Come on, Lucas!

George Lucas's greatest blunder to date is not Howard the Duck. No, it is in one of the last scenes in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Obi Wan and Anakin are fighting in the lava world. Obi Wan, in an emotional fit, cries out to Anakin, "Only Sith lords deal in absolutes!" Whoa, the respect meter went down considerably on that instance. Either Obi Wan made a verbal fumble with his Force philosophy (since he was an emotional wreck at that point, not very becoming of a Jedi) or Lucas made a dialogue error (one of many or should I say the entire movie was filled with bad dialogue) and made a fumble in his Force philosophy. In fact it was quite the strange line for Star Wars. The very idea of having the Good side of the Force and the Dark side of the Force is based on absolutes. There is never the Gray side of the Force. From what I gather in the movies, the Gray side is the slippery hill where you slide down one side or the other. It's the "lop off Count Dooku's head" area or "toss the Emperor over" area. That's if there is the "Gray side." Lucas most likely confused the word "absolutes" with "extremes." There's quite a big difference. Simply put, an absolute is complete and unconditional while an extreme is fringe and outermost. Yes, extremism may need absolutes, but absolutes do not necessitate extremism. Extremism just needs one idea to go on, whether or not it's absolute. I'm sure Lucas thought that a person with absolutes qualifies him to develop into an extremist. And I'm sure he knows the difference, but he didn't seem to clarify it in that one instance. And yet there is that phrase in Empire Strikes Back where Obi Wan pretty much says truths are different for each person, or, to quote Bruce, your truth is not my truth. Hog-freaking-wash! Even some secularists agree on the inconsistency of relativism. There is only yes or no, true or false. Of course there is a "depends on the circumstance" but even then those decisions are based on working within the framework of absolutes, otherwise you'll be inconsistent. It's not just Aristotilean dichotomy, our minds are naturally binary. As Schaeffer puts it, it's either thesis or antithesis. Synthesis is sloppy when it comes to dealing with absolutes because it leads to contradiction and dissonance, a result of relativism.

Lucas, you either do or do not, there is no gray.