Star Wars, Robots, and Transhumanism

I’ve been doing this channel for awhile now, and I have yet to talk about Star Wars. This is half on purpose, and half on accident. A huge reason for this is quit simple: Star Wars is so binary. The good vs evil ploy is very black and white. The evil people are clearly so evil. I mean, their names are Darth Sidious and Grievous. The storytelling is not exactly subtle in the way they paint the good guys very good, and the evil guys very evil. Not to say that something has to necessarily be crazy nuance to drag something interesting into the equation, but it certainly helps. I knew I’d have to approach it at some point, but the question of exactly how was definitely a pressing concern.

But today, I wanted to talk a little about that binary nature of the world which separates good and evil as inherently different beasts. Today, I wanted to talk about some of the underlying beliefs and understandings of the world according to the Jedi vs their evil counterpart – the Sith. When we dissect these elements, we see that the Jedi order may not be this pinnacle of good and have a lot of underlying troubling beliefs to them. Even though the world is painted in very binary natures of good and evil, a more detailed look will show that maybe there is more nuance than I originally thought.

Our starting point for this discussion is actually with the presence of robotics and the question of Transhumanism. In scholarly explanations of Transhumanism, Darth Vader is actually used a lot – his transition from entirely human Anakin Skywalker to the overly roboticised and more-than-human Darth Vader is the perfect example of the idea of Transhumanism as the ability for a cyborg to be more than ourselves. Despite Darth Vader being the primary pop culture example for academic studies into Transhumanism, the conversation about Transhumanism and Star Wars doesn’t go much beyond this. Which is interesting. There’s an underlying debate about Transhumanism that exists within Star Wars – each side of the argument on each side of the binary nature of our good vs evil dynamic.

As Anakin Skywalker becomes more and more cyborg, his descent into the Dark Side is more obvious. When a “whole” human (and I should note I’m using quotes around the idea of “whole” here), he seemed saveable. But even the one-robotic-arm Anakin in the Clone Wars displays a lot of troubling aspects which point to his inevitable fall to the dark side. We also see connections to the cyborgian Dark Side in Grievous. While not a Sith, and therefore not technically Dark Side, Grievous is always on the evil side of our good vs evil divide. In the Clone Wars, he’s with the Separatists; in the movies he’s with the Empire. No matter the debate, he’s always firmly on the side of evil. He’s also quite the cyborg.

While once a man, Grievous sustained life-threatening injuries which required him to have extensive changes to his body which were mostly mechanical in nature. He also made secret alterations to his brain, which increased his natural abilities despite their active change to make him more mechanical than his original organic life-form.

Grievous, in many ways, is the foreshadowing of what will eventually happen to Anakin – who will become quite a lot more mechanical than his initial one arm. But even among Jedis, having one arm missing and a mechanical replacement was not usual. Anakin was marked by his proximity to machine.

The views on Grievous’s Transhumanism was made fairly clearly by Obi Wan in the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan describes the transformation as malforming the body, rather than seeing it as a life-saving act. In the same fight, Obi-Wan also criticises the Separatist army for being all droid – unfeeling and mostly programming. Machinery, droids, and even mechanical prosthetics are all seen as a negative to the Jedi way of life.

Me pointing out some of the more obviously religious connections of the Force and Jediism I hope will not be anything new to anyone – like most things in Star Wars, it’s not exactly subtle. But maybe this lack of subtlety works in our favour in this instance – we’re more able to see connections between religion, robotics and Transhumanism both in Star Wars and outside it.

William Bainbridge is a scholar of religion who once did a pilot study about Transhumanism and religion. In his work, he found that very traditional religious views often saw Transhumanism and aspects of Transhumaism as inherently negative. For them, the idea of cyborgian more-than-humans are actually in direct competition with their own religious beliefs. Put in more direct Christian terminology, a cyborgian human is going directly against the idea of humans as replicated in God’s own image. It’s inherently wrong.

This can be also related to Jedi and Sith conversation, with Jedi taking the place of our traditional religious views. The Jedi see the robotic nature of what once-was-human as something inherently wrong. It goes against the nature of the Force and the understanding of the place and role of humans and, more importantly, the human body.

Let’s look at the Jedi code in contrast to the Sith code to see this a bit better. The Jedi code ends with the phrase: “There is no death, there is the Force”. This is very reminiscent to Christian ideas of connecting to God through Jesus as granting “ever lasting life”. In both instances, they don’t mean you will literally become immortal through your connection to the religion. Even the most fundamentalist of Christians know that at some point their mortal body will fail them. Rather, they acknowledge that their connection means there is something beyond that – a life after life, as it were. For the Jedi, this is similar.

While the Jedi code focuses on aspects of what there is not and how all is the Force, the Sith code – at it’s more superficial – actually doesn’t seem all that bad. Their code focuses on freedom, and how the gaining of freedom is above all else. The use of the Force is simply a means to an end, with the end being the freedom they seek so much.

This focus on freedom is an actually rather interesting side note to this whole discussion, because in the Star Wars universe, there’s actually a lot of slavery. Twi’leks are often used as slaves. The number of Twi’leks owned, and female Twi’leks in particular, is a marker of social status and rank, including the Twi’lek senator. In fact, female Twi’leks are often involved in sex slave trade, as they are seen as inherently sexual. Although the consequences of this on the Twi’lek women themselves are not as deeply explored as one would hope. In fact, in some explorations of Star Wars, Twi’leks slavery is almost glorified. Sex slavery was also alluded to with Leia when she was captured by Jabba the Hut, which is also seen as a great sexy outfit despite the implications of the character’s situation.

We also see slavery in Tattooine, a planet whose history seems to involve intense slave trading no matter the era. In Tattooine, we are also introduced to the idea of chips implanted in the slave which physically keeps the slaves from escaping. This is a really intense way to keep slaves, to say the least.

In fact, the slavery on Tattooine is directly presented to the audience through young Anakin Skywalker. Anakin was born into slavery, and therefore was deeply affected by his experiences. When beginning his training as a Jedi, many of the Jedi were already fearful of Anakin’s shifting to the Dark Side because of his history as a slave, saying that his history of slavery fosters feelings of hatred. This is, of course, frankly true. Ill treatment, and especially seeing such aggregious practices as slavery, can definitely foster feelings of hatred in those who are personally affected by it. And it also fosters the inherent need for freedom, another aspect that the Jedis seem to dislike in contrast to their Sith counterpart. The Jedi view of Anakin already reveals really complicated notions of slavery is, and quite frankly how problematic.

In Anakin’s history, we see a lot of glimpses of how the Jedi treat him differently because of his past as a slave. Partly this can be due to the inherent fear of his turn to the Dark Side, but also this is partly because of classism. Many don’t take him seriously as the Chosen One because of the fact that he was born a slave – and for some if you are born a slave, there is little you can do to raise yourself above that. More so, the fixated nature of slaves as being more consumed by the Dark Side also proves to demonstrate very complicated notions of the cultural and social impact of slavery. The continued different treatment of Anakin – no matter the reason – helps to instill difference and Otherness, which will inherently push Anakin to seek more direct and conscientious notions of Freedom.

And speaking of the way Jedis treat slaves, I feel like we have to address the conception of the clones in the Clone Wars. What’s interesting about the Clone Wars is that the writers in Star Wars had to think of a way to have a massive war which didn’t completely wipe the population of the galaxy. In the Clone Wars, there are individuals who fight on both sides, but the primary troops are either droids on the side of the Separatists (another peek at the idea of robotics as bad) and clones on the side of the Republic. The clones were developed from the DNA of Jango Fett, a Mandalorian bounty hunter. Genetically speaking, the clones are Mandalorian – they are made of organic material and have personalities and viewpoints. They name each other nicknames that go beyond the numbered designation the Republic gave them. But they are expected to be nothing but soldiers and fodder for the war. They are trained to fight and die, and are given no other option. For all intents and purposes, the clones in the Clone Wars are slaves to a war – unable to escape and unable to choose for themselves what they wish to do. And they fight alongside the Jedi – whose views on the Force and life seem to not question their treatment of these individuals. This was especially made too real for me in the Clone Wars episodes that show the clones as children – who are already being trained to fight and die despite their age.

There is, also, the role of droids. We’re already talking about the view of robotics as bad in the good vs bad debate in Star Wars, so droids have to come more directly into the conversation. If Transhumanism is seen as bad because of it’s proximity to robotics, then how is a full on robot treated? And again, we can talk about slavery.

In the Star Wars universe, there are some people who fight for droid rights, but these are few and far between. Most see droids as built to be slaves, despite the incredibly present intelligence in the droids we encounter. Discussions of slavery tend to be focused on the conception of beings who are “sentient” – but the determination of sentience is complicated. How do we determine sentience? I know I’m starting to sound like that one episode of Star Trek, but I think it bares thinking about, especially when we are talking about artificial intelligence. What truly is the difference in artificial intelligence like Data, or R2D2, and the sentience of Anakin Skywalker?

In fact, many treatments of droids follow aspects of slavery constraints. Restraining bolts can be put on droids, which are hardware that restrains or alters the typical behaviour of the droid or its own obedience. Restraining bolts share a striking similarity with the mind chips implanted into the slaves like Anakin and his mother – keeping them from acting on certain actions.

The Jedi dislike of droids is pretty palbable, and in more than just that one scene with Obi-wan and Grievous. For those in universe who fight for droid rights, one of the actions they most dislike is memory wiping of droids. This is seen as working actively against the droids own personal bodily autonomy. Interestingly, we see Anakin mimicking this in the Clone Wars series. In one episode, R2D2 was taken and it was revealed that his memory had never been wiped by Anakin. Therefore, he held all the of the battle plans and floorplans that have ever been used by Anakin or R2. When Obi-Wan finds out about the lack of wiping, he’s pretty mad and orders Anakin to wipe the memories of his droids.

The fact that Anakin never has wiped the memory of R2 reflects his treatment of R2 as an equal, and perhaps reveals his own understanding of the use of droids as effectively slaves. He likes to think of R2 as a friend and colleague, rather than as a tool. This is why he refuses to upgrade to a newer droid, or to wipe the droids memory. He retains the bodily autonomy of R2 out of respect for R2’s own sentience.

Droids and robots are therefore inherently inhuman and therefore beyond the nature of what should be under the protection of Jedis for most who follow the Jedi code, while the Sith – like Anakin becomes eventually – see their inherent intelligence and personhood. It is also the Jedi who treat those from slavery poorly, and see them as an inherent threat, rather than as peoples worthy of saving and equal treatment. It is the Sith who see slavery as inherently bad, and the need for freedom as something to strive for. While this isn’t always followed through directly by all the Sith, it’s still worth considering how this appears at least on paper.

The Jedi resistance to the conception of death as the full end may be why they view alterations to save a life as inherently bad. Grievious’s initial changes to cyborg, for example, were not just done on a whim, but were the result of great injury. Anakin as Darth Vader is similar – after sustaining burns and arm amputations, the cyborgian Darth Vader is how Anakin manages to stay alive. In the Jedi mindset, they would potentially have been better off dead. A lot of the way the Jedi understand these changes reveals a lot about the Jedi view of the body and the ableism that is inherently present there.

Let’s take Anakin pre-Darth Vader, shall we? He gets his arm cut off by Count Dooku, and the plan is to give him a mechanical prosthetic. But this already alters him, and by all views of the Jedi and robotics, marks him as Other and robotic. Prosthetics are not exactly seen as normal in the world of the Jedi, which is surprising considering how many times it happens to a Skywalker. After his mechanical arm, Anakin is still a Jedi for some time – during the entirety of the Clone Wars. But how does his prosthetic compare to Obi-Wans comment to Grievious about the disgusting nature of the robotic body?

For a group who are supposed to understand life through compassion, there appear to be deep rooted inabilities to see past issues of “normality” and particularly conceptions of a “normal body”. There is little compassion for the history of slavery in both an individual and in a culture, and there is also little compassion for bodily differences which may present themselves in the form of prosthetics or cyborgian elements. Despite believing in the sanctity of life, those who continue to live in different bodies are considered something to be feared or rejected. The life of clones are not as privileged as the life of a Jedi.

So, I guess, that pre-established binary of Jedis as all good and Sith as inherently evil is not all that its cracked up to be. The strong and un-subtle delineation of good and evil seems a little more nuanced, and a little more problematic. Because discussions of Transhumanism are inherently tied to discussions of personhood and definitions of what it means to be human, by looking at the understandings of Transhumanism we can get a really good picture of the morality of the Star Wars universe, and the Jedi in particular. Their absolute resistance of Transhumanism, and especially the connections between personhood and robotics, can be ableist, classist and even pro-slavery.