Well, for the last couple weeks I've been analyzing my world of absolutes, questioning people and coming up with conclusions.
I have mentioned many times that I am an Absolutist. I believe there are fundamental elements in the universe of human nature that are absolute. Thus, they are universal to every human.
I realized as I was going through my research on what was absolute that people seemed to have the wrong impression of what I was saying. Let me at this moment try to clear up those misconceptions.
"There can not be absolutes. You will never find a belief that EVERYONE will agree upon."
Answer: An absolute isn't a belief, per se, it is in fact a constant. One doesn't "believe" in absolutes, like they are morals, they experience absolutes because they are humans.
"Murder isn't an absolute. Sometimes death is justified."
Answer: This is using a moral statement as an absolute. I, as an absolutist do not feel that moral concepts such as murder, abortion, stealing and the like are absolutes. I shall cover this more in depth later.
"What do you feel are absolute?"
Answer: I believe there are many metaphysical absolutes in life. The following is a list.
Morality - I believe morality to be an absolute because of the fact EVERYONE has their own moral system. Thus morality is an absolute for the human species. NO TWO MORALITIES ARE THE SAME, but it still remains that an idea of "morality" is constant for every individual.
Fairness - We all have our ideas as to what is far and what is not. We all see thing in our own way and determine from that if an event of a situation is fair by our own standards.
Good - We all have a concept of what is "good" whether this concept comes from religious belief or simply "what is good is what brings pleasure" we all can claim that to us, things can be good.
Bad - Closely related to good, but this can be caused not be what brings pleasure, but by what brings pain.
Suffering - Probably the most fundamental of all absolutes is suffering. The fact that each of us will undergo a state of metaphysic being in which we question the reason for existence because living is such a horrid thing at the time. No two people ask the same questions or have the same suffering, but it is still a universal in that all undergo it.
Character traits are not absolute. We all have known people who lack humor, who are not sensitive, who possess no personality, who can nor be serious, who are never kind, who are never mean. Personality traits are relative values. NOW, personality itself IS an absolute for we all have personalities, but the characteristics of these traits is relative.
What is relative? I believe in Universal Absolutes. Everything comes from an absolute source, for instance the personality question. The idea of personality is absolute, the traits of the individual are relative.
Another example, beauty. Beauty is an absolute, we all have things we call "beautiful".. but the relativeness of beauty is in what individuals deem beautiful.
Thus it's like a high-archy. On top is the absolute concepts and hanging off of each concept is the relative, individual view of the concept.