In Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon flipped the die on Tatooine using the Force. Isn't this deceit? By doing so, did Qui-Gon follow the Dark Side?
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8related, possible dupe: How is the Jedi mind trick not a dark side technique?. The rule of using such techniques only for the greater good would apply here.– phantom42Nov 26, 2015 at 12:54
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6If jedi can agree to depose chancellor to bring peace, dice roll seems a small price, me thinks– AbhinavNov 26, 2015 at 14:50
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1@Abhinav They agreed to arrest Palpatine. Windu planned to kill Palpatine in the last moment.– user931Nov 26, 2015 at 18:10
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2Chopping people up with a lightsaber is totally Light Side, but flipping over some dice... whoa! It is interesting how blatant our moral biases are, and yet we are totally blind to them. (And even knowing this, we are shocked at how it is possible for a well-meaning public to consistently elect awful people!)– zxq9Nov 27, 2015 at 12:41
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2@zxq9 Killing isn't a Jedi way. They chop off droids most of times. When it comes to the rare occasions, the victim is very bad guy.. But, the act is labeled dark. Windu was indeed dark Jedi.– user931Nov 27, 2015 at 12:47
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7 Answers
Very few people would argue that it is wrong to cheat in order to free a slave. Or to put it differently, almost everyone would agree that slavery is so appallingly wrong that cheating in a game of chance (especially against a slave owner) is all but harmless in comparison.
Watto was cheating too:
Watto used a chance cube he had with him to gamble with Qui-Gon Jinn on the outcome of the Boonta Eve Classic. After refusing to bet both Anakin Skywalker and his mother Shmi against Anakin Skywalker's Podracer, he offered to roll his chance cube to decide which slave would be wagered: blue for the boy, red for his mother. Qui-Gon Jinn used telekinesis to influence the fall of the chance cube to ensure that Anakin's freedom would be at stake. As Watto had weighted the die to land on red, and had five red spaces and one blue, to ensure winning such random tosses, Jinn's trick took him quite by surprise.
- Wookieepedia, citing the novelization of the film
And:
According to the script, the chance cube that Watto rolled with Qui-Gon was fixed to land on red. That's why he was so mad that Qui-Gon tampered with it to land on blue.
- IMDb
Losing Anakin wouldn't materially hurt Watto much, but if Watto kept Anakin, it could hurt the galaxy, the Jedi, and everyone else (obviously, no one knew Anakin would turn out to be the worst thing ever).
Although the Jedi hold the virtue of honesty in great esteem, they are allowed to bend the truth, cheat, and even lie if it serves the greater good and wasn't motivated by personal gain:
Practice Honesty
Honesty was the first responsibility that aspiring Jedi were taught. Jedi were permitted to stretch the truth if the situation required it of them, however this was to be done as sparingly as possible. An honest Jedi was always truthful with himself, his Master, and the Council.
- Wookieepedia
I can't imagine many people arguing that Obi Wan was a bad Jedi based solely on the act that he said "These aren't the droids you're looking for" when the droids in question were indeed exactly the ones the stormtroopers were looking for. Qui-Gon's situation isn't much different.
- The Jedi are obliged to protect the weak from oppression.
Defend The Weak
Similarly, a Jedi was expected to defend the weak from those who oppressed them, ranging from small-scale suffering at the hands of an individual to large-scale enslavement of entire species.
- Wookieepedia
This would certainly seem to apply to Qui-Gon trying to free a child from slavery.
In light of all of the above, we can say with some confidence that Qui-Gon didn't do anything wrong:
He was dealing with a slave owner, trying to free a slave
The slave owner was trying to cheat him to keep said slave
He was bound by oath to protect the weak from oppression, which presumably included slaves
The net gain to Anakin, the Jedi Order, and the galaxy was far greater than the net loss to Watto
He was under no obligation to be honest/fair, especially with an immoral, cheating slave owner who wasn't being honest/fair with him
His motives were good, not selfish; his methods were proportionate to those of his adversary, and measured; his goal was admirable, not malicious; the outcome was just, not unjust (ignoring the fact that Anakin became a monster decades later, which no one foresaw). None of this smacks of the Dark Side - quite the opposite.
answered Nov 26, 2015 at 11:20
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'Good'/'bad' are subjective and not axiomatic. But I think this quote is appropriate here: "Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nov 26, 2015 at 22:07
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@jonbaldie The appropriate quote is in the link above, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes."– corsiKaNov 26, 2015 at 22:31
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Watto also tried to cheat Qui-Gon out of freeing Anakin after the race was won. Watto only caved when Qui-Gon threatened to bring The Huts into it (weather the Huts have a sense of "honor among gangsters/slavers" or that Watto is on bad terms with them doesn't really matter given the threat of bringing them in was enough to have Watto give in)– Memor-XNov 27, 2015 at 2:11
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1@aroth Except that the Jedi council only became concerned that Palpatine was a Sith Lord is because Anakin told them as much. For all we know, if Anakin had been left behind then the council never would have learned the identity of the mastermind until it was much too late, and then fast forward to the future there may be no Luke (or Leia) to oppose him, nor a Darth Vader to turn against him at the final moments (and he wouldn't even be trained in the force). Which would be much worse. Nov 27, 2015 at 4:55
No.
Normally, using the Force to make dice roll in one's own favor would be dishonest and against Jedi teachings.
However Qui-Gon in this situation was trying to free a human being from slavery, something I rather doubt would lead him down to the Dark Side.
To illustrate what I mean, normally Jedi seek to avoid taking a life but will sometimes kill to defend the safety and freedom of others as well as their own.
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4Yeah, seeing it as an act of freeing a slave, in other words, enforce the laws of the republic (as far as possible at that point of time), we can say that he chose the non-violent way of doing it. Manipulating dice can’t be wrong when the only alternative are negotiations with a lightsaber. What is much worse, is, that nobody of the Jedi ever cared about returning and freeing the other slaves once they learned that there are slaves. I mean, accepting it as you are only two Jedi and having a different mission is one thing, still ignoring it for years when you are back at the Order is another…– HolgerNov 26, 2015 at 12:24
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2But he would have freed a slave either way, either the woman or the boy. But he choose to manipulate the dice to get the boy instead of the woman.– BobbyNov 26, 2015 at 14:44
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3@Bobby - The woman was the boy's mother, so I'm pretty sure she would have wanted Qui-Gon to save her son before herself. Nov 26, 2015 at 14:51
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@MarkGabriel Qui-Gon mainly. He isn't exactly the most orthodox of the Jedi. See Mike C. Ford's answer.– KroltanNov 27, 2015 at 0:36
Qui Gon was not really an exemplar of the Jedi Order, he went against their wishes numerous times, and by all accounts he was a bit of a maverick and tended to not follow the rules to the letter.
Besides, he influenced a game of chance in which the outcomes were to decide which of the two slaves he would be freeing, not whether or not they were going to be freed, that depended on the race. Sure he benefited from the outcome, but had Anikin lost the race it would not have mattered, as he would have freed neither of them.
Had the dice roll been for whether he won or lost the wager between the slaves and the pod, or if he used the force to influence the outcome of the race, that would have been much more deceitful.
Plus, I was always under the impression Watto was using a weighted die, so perhaps Qui Gon knew this and was simply redistributing the odds that were already stacked against him.
answered Nov 26, 2015 at 10:49
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I also always thought Watto had a weighted die, his expression seems very worried for something with 50/50 chance.– KroltanNov 27, 2015 at 0:37
The Light and Dark sides of the Force are determined by the users emotions, not by their actions or the result of their actions.
Was he using anger, greed, jealousy or fear to give him the power to move the dice? No, he was calm and using the Force to free someone. So, no danger of slipping into the Dark side from this.
Which side you are using is not the result of a moral decision. The problem with using the Dark side isn't your goals, but rather the fact that it reinforces negative emotions, which ends up changing yor goals.
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@SS-3.1415926535897932384626433: so? He wasn't using the Force to say that. If there was any Force use by him in that scene, it would be when he said "Do it" just before Anakin did it, and that had some emotion behind it. And again, it's not moral goals that determine whether you are using the Dark or Light -- using the Light side to send a tellepathic message to commit genocide would be possible.– jmorenoNov 26, 2015 at 18:28
No, by altering the roll of the cube, he did not use dark side. Having said that, even if it's a moral question; Qui Gonn was a grey jedi, anyway; a factor (amongst his own choice) that he was not on the jedi council.
He believed what he was doing was because of the force. That they were led there to find the boy by the force.
Besides, one could argue that keeping slaves is not right, and that freeing slaves is a greater good - had he freed Shimi, she would not have been able to do much. However, having freed anakin, there was more of a chance later she could be freed, which, as we know eventually happened.
The purpose for doing something is more of a determinant of its evil/good nature than the act itself.
For example, rather effectively running a republic to victory in a war against some pretty bad dudes can actually be a pretty evil thing if the reason you do it is as a ruse to implement a plan to commit genocide on a rival group and take over that republic and make it into an empire.
Likewise, killing people can be inherently good if you're doing it to protect the lives of the innocent.
Both of those examples are in the star wars world...but parallels exist in ours too. Someone that kills someone that was attempting to murder innocents is hailed as a hero, not a villain for having killed. It was the reason for the action that determined the evil/good nature of it.
There is nothing in the light side of the force that prohibits deceit. On the contrary, deceit and trickery are the light side's bread and butter. In the Death Star, Obi-wan projected sounds to trick the stormtroopers into leaving their post. In the battle with Vader at Cloud city, Luke uses a force jump in an effort to trick Vader into thinking Luke was still in the Carbonite machine. In many of the video games where you play a Jedi, a lightside skill is to turn invisible -- allowing you to sneak up on enemies and get the drop on them.
A dark sider isn't deceitful. They don't need to resort to trickery. Someone using the dark side wouldn't have used the force to move the dice. They would have straight up murdered Watto and taken whatever they wanted.
Using trickery and deceit is what separates the light side from the dark. The dark side is big, showy, loud, bombastic, and direct. Think force lightning, force chokes, throwing debris across the room. The light side is subtle. Think making a dice roll one extra time, convincing people that these aren't the right droids, turning into a ghost.
Factors that help determine if something is Darkside or Lightside are mainly:
- Motivation - Are you using the force for yourself - or - to help others
- Emotion - Are you being driven by fear, hatred, anger - or - are you level headed and calm
- Directness - Are you hurling lightning - or - are you tricking people? Are you using a lightsaber to kill everyone in your path - or - do you chop off a guy's arm to show the whole room not to mess with you, thereby ensuring you don't need to kill everyone in your path? Do you force choke an enemy to death - or - do you use a mind trick to send enemies on their way? tl;dr, are you using the force for violence as a first resort - or - are you using the force to avoid violence?
