Cards Drawn: Ignore Responsibility; Honor the Law
This seems like such a hard set of cards to consider. And the name certainly doesn't seem to make any sense, does it? It will, or at least I hope you get it by the end.
It is quite possible that the only reason I was able to craft a scenario where both cards are true, is because I’ve been watching/listening to an awful lot of archeological related documentaries this month.
Perhaps in the framing of “Ignore Responsibility”, it would be better to say “Resist Responsibility”. In this instance, I’m speaking of your duty to your career or a pursuit that means a great deal to you. You might be an archeologist that’s entire career seems to hinge on being able to get to spend time at a particular archeologically important site. However, governments have a stake in what happens to or at those places, and thus craft laws to protect them from the population.
A particular place in Hawai’i comes to mind. The US Army owned some land on Oahu which was used for aircraft combat training. Which included using it as a firing range. The responsibility of the people on the site was to ensure combat readiness of themselves and their troops. But someone intelligent enough to recognize what they were looking at, realized that after a planned control burn that went south, a couple of significant cultural sites were on the Makua Valley property. The US Army had to make a choice, either continue to use the property for live-fire exercises or protect the cultural site. One was a responsibility to the mission, while the other is not exactly a law, but there have been laws built around the importance of such: Historic Preservation.
This is where “Honor” comes in. Although Makua Valley was not specifically covered by any Historical Preservation laws, it does not negate the fact that the “Spirit” of such laws are at their core meant to protect sites of significant cultural importance. And as it would happen, to the people of Oahu, there is no area of the island more sacred than Makua Valley, of which they had been fighting for years to keep the military from using it for military training. To give you an idea of just how important it is, “Makua” means “Parent” in Hawaiian. It is part of the local creation myth, and it is believed to be a place frequented by chiefs from across the South Pacific to communicate with the Hawaiian people.
The decision was made to “Honor the Law” rather than ignore it for the sake of their responsibility to combat readiness. They had to find another way to accommodate their responsibilities in favor of protecting sacred history. Today they struggle to meet the demands of Hawaiian natives, simply because the site is still crawling with unexploded ordinance that they missed when sweeping the property. But they are working on it, and that’s honestly the most that can be asked.
Ultimately, Responsibility and Honoring the Law tend to go hand-in-hand. But Responsibility is more about what you feel obligated to and at times the two obligations (law and responsibility to someone or something) may find themselves at odds with one another. For the Jedi, we should always consider which one (law or responsibility) is more important to pursue in the moment and which one can be put on the back burner or left entirely. In the situation I outlined above, it's actually not that hard to reach a conclusion. There were already tensions between the local population and the military, so the right choice was always to improve relations with the local population by showing good faith. But what if the responsibility is to the family (or at least those you deem family)? What if your responsibility to them conflicts with the law? Suddenly, the answers may not be so simple.