The Don

Someone Please Explain To Me What 'Relative' Means

10 posts in this topic

Hello everyone!

As I'm building my existential vocabulary for understanding life, I've encounter the word 'relative'.

It's been two hours since I'm trying to grasp the meaning of 'relative' but it's still unclear to me.

If the term 'absolute' has the meaning of "something that cannot be qualified, changed or diminished in any way", does it mean that 'relative' is the opposite?

I wanna have your perspectives on this.

Thank you in advance.

Edited by The Don
Clearing empty lines.

Me on the road less traveled.

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Water is cold in relationship to your body temperature. That's relative experience. For somebody the same water is warm becouse his hands are cold. So the water is neither cold nor warm, it's in relationship to your body's temperature that you experience it as cold or warm. That's what relative experience means. 

For a kid being 1.60m is tall. For adult it's small. So it's relative. It's not absolutle. 1.60m is neither big or small. It's according to you that you call it big or small.

All experience that you have is based on comparisons. You know what is dark only because you know what is light, you know what is silence only because you know noise. So actually you never experience the Absolute Reality of water. You only experience the relationship it has to your senses.

So you know life only in relationships. Spiritual process is about seeing absolute Reality. Absolute truth. Raising your perception beyond the physical. Seeing things the way they truly are.

 

Edited by Salvijus

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@Salvijus, thanks a lot for you explanations.

It was a "a-Ha" moment for me and I'm very happy to see people being able to help.

It feels good to understand the world better through knowledge.

Now I'm at the word "wisdom" which means "the ability to make good decisions based on knowledge and experience".

'Wisdom' is a much easier word than 'relative'. xD

@Leo Gura definitely knows the meaning of 'relative'.

Edited by The Don

Me on the road less traveled.

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@The Don X is relative to Y if X can only be defined through reference to Y. 


Hark ye yet again — the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough.

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Think of relativity as seeing one side of the coin, except that coin can have many sides. lol

One person can find a person attractive, another can find the same person unattractive.

Ultimately one facet of the absolute would be they hold both qualities and those two people are seeing one of the qualities but not the other. 

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An elephant is only large relative to certain things. An elephant is large relative to an ant, but tiny relative to a galaxy.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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@The Don

Eating spiders is disgusting relative to Americans, yet a yummy snack relative to Cambodians. 

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Absence of The time.

Edited by RichardY

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5 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@The Don

Eating spiders is disgusting relative to Americans, yet a yummy snack relative to Cambodians. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider

Holy fucking shit. The killing fields must have driven people to extreme hunger and forced them to adapt to local resources(e.g. spider). Cultural adaptation. Cultural memory. Whatever.

Americans had to adapt to eating animal intestines during world wars because animal meat was sent to soldiers on battle fields. Now, animal intestine foods are a part of american culture.

Edited by CreamCat

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On 19.10.2018 at 9:19 PM, The Don said:

Now I'm at the word "wisdom" which means "the ability to make good decisions based on knowledge and experience"

the definition of wisdom is just a wisdom, not a definition of wisdom. wisdom is a word that cannot be defined.

that was wisdom as well.

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