Someone Please Explain To Me What 'Relative' Means

[The Don]

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 October 19, 2018 by The Don
Clearing empty lines.

[Salvijus]

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 October 19, 2018 by Salvijus

[The Don]

@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'.

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

Edited October 19, 2018 by The Don

[lmfao]

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

[Shadowraix]

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. 

[Leo Gura]

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

[Forestluv]

@The Don

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

[RichardY]

Absence of The time.

Edited October 20, 2018 by RichardY

[CreamCat]

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 October 20, 2018 by CreamCat

[now is forever]

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.