In his book Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness, John S. Rigden writes, “A location has no meaning in the absolute sense…[It is] always relative to something else” (79). * That got me to thinking, “Will we ever resolve the designation of “relative” and “absolute” in matters human?” And that question led me to musings about identifying who we are, where we come from, and what we do in terms of relativity and absolutism.
We all know that Einstein is most famous for “Relativity,” a theory that can be broken into two explanations that tie first space to time and second space-time to gravity. Since his 1905 and decade-later papers on “special” and “general” relativity, the term relative has oozed its way into the everyday vocabulary and found its application in psychology, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and artistic and musical expressions. In fact, “relative” has come to dominate absolutist Either/Or arguments that run from universities, to churches, to office spaces. It is the basis, ironically, for positions on individual autonomy. I say “ironically” because having a relative value has become an absolute for many. **
And so it is with place, one of the key themes running through articles on this website. We know that there is a mutual influence, as place defines us and we, in turn, define place. We become carriers of place, recognizable as individuals from either “side of the tracks,” from Walmart and Dollar General to Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, and from the Occident to the Orient, and so on. We define other people as relatively the same or relatively different, and we associate them with places of work, worship, or whereabouts that differ from or equate to our own places. But once we define others relative to ourselves, we stamp an absolute on them, and in doing so, also stamp an absolute on ourselves.
In fact, we want both relativism and absolutism in matters human. We know, for example, that even those who subscribe to a “moral standard” do so with some reservations when faced with personal decisions in isolated circumstances—giving rise to situational ethics or morals. Take the position of many on murder. Killing is “immoral,” but killing killers isn’t. Interestingly, we hold ourselves as absolutes against which we can judge the behaviors of others, much the same as we can judge the movement of the moon against the background of the seemingly stationary and absolute positions of the distant stars. We might, however, remember that even the background is in motion, imperceptibly so, but moving nonetheless. Those situational variations in our own lives should indicate that we also move like the distant stars. Our ethical and moral places also move imperceptibly, but we still use them as stationary absolutes.
Anyway, maybe it would behoove each of us to ask ourselves every so often whether we are acting out of or thinking out of relativistic or absolutist terms. Maybe we should each consider whether or not we apply relativistic thinking to our own lives and absolutist thinking to others’ lives. And maybe we should ask whether or not we ascribe absolute identity to others because of our relative understanding of the places—both figurative and literal—we associate with them.
If some alien space craft should land at your place and aliens to step out to speak, would they say, “Ah! You Earthlings! You’re all the same”? “Everywhere we observe you, you think your place is the absolute upon which all others can be judged. You tend to think of your place—home, neighborhood, town, workplace, and church—as the center of the universe unless you have widely traveled or lived in multiple communities and tested multiple ethical systems.” And finally, “You Earthlings just can’t decide whether or not your thinking derives from an objective Absolute or a subjective Relative. And that intrigues us because in our understanding of the universe, which seems to mimic that or your late Albert Einstein, we think the relative IS the absolute in transforming one’s frame of reference into another’s.”
We might think we stand on a moral high ground from which we can view the surrounding terrain, but the shroud of Ego prevents us from seeing higher elevations.
*Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. 2005.
**Like the claim by some that “gender” is whatever one wants it to be and is dependent on culture, but once declared, it is irrefutably absolute.
We all know that Einstein is most famous for “Relativity,” a theory that can be broken into two explanations that tie first space to time and second space-time to gravity. Since his 1905 and decade-later papers on “special” and “general” relativity, the term relative has oozed its way into the everyday vocabulary and found its application in psychology, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and artistic and musical expressions. In fact, “relative” has come to dominate absolutist Either/Or arguments that run from universities, to churches, to office spaces. It is the basis, ironically, for positions on individual autonomy. I say “ironically” because having a relative value has become an absolute for many. **
And so it is with place, one of the key themes running through articles on this website. We know that there is a mutual influence, as place defines us and we, in turn, define place. We become carriers of place, recognizable as individuals from either “side of the tracks,” from Walmart and Dollar General to Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, and from the Occident to the Orient, and so on. We define other people as relatively the same or relatively different, and we associate them with places of work, worship, or whereabouts that differ from or equate to our own places. But once we define others relative to ourselves, we stamp an absolute on them, and in doing so, also stamp an absolute on ourselves.
In fact, we want both relativism and absolutism in matters human. We know, for example, that even those who subscribe to a “moral standard” do so with some reservations when faced with personal decisions in isolated circumstances—giving rise to situational ethics or morals. Take the position of many on murder. Killing is “immoral,” but killing killers isn’t. Interestingly, we hold ourselves as absolutes against which we can judge the behaviors of others, much the same as we can judge the movement of the moon against the background of the seemingly stationary and absolute positions of the distant stars. We might, however, remember that even the background is in motion, imperceptibly so, but moving nonetheless. Those situational variations in our own lives should indicate that we also move like the distant stars. Our ethical and moral places also move imperceptibly, but we still use them as stationary absolutes.
Anyway, maybe it would behoove each of us to ask ourselves every so often whether we are acting out of or thinking out of relativistic or absolutist terms. Maybe we should each consider whether or not we apply relativistic thinking to our own lives and absolutist thinking to others’ lives. And maybe we should ask whether or not we ascribe absolute identity to others because of our relative understanding of the places—both figurative and literal—we associate with them.
If some alien space craft should land at your place and aliens to step out to speak, would they say, “Ah! You Earthlings! You’re all the same”? “Everywhere we observe you, you think your place is the absolute upon which all others can be judged. You tend to think of your place—home, neighborhood, town, workplace, and church—as the center of the universe unless you have widely traveled or lived in multiple communities and tested multiple ethical systems.” And finally, “You Earthlings just can’t decide whether or not your thinking derives from an objective Absolute or a subjective Relative. And that intrigues us because in our understanding of the universe, which seems to mimic that or your late Albert Einstein, we think the relative IS the absolute in transforming one’s frame of reference into another’s.”
We might think we stand on a moral high ground from which we can view the surrounding terrain, but the shroud of Ego prevents us from seeing higher elevations.
*Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. 2005.
**Like the claim by some that “gender” is whatever one wants it to be and is dependent on culture, but once declared, it is irrefutably absolute.
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