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Comment by asimpletune | Hacker News Reader

It needs to be said that Darth Vader is not simply a villain who believes in the force but uses it for evil. He sincerely wants peace for the galaxy. In terms of goals Darth Vader and the Jedi ultimately want the same thing, or at least neither of them want "evil". Where they disagree is he just believes the best way to achieve peace is through gaining power, that's it.

It's essentially a contest of peace through control (order) vs peace through trust (balance), and for that matter the Jedi are not even successful in sustaining their beliefs.

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I get what you are saying, but surely their definition of "peace" itself differs quite dramatically.

I venture to say they in fact are not after the same thing, while they may be using the same words. Their use of the word "evil/not good" only serves as a distraction as that is a word used to determine how aligned or misaligned a subject thinks it or some other subject is on our or its way to whatever goal we have in mind, but this doesn't mean the goal is the same if two actors use that word.

What Siths want is autocratic control for its own sake. If they could somehow have robots or whatever handle the galaxy's "peace", they wouldn't suddenly grab a martini and start relaxing on the beach singing beautiful songs of cosmic harmony. They would still exert control in their characteristic sadistic, vindictive ways. They are in it for themselves, they don't care about anything else and I'd argue they are incapable of knowing. They are wired that way. In a way it's sad. They want personal control and personal aggrandizement. When they use the word "peace" they mean "lack of resistence (to me)" and not "freedom from violence and liberty for all".

Jedis fundamentally want a different thing. They don't want to become personal dictators over a faceless populace subjected to their every arbitrary whim. They do want "freedom of violence and liberty for all". They want an order based on rules and those rules must be born out of concern for life itself, not the indiscriminate use of power to get whatever the hell you want when you want it. That's why Siths are obsessed with personal power, not because their aims are equivalent. It's because their aims are not equivalent.

The Sith really need to get a comms guy in to look at their branding and messaging strategy

Just cool it with the evil laughs, ok?

I just noticed... All our Sith Lords wear black.

Are we the baddies?

Finally! Someone who sees his true motives. Never, was there ever a more misunderstood figure.

> He sincerely wants peace for the galaxy.

I understand this is probably prequel or EU lore, but I wonder if this claim can be justified using only the original trilogy.

That is a great question. In the original trilogy, without prequel context, he often makes overtures to Luke about them ruling the galaxy together. Otherwise I don’t think we see a lot about what Vader wants until later when he’s dying. I think then he says something about Luke having given him hope or something, I don’t remember perfectly.

So from the original trilogy alone I think it’s not 100% clear what Vader wants, but there are strong indicators.

if someone wanted more peace than Vader, Vader would try to kill tht someone. Vader is driven by revenge on the biggest scale, which leaves zero wiggle room for any truth but the one who swayed him when he was at his lowest. he got taken in by a roofie/stockholm syndrome strategy where the swedish part remains obscured by V's blind wrath and his liminal existence as a cripple.

one addition:

control and balance both allow margins of error and variety, the former as a method of quantifying edge cases and the outer rim of the currently controllable system and the latter for survivability and thriving. control permits the next challenges, while variety ensures that at least some approaches don't blow a hole into the hull that can't be fixed by at least somewhat established methods.

peeps like Netanyahu are blinded by some sort of revenge while being taken in by some sort of roofie/stockholm tactic pulled in their youth.

leadership in general on the other hand have all the data telling them how ugly their daddies fucked up so they exert way too much control via maximized systemic fraud and hoarding while referring to established financial mechanisms that are young and erroneous. then there's the phantasy of "cycles" ... as if modern human progress has to care and abide by such a thing ... instead of meeting them head on with control over in-build organic mechanisms ... which again, is the failure of leadership and science, allowing stuff in products that breaks in-build control mechanisms for the economies sake, which is logically retarded beyond belief ... but being a young civilization, it's pointless to blame the misinformed ... and ridiculous that leBuffets of this world say things like "if the people were smarter, we wouldn't make so much money" without turning into moldy tomatoes ...

Darth Vaders definition of the peace is something like the one Putin has or Nazi had. In the Nazi plan, once they conquer everything, there will be peace and prosperity.

It is NOT the same thing.

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