Love Conquers

Compassion serves as an important part of many narratives. In Star Wars love, passion and compassion became central issues as the franchise expanded across various mediums, particularly the prequel films. Its Jedi heroes went from wise old knights retired as hermits into monk-like warrior-priests - who refrain from love for fear of the potential corruption.

The most significant portrayal of someone falling foul of this is Anakin Skywalker. In the prequels we are presented with the idea that Anakin falls to the dark side when his love for his wife is exploited against him - Palpatine using jealousy, anger and hate to twist Skywalker into Darth Vader.

But this wasn't the message in the original trilogy. In Return of the Jedi it was Luke's compassion and Vader's love for his son that helped them defeat the Emperor. That sentiment was reaffirmed in the wonderfully written game Knights of the Old Republic, through the venerable old mouthpiece Jolee Bindo:

"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you."

And compassion is capable of driving more than selfless devotion. Richard Dawkins discussed the role that altruistic behaviours play in the evolution of creatures:

 "Reciprocal altruism - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. When animals live in groups where they encounter each other frequently, genes for returning favours can survive. Individuals sacrifice themselves for each other, they give food to each other - to close kin and other individuals who might be in a position to pay back favours on another occasion. Selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals."

This suggests that your own potential is best served, not by absolute selfless devotion  nor selfish introspection, but rather through the self-centred notion that you help yourself best by caring about the well-being of others.

As it was put in a report compiled in the 1920s to find an answer for Britain's struggling economic situation, the liberal Yellow Book (1928):

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'

Compassion serves as a huge advantage to the evolution of an individual. But it is also central to the liberal ideology, where a society takes an interest in the fulfilment of the potential of its individual members - acknowledging that your liberty as an individual is best defended by defending the liberty of others.

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+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928.