Come to the dark side, Corey

Everything and everyone is gray. These moral dilemmas that we are all so familiar with are subjective. The battle between Luke and Vader is portrayed as good versus evil because, as the audience, we are supposed to root for Luke. We see Luke's struggle as the better cause because he is the one we are exposed to. We are never shown all the good that Vader and the Empire bring, all the jobs they create, all the planets that they help, all the people that they protect. If they showed us that, then we would not all root for Luke, but rather, like real life, we would be divided between Luke and Vader.

During the Cold War, Americans viewed Russians as Vader and the Empire. They were an evil force driven to undermine the American way. But to Russia, we were Vader, we stood to destroy all that they believed in. Good and evil only exist as a way to rationalize our own actions in this gray world.