> Michael Bowling said:
> >Recall in _Return of the Jedi_ when Luke meets Ben's ghost. Ben says that
> >Luke's father, Attican (sp?), ceased to exist when he was swayed over to
> >the dark side. Of Darth Vader, Ben says, "He's more machine than man--
> >twisted and evil." At the end of _Jedi_, a berserking Luke cuts off
> >Vader's saber hand, and low!! it is artificial! Luke looks at his own
> >prosthetic hand and realizes that he was becoming like his father-- more
> >machine than man, spiraling enraged into the evil of the Dark Side. ...
>
> This is a good point and illustrates that the attitude toward "machinery"
> in the Star Wars trilogy is sometimes negative. Yet, two of the major
> sympathetic characters are droids - 3PO and R2D2. The movies do not appear
> to express a coherent theme.
>
It, IMHO, seems rather to indicate that since tachnology is non-moral, its
benefit or detriment to society are entirely dependent on what side of 'The
Force' the individual using that technology is on. A machine that can be
reprogrammed by others can be made to do any evil desired. This is what Vader
intimates when he says to Luke earlier, in bot Empire Strikes Back and Return
of the Jedi, "It is too late for me.", as by then he was totally imprisoned by
the machine programming of his android side to remain enslaved to the evil
Emperor Palpatine. Perhaps the severing of his machine hand reduced the
control of the machine side of him long enough for his human side to revolt
and kill the Emperor.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?