Only a Sith thinks in absolutes...
teratologist offered a heads-up to this link showing that, as she puts it, Orson Scott Card is acting a damn fool again. This link reminded me of something I've been thinking about lately, mostly due to a random discussion about Revenge of the Sith. It has, I guess, to do with that impulse to ( think in absolutes. Spoilers for RotS within. )
And that's where I feel the absolutes in both the characters who cannot look around the straight line logic, make for a good story, can't be savvy interpreters, but are more than the viewers who wish to clamp them down to one meaning want them to be.
Yes! Well said. Since people are like this characters often are too, and that makes for complications and conflict in the plot. But there are so many areas where of course people are going to react differently or think something else other than what is happening is going on.
The two ideas really do go together, because I think they tie together this fear of chaos and love of order that's easily understood, so even traumatic experiences follow a familiar pattern. That's what's so odd to me about Card being so offended at the idea of someone not seeing good as an absolute when to me "good" is so obviously a nebulous concept. It has nothing to do with moral beliefs, for me, but just facts. Maybe you'd like it to be that easy, but it usually isn't--and I think that's often why in my experience the people who think it's simple and black-and-white and absolute are the ones doing the worst job of living up to it!
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