line between human and machine.