If so I admire the way you bore. Cause sometimes, we aren't so different.
We both kind of feel like we are losing strength don't we? But it's okay. sometimes we need to regenerate I guess. Life takes us all to the strangest of places.
You did things I've never see you do before, said things that I've heard myself say.
___
Everything I do is judged
And they mostly get it wrong
But oh well
'Cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
And the woman who lives there can tell
The truth from the stuff that they say
And she looks me in the eye
And says would you prefer the easy way?
No, well O.K. then
Don't cry
And I wonder if everything I do
I do instead of something I want to do more
The question fills my head
I know that there's no grand plan here
This is just the way it goes
And when everything else seems unclear
I guess at least I know
I do it for the joy it brings...
I do it for the joy it brings
Because I'm a joyful girl
Because the world owes me nothing
And we owe each other the world
I do it because it's the least I can do
I do it because I learned it from you
I do it just because I want to
Because I want to
-- Joyful Girl by Ani DiFranco
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6 comments:
There is nothing relative about the truth. There is nothing relative about the good and the evil.
If I murder your family, there will be no doubts.
If I rescue you from a fire, if I stand by your side and I protect you throughout your life without ever asking a single thing, without wants or desires from your being, there will be no doubts.
Every soul sees the evil for evil, whether we want it or not. Every soul will see the good for good, without ever a question.
You can't find anyone in the world that hears about the murder and torture of a small human child and not find the action evil.
Judgement is subjective. Judgement is 'relative'. Reality is truth. Reality is absolute.
Thank you for posting that, Vermillion.
Yes. Reality is absolute. But reality is not always truth and vice versa.
Truth does not consult reality. Reality can be gruesome reality is accurate history. truth does not get strangled by human circumstances, or the sum of the worlds actions.
But life is the meaning we give it, otherwise is simply eating sleeping and simple maintanance. Not all possess the same meaning making processes.
Good can be relative in some views. I like an example my book gives.
A man utilizes a fine raft to cross a wide river, once he travels to the far side, he appreciates this raft and takes it with him throughout the city and his travels on land. It serves as an extra weight. He kept it because it was worth it to him in travel, but since his method of travel changed it became more of an obstacle. Some things are good within the right environment.
Yes, there are some obvious situations were evil can be sighted. Evil being hatred and malice or intrusion on another's natural rights to life. But do you not agree that many are subjected to delusion?
Are there not those who can feel shedding the blood of others is a divine call on a jihad?
The socratic statement the more I learn the less I know holds alot of meaning, the more one learns about the world and environment the more one learns about its variables, and its hierarchy of factors being independent.
Indeed that statement is true.
The dangers of the relativist is arguing that belief makes truth relative.
An absolutist thinker realizes there are variables, realizes there are things that can't be controlled and things that can. But he also believes that those are the same accross the board, even still. What is true for you is true for us all.
Gravity pulls you towards the center of a large mass. Obviously the pull is greater with greater mass.
The sky is always blue, UNLESS there are other factors (it really is only blue do to the refraction of the angle of the light, blah, blah we know this).
A relativist makes the mistake of assuming that because we have variable if/then statements that it allows for their twisted warped thoughts to give way to their own relationships in the world.
A relativist does not include facts into their "relativity". At least not nearly as often as is needed. Instead they will install all of the things that will apeal to a humanist. Thought, feeling, free will.
A relativist, when dealing with things that have no agreeable cut and dry nature will use the feelings behind something as an argument. It's a type of fallacy when dealing with the truth.
The truth doesn't care what you or I think. The truth is absolute because no manner of any sort of compulsion of any kind will change it. Thus your feelings and your belief on the matter are irrelevant.
Thus what you believe and think to be true and right are ultimately irrelevent to the truth. Does your strong belief in the smashing of the heads of infidels cause you to follow that action? Many will follow that compulsion. Many will think that "Yes, I was told to do this, and I will." A relativist will tell you that's fine. A relativist will hold that because know one knows the truth 100%, then nothing can be said about the path one walks and he must decide for himself.
An absolutist will tell you that murder and religious persecution is an unhappy and evil thing. They will tell you that no matter who told you what, no matter how you feel about it, it will still be an evil and unhappy thing.
Reality is an absolute as it is well and truly unescapable.
Gravity is a truth and a part of reality.
Death is the same.
Any true force of nature is a mechanism of reality and is a truth.
Your belief of what is real and your own dilusions to that end are not important.
My thoughts of my being able to fly? Pure fancy until it happens.
What you believe is real and what really is real is the difference between the relative and the absolute.
Absolutists believe in what is real. Relativists believe in what they wish to be real.
Ohhh dang that's a bit low there.
First of all I will not be constrained to the title of a relativist or absolutist. Never judge a book by it's cover or a person by their 'title' with the most immediate revelance.
I'm not going to go through life carrying a label gun, and imaginary post it notes. I like to view the world as a series of developments. However developments cannot have a hand without change in nature and circumstance.
I need to explain further. Good things can have negative consequences. It does not comprimise the goodness of the act, but as there is more than one element in the big picture than just justice, the outcomes and consequences will not be standard.
I can try to help an injured person treat his wounds, but if I do not know the nature of it and do not apply the aid correctly I could further the would. Suppose I did. Suppose he asked for my help. Now, wait a second. 'As a rule' It's a negative thing to bring pain to another, isn't it? 'As a rule it is a positive to tend to someone when they are not well. "As a rule' it is neglectful to ignore someone when they geniunely need your help. But I was trying my best to heal him wasn't I? Does that mean I did a bad or good thing. Does one have to be chosen?
There are many factors to consider.
Life is more complex than that. It does not run in straight lines because more than one goal and influence exists. It might have been that way at one point in history. Yet, I am convinced these days we live such accelerated and lengthened lives with numberous influences that did not even exist a century ago. Well life requires us to multitask.
As for every soul seeing evil for evil. What a second.
People function as best they can with their understandings of the world. Many can get muddled between definitions of negativity and positivity.
As for the murder and torture of a child and someone not seeing it evil. Well, I can see a religious group calling it an eradication of a devil. I think some can becaome so heavily enculturated that it rearranges and mold their moral perception.
Assuming that moral perception is universal, anyway.
My god, we live in a world where hundreds believe that strapping a bomb to your chest and killing young and old in the name of Allah or God is holy.
Imagine for a moment you were raised by a kind and loyal Jewish family. However you are raised in a war torn country. You view these Palestinians as viscious fiends who will unthinkingly point rifles in your face, blow the brains out from your sister's head. Spilling blood in the name of their beliefs. However you love your family, faith, and country. So you will kill, defend, drive out the Palestinians who want to take your country.
What if you were just behaving on what you were taught and had come to 'know'. Several bad and good things involved in that.
I am sure we can both agree that that warzone is pitiful and embarrassing, a gruesome holy war. But if someone acted on that situation as best as they knew how it would not make them bad. But this does not changed the nature of bad either. Human actions and efforts do not necessarily change the definitions of bad qand good.
Examples? Well what do you associate good with? Many do that with religion, love, service, ambition, goalmaking. Can religion be bad? Whatabout ambitions or love? Are they always good? What if some base truth on religion, well what if that religion is faulty?
I hold that many times in life answers are not standard, you can't just look it up in a text book and have it all explained.
Some relativists do have their own agenda, to explain away all their fuck ups to just say oh yeah it will be all right in the end. No that is wrong. People can see through that. But not all do. Just because the morality of a circumstance can depend does not reshape the nature of good or evil. Let's get that much straight.
But just as there is a limit to how well an absolute and generic statement an be applicable, there is a limit to the degree of relativity as well. We should not try to wipe out all definitions.
I can say that some things can easily be seen as they naturally are. Sometimes absolute definitions can be applied. But other times due to the acceleration modernday life is getting, due to the fact that moral understanding comes to everyone differently we must give things and people due process. It would not be fair to apply a prototype, a discrimination.
either extreme is dangerous by the way, absolutist or relativist.
Bah! You labelling Absolutism as a type of bigotry gets me riled up, just a bit.
I can see it being taken as such, but I percieve it more as an empirical science. You observe what happens and make statements as such. It's not about labelling something so that we can belittle it, it's about finding out the why's and how's behind it so that we can understand it and control it.
If we know what drives people to "evil" then we can seek to undermine that path. We hope to persuade our brothers from blowing themselves up for Allah, not label them as "ragheads" and destroy all of their nations for their beliefs and their dress.
Are there Absolutists that follow the path you choose to define us ALL with? Yes. Many of us are still weak, still human, and still prone to our own misguided judgements. Absolutists, in my mind, are those that RECOGNIZE that there are absolutes that everyone will recognize. The sky being blue, while a "generic" statement is the easiest example. It seems as though it is a generic statement because it needs no further scrutiny. The God given sky IS freakin' BLUE!! What do you want?
Don't mistake that for a generalness in all things. Absolutists struggle with all of the best moral questions you will ever find in life, BUT they do believe that once an answer of such is found, it should hold true FOR ALL, or it is not an answer as we thought.
If I kill someone to save their immortal soul, does that still give me a one way ticket on the highway to hell?
If the answer is yes, then it will apply to all. If no, the same, or perhaps it isn't specific enough? Perhaps only if I did it to someone I KNEW was going to damn themselves for eternity? Instead of just doing it to all of the innocents that haven't screwed themselves up yet (i.e. babies/children/etc.).
The point is, that like physics, if you know all of the rules, you can tell the outcome.
If I spend enough time, I could calculate what everything in the world would do at any given time. As the laws of Physics and Math are not absolutely correct, but are skeletons of their ends, there will be flaws, but I could almost predict the EXACT location of where something would fall given the right values and equations.
Problem is, we can't always have the values we need for the equation, and we're still writing the equations.
The absolutists that I have spoken with understand that there are if/then statements in life. Thou shalt not kill is often disregarded as entirely too strict. For instance, most, if you ask them, would kill under a circumstance that they see as just (i.e. defense of family, another mother, or another child). I personally would have a long dispute with the big guy if I was on trial for killing a sniper that had chosen to fool around with a school of children.
That would be something that I am prepared to deal with, but it's also something that would apply to everyone.
That's the percieved difference to Absolutists and Relativists.
Relativists believe that it is different for each culture, I do not. I believe that all cultures hold that murder is a bad thing, but even other non-fanatical Islamics see the blowing up of people to be a BAD thing, it's the fundamentalists that will always seem to bring the bad name. Just because the individual has found a way to rationalize his evil in his own head, does not make it less so.
And I think your last side comment needs modification. There can be bad from both sides, no doubt, but I believe that if we had all of the values and equations, that Absolutism would still hold to be the better path.
People do change, things evolve, but I don't believe that is the same for morality or the laws of the universe.
Merely our understanding evolves.
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