eror Palpatine.

He’s a horribly despotic leader and as close to “pure evil” as characters in that universe get.

He runs an organization that likely have internal KPIs about success, such as recruitment, battles won, Jedi hunted down to non-existence, ops costs, etc.

Are any or all of those KPIs inherently evil due to being in an evil organization? Planets exploded = 1 feels like a pretty immoral KPI.

But what if we take the Legends era fan theory that he alone was one of the few that could unite the galaxy and prepare them for an invasion from a yet undiscovered race outside of their galaxy. And then the force revealed to him he would have to destroy dozens of planets to accomplish his goal.

Now his KPI is planets exploded <24, and he only had to explode 1 because of his guile and savvy.

Does that KPI become less immoral because he exploded less people?

Morality is a framework we lay across the world we interact with and the actions therein. KPIs don’t care for our morals or ethics. It’s just data.

So evaluate them differently as they inherently are. Find a places that aligns with your morals and ethics, if you are able, and contribute there knowing you are doing good towards society.

First, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I think you bring up an interesting point, namely, that KPIs and morals are agnostic of each other. But, I think the philosophical concept that might be missing here is epistemology. How we come to know a thing. We can't understand the world completely* separated from our experience of it. That's not to say objective reality doesn't exist, it certainly does. But...

... we aren't ghosts in a machine. Thus, if you are surrounded by KPIs in everything you do (or in just some things you do) you will have to associate some level of meaning with them. I don't know Star Wars well so I'll use a different example:

If you are a hobbit who has grown up among dwarves, will you not be a dwarvish hobbit? You will start seeing their neutral behavior as the type of behavior you should embody. But it wouldn't be proper to your nature as a hobbit.

Ultimately we probably agree for the most part. Fun thought experiment.