“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” a Lesson

[Jack (Kasō Senshi)]

The famous movie line, "“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith gets a LOT of air time lately. The lesson is a fun one! In this lesson write about your thoughts about absolutes and post arguments for AND against. The catch, just your thoughts and no outside sources to back up your points of view. This is to be totally from you.

[firecracker]

Pro: Absolutes certainly exist, absolute values (mathematics), absolute zero (science), and been on our sliding scales of behavior/politics/ and etc, there are some things that are so far to the extremes that they would best be considered an absolute in that category. For my absolute inability to wrap my head around anything math related, I wouldn't consider math or any of these other categories to be Sith. To some degree we probably need absolutes, if for nothing else than to give us some sense of where we are in things (philosophically and in the soft sciences; and to aid in our understandings in math and science. Con: Where absolutes can be important, life is much more complicated than what living in absolutes allows for. Yes we have a definition of absolute zero,but outside of that we probably couldn't get a wide spread agreement on what constitutes as cold or warm weather. For example I live is South Carolina, my parents in Pennsylvania, and I have family in Colorado, Indiana, Illinois, and Rhode Island. We all based on our locations have a very different view on what is cold and hot weather. Conclusion: Where we need absolutes, we also need to be aware that absolutes can be dangerous. Where we need the shades of grey, we also need to be aware that the shades of grey can be dangerous as well.

[persistance]

I always saw this line as kind of a contradiction to the fact that Obi-Wan himself is such a a devout follower of the literal meanings in the Jedi Code. To me, this was a way to show the audience that even in his final moments as a Jedi, even as he was being forced to fight his "brother", Obi-Wan held fast to the absolutes of the Council without questioning if the Jedi were in the wrong. It also doubled as a justification of pulling his lightsaber on a friend, "he's not my friend because he is my enemy, a Sith" which cycles back around to the absolutes of the Jedi and how Obi-Wan never questioned it, even as he says "only the bad guys do that".
It's difficult for me to frame this line in a good light because essentially it's Anakin saying "If you're not my friend then you need to die" and Obi-Wan almost saying "no u". Being raised the way he was though, he does seem to understand that Anakin, at that point, is irredeemable. "I will treat you with absolution as a Sith, because you are willing to treat me with absolution as an enemy, but I'm also skirting around the whole 'Jedi are bad' thing you're talking about because you are corrupted by the dark side." I think is what he would have said, if he was more self aware of the Jedi as a whole, but this would also be very difficult to deliver without sounding stiff.