What's your take on it? Are there objective standards to argue between what's good or bad, whether that be religion, art, beauty, etc? Or is it all relative to anyone's opinion through their cultural background, specific knowledge, or places of interest?
Personally, I think both extremes do no good. One silences, the other gives so much noise it's all pointless.
"We sat around, scratching the earth with our feet, half looking up for a sign of the end. And all the while it had long since come and gone." Alexi Murdoch
Shall I answer this absolutely or relatively?
Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb
I'm all about grey areas. My familiy is primarily prison guards, and usually convicts have strange stories, and at least some likable qualities. My grandmother was the laundry lady for a few decades and she was good friends with an Asian gangmember who sold drugs to kids, once he kicked a guy in the face for talking bad about her. The thing is, he grew up around horrible people the likes of which most of us can't even imagine, he had to sell drugs to kids even while he was a kid, and in spite of that, even though it was warped, he had a sort of code of ethics. I've learned that "bad" people are usually not entirely "bad," that's not their only characteristic. Situations get complicated.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
It's strange but some people prefer and feel safer about functioning in pure black and white terms. In my experience this minimises their capacity to empathise or understand situations out of their realm. Aside from the fact that they may apply their own relative bias - they live by the sword, they should die by the sword, I don't see how this perspective enhances one's outlook on life, only that it protects a person from having to confront the emotionality of life.
Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb
I think it makes them feel better knowing they only have two choices in any situation.Originally Posted by Delta40
(I am not saying I don't live in black and white terms at times)
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
You're probably right hypatia. In my job, I can be very black and white according to who I'm talking with - sometimes it's necessary. Certain family members get the same treatment too! (because they deserve it)
Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb
I spent a fair bit of time with a gangster locally renowned for his wanton violence, but he remains one of the nicest guys I've ever known.
As far as moral relativity goes, I'm really not entirely sure. I believe that the overwhelming majority of psychologically healthy individuals will share certain moral judgements, such as indiscriminate violence being morally reprehensible, while those suffering particular brain abnormalities and sharing similarly troubled upbringings and environments are going to have a much looser definition of what is good or okay. We are certainly a violent species, but under ideal circumstances random acts of violence are going to be socially and personally frowned upon. So for extreme acts I believe there is a kind of universality to their being deemed good, but it you branch out to less extreme acts their moral status becomes a little grey.
I don't believe aesthetic value judgements are relative either. I always encounter people who say "that's just an opinion," doesn't matter how obvious the claim is, even one as simple as "Shakespeare is a better writer than Stephenie Meyer." In my experience more intelligent and experienced persons are going to have superior opinions on what constitutes great art and less intelligent people with less varied exposure are going to have weaker opinions.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
There will always be situations where absolute truths fail lamentably. Is there a better discussion of this than in Henrik Ibsen's first successful play, now rarely performed, Brand?
"Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself"
truth as we experience it can differ also. How do we deal with that?
Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb
You've got to be careful with that sometimes, it's happened before that experts in various fields have ****ed up royally. My favorite example is recovered-memory therapy from back in the 70s and 80s. The idea behind it was that people who display psychological disorders must have some kind of traumatic memory buried deep in their subconscious which is causing them to be messed up, and that those memories could be exposed by putting the client in a hypnotic state and "regressing" them to childhood. So like:
Therapist: Think back to when you were a little boy. What are you doing?
Client: Playing with my ball in the yard.
Therapist: Is it sunny?
Client: No, there are lots of clouds.
It's a fake memory, but at the time professionals thought it was all real.
So, what many high-ranking psychologists did (and this is only a couple of decades ago) was instruct therapists and clinicians to put these people in a hypnotic state, bring them back to their childhood, and then ask the client to "describe the bad thing that happened." Of course, power of suggestion under hypnosis, the client would come up with a "bad thing" that didn't actually happen, and once they were out of their hypnotic state both client and therapist completely believed it to be true. Most often they came up with stories in which that they were raped, usually by their father, sometimes they thought that they had been used in Satanic rituals, all sorts of crazy stuff. Years later when it was finally exposed as bull**** hundreds of families had long since been destroyed.
So yeah, that story is what convinced me to at least be skeptical of the widely-held opinions of experts if I'm ever too stupid to understand what they're talking about, a nice little modern-day Aesop's fable. I guess it's really just important with science though. Maybe economics too, I guess.
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 05-15-2013 at 10:58 AM.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
That is such a great example. And honestly, I feel it can be importantly applied to any field, not just science or econ. But you're right, the real world repercussions are greatest when involving technology and money, since they affect so many people.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
In the most literal sense of the term, I see absolute truths as being statistically/empirically based; i.e. "There are 12 inches in a foot" and "the integral of x is (x^2)/2". On the other hand, relative truths, as the name implies, can be subjectively interpreted based on perspective, prior knowledge, and prejudice. Absolute truths can support relative truths, such as in the classic example to introductory evolution where statistical data of derived Mendelian ratios roughly confirms the numbers and physical traits of various pea plants.
Here is a basic application of absolute and relative truths in an academic context:
For the sake of making a point, let's say studies concerning population dynamics in the U.S. unanimously show (based on statistical models/data) that blacks and Hispanics, on average, have higher felony rates, higher illiteracy rates and higher poverty rates relative to non-Hispanic whites. This would be an absolute truth.
One widely held interpretation of this truth suggests that blacks and hispanics are more prone to have the three negative aspects according to said statistics. The deviation of this statement from absolute truth is entirely based on the word, "prone".
Some people might view the word, "prone" as something that characterizes the likelihood or apt of an individual, in which case societal statistics are redundant. Others validate the claim by placing "prone" in a societal context.
Thus initiates an endless debate of relative truths from different points of view and all walks of life.
Last edited by Adolescent09; 05-31-2013 at 11:20 AM.
My hide hides the heart inside
Sorry but you are con-fused as to the meaning of relative. All absolute truths are relative to the situation and circumstance to which they apply. The other relativity you are talking about is retarded Einstein's relativity. Every actual progress in relativity has been done in tune with the absolute truths of Newton and Galileo.
I consider relative truth to depend on context, not absolute truth.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
While there are some indisputable absolute truths, I think that most truths are relative.
Last edited by astrum; 06-23-2013 at 10:10 AM.
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