The Bizarre (And Often Dark) Implications Of The Star Wars Universe

Is there any altruistic explanation for why droids should be created with the capacity to feel pain? The most glaring example of this are the soldier droids that, of all droid-kind, should be the last ones produced with the capacity to feel pain as they were built to have violent demises.

Beyond that, other types of droids clearly experience pain as well. C-3PO says "Ow" on the numerous occasions he's harmed, and we also see a droid being tortured in Jabba's palace by having its feet scalded with hot irons as it screams. It seems particularly sadistic to program droids to feel pain as, best case scenario, their "lives" come to an end simply being left somewhere to rust. Otherwise, they'll almost always be dismantled in some violent way or another. 

The Phantom Menace makes perfectly clear that soldier droids both fear for their lives and feel pain when they're sliced to bits with lightsabers. These droids crack jokes, shake in their boots about the Jedi, and emit sounds of pain when they're attacked as some form of comic relief. The larger implication is that while these drones that are essentially cannon fodder, they were also programed to feel any pain inflicted on them and fear their inevitable demise in battle. 

The Star Wars saga is so full of planetary destruction that we've almost become inured to it. It's why The Force Awakens had to up the ante by giving Starkiller Base the ability to destroy multiple planets at once instead of just one. While this mass murder is objectively horrible, it becomes even more amoral when the full scope is considered.

Not only are all the autonomous individuals of those planets killed, almost every single species is completely wiped from existence with the destruction of each planet. There are millions of species on Earth; any such habitable planet is likely to have a comparable number. With each planet destroyed, the galaxy edges closer to the extinction of billions of different species.

Most citizens of the galaxy are probably functionally illiterate. Even those who can read for their professions, like the pilots and technicians, likely can only read because they went through specific training. The one case of long-form media we see, the ancient Jedi texts, are impossibly old and heavily pictographical. No one texts, no one writes letters, they all just communicate through voice chat and holograms.

It doesn't seem like there is a news media or journalists, either. In Phantom Menace, the Galactic Senate can't verify the status of the invasion of Naboo because there are no pictures, and no one has written about the very visible invaders surrounding their planet.

Since it's not even clear whether people are literate in the Star Wars universe, it's no surprise that they don't seem to have a free press or any kind of news media. The free press is sometimes referred to as the "Fourth Estate" because it's a veritable necessity to keep a democracy afloat. The reason why governing seems to be such a clusterf*ck in Star Wars, as even their "Republic" seem to run on nothing more than impassioned speeches, may very well be largely due to the lack of an independent news media. The lack of one certainly helps evil emperors and First Orders take over the galaxy so easily.

In their final battle, Obi-Wan shouts to Anakin that his allegiance is "to democracy." While Obi Wan may have thought that, the Republic that he fought for showed little evidence of understanding how government or democracy works. For example, after Amidala was elected a Galactic Senator, she stepped down after several assassination attempts. When she leaves, she gives Jar Jar Binks, a random unelected citizen, her Galactic Senate seat without any sort of special election. She just says it. Jar Jar then uses that power to give Palpatine his clone army, setting the stage for the Empire to take control.