I thought that I’d write a big long story about Relative vs Absolute once I’d had it all figured out in my mind. But I’ve come to find that it’s actually better to type away here, to sort out and compartmentalize my thoughts, rather than come to the blog with full stories. So in that vein here’s some semi-random things on my mind, hoping to coalesce everything later on into a single ideology.

I think one of the most philosophical battles is not between black and white, or right and wrong, or conservative and liberal. I think it’s between The Relative and The Absolute. This is an unresolved combination that will probably never be resolved. Its like in our own US Congress where we have Senators (an absolute number, 2 from every state) and the House (a relative number depending on your state’s population). Or in a car warranty where you are covered for repairs for 100,000 miles (an absolute number) or 5 years (relative to when the car was purchased). I’m sure there’s other examples of the relative existing next to the absolute that I can’t think of at this moment.

Growing up it seemed as though the conservative Republican part of our country was more in the absolute camp whereas the liberal Democrats where relative. The conservatives were more religious, believing in the absolute authority of God. Liberals were more open minded, looking for both sides of a story, seeing that different perspectives reflected where you stood (in a relative sense).

Growing up I was a Democrat, sometimes even more liberal than a typical Democrat. I went to see Ralph Nader speak when he was running for President with the Green Party. I did a presentation on the Green Party in college. But as I got older I (naturally) became more conservative. I think this is because as you get older you start to see styles, ideas, trends, etc repeat themselves. You see these new trends as nothing new and nothing special. But oh for the old ways of doing things! Now that is what was good. That is when the world made sense.

And then the Great Recession came and I moved from middle-of-the-roadism to a hard conservative stance. But even at this stage I missed the old me, the curious me, the open minded guy. So I’ve steadily been moving back toward the middle of the spectrum. I feel like the typical libertarian now – fiscally conservative but socially liberal. I like being open minded to new ideas and concepts, but most of these new ideas I end up rejecting because they’re judged against my older, conservative perspective.

So which is better – The Absolute or The Relative? I struggle to answer this question. Like, for the church, they believe in the absolute truth of the Bible and God and such. And it is great to be part of this, because believing in something larger than yourself can give you strength and comfort in times of need. Ok. But there’s 13 churches in my town. Which one is the absolute correct one, and (by extension) which 12 are incorrect and tacitly doomed to burn in Hell? Is the Bible absolutely true? When it says that Jesus is a door, I guess we have to literally believe he is a door, frame and doorknob and all.

So these questions posed to a typical church-goer would probably elicit the response that “Well, a lot of the Bible is symbolic.” So who gets to decide which parts are symbolic and which are literal? It used to be that being Christian meant that you’d better get your ass to church or else you would get burned at the stake. Christianity has morphed over the years from this old absolutist stance towards today’s relativistic “Jesus is My Life Coach” stance.

I think that people are both absolutist and relativistic, depending on the circumstances. I think we are all individuals, driven by our own rational self-interest. Note that this is different from selfishness. Selfishness is harmful and not rational. But what is rational and in our own self-interest can change over time, as circumstances change and as new information enters our senses.

We are individual beings following our own self-interest. But humans are also social creatures. So we want to be around others. No one really wants to be alone. Because we have our own self-interest we want to be around others that are most like us; those with the same worldview and ideology as ourselves. This also gets extended to wanting to be around those with the same skin color, nationality and language as us. I think we want to be in these groups because there’s strength in numbers. The bigger the group is of people like me, the stronger I myself become.

There’s also some laziness in this. Maybe we all want the most bang for our buck out of life, like we want the most resources and experiences with the least amount of effort. Being part of a large homogenous group can be good, in that the hardest working top part of the group produces everything while the bottom part just rides on the coattails.

So if one is always a relativist, then that means they are absolutely a relativist, which is a contradiction. One could be always an absolutist, but that is just what they would say. No one can be 100% absolute all the time in their beliefs and actions. Well, they could, but when you have an Absolutist attitude life becomes miserable. You’ve already charted out the direction in your life, and you will fight and leave people who don’t agree with you. At first you will fight and break away from those of you with large differences. Like let’s say I’m absolutely a Republican. I’m going to fight/ignore/marginalize half of the people right off the bat (the Democrat/left side). Then, given enough time, half of the Republican group…….

Hold on, let me retype this in a different way. Let’s say there’s a conservative Thanos in our country. He snaps his fingers and half of the country (liberals, democrats) disappear. The remaining half of the country is happy. Everyone that is left has the same worldview, so life should be good, right?

Given enough time this remaining group will develop differences in ideology and start to splinter off. So then this group will half to be halved again, with another snap. So now you’re left with a quarter of the country that is just true believers. Over time there will be more and more snaps, as people (individuals following their own self-interests) start to pair up and group up with like minded individuals. Until eventually there’s only two people left in the country. There’s a disagreement about some truly petty issue, like the other person doesn’t like my sweater (lol just follow me here). Me, being an absolutist who has proven to have no issues with making my enemies disappear, while snap my fingers to make the other person be gone. And then that’s it; I’m stuck with myself on my Island of Righteousness. Population: 1.

I love this book I’m reading about the history of Eastern Europe. I think this newfound love of history is partly because it’s dynamic, interesting stuff that I can sort of remember from my youth, but it’s also because I’m trying to learn from it to predict the future. It’s scary now, because after reading about the rise of all these cult-of-personalities I can see the dangerous parallels with our own cult-of-personality in Donald Trump.

Trump, himself, is harmless. He’s harmless in that he’s just an empty idiot. He was a Republican president but he could have easily won as a Democratic president, without changing too much of what he says. The danger here is the people that support him, that have built him up in this cult-of-personality and foyster all their prejudices and insecurities onto him.

There was a time when I really liked Trump. I had a Twitter account and only followed three things: St Louis Cardinals, Rush (the band), and Trump. I’m proud to say that I didn’t vote for him in 2016, as his words (and followers) had pushed me off his trail. Then in 2020 I was probably the only person in the country who really didn’t know if I was going to vote for him or not. When I went into the booth the vote I checked boxes for all Republicans (because I’m pro-business) but when I got to the President box I voted for Joe Biden. I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President before. I just held my nose and jumped in.

There was a lot of talk about if the election was “stolen” or not. It was not a stolen election. If I voted this way then there’s no doubt that many other Republicans voted as I did. They would never admit it, of course. But that’s the beauty of the secret ballot; no one ever has to know who you really voted for.

I’m happy with how our political environment looks – our country is about half conservative, half liberal. It’s about half Republican, half Democrat. This is good, because it’s to be expected. Since we do not have a representational congress, we have to live with winner-takes-all type of governing. And since the winner takes all, that eventually leads to there only being two real political parties, as a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.

Having only two real political parties means that they are plastic, malleable, ever-changing, because they are made up of individuals who are chasing their own rational self-interests. So whereas Democrats were pro-slavery 150 years ago, now they are the party of African-Americans. These parties change over time, just like everything else. But it’s good that we have a 50/50 split in our country because it means that both parties change in order to grab this 50 percent. It’s organic and natural. Plus it also introduces my favorite feature of government, which is grid-lock. It’s the libertarian in me that is happy that stuff does NOT get done. The government would probably mess it all up anyway.

Back when I was vacillating back in forth between political ideas I was upset, because I would read about an issue from a liberal point of view and agree with it. But then I would read the conservative view and see that it had good points too. So I was conflicted. I didn’t know what to believe. It wasn’t until I got into Ayn Rand that she gave me the answer I was looking for – Philosophy. Philosophy is the over-arching subject from which politics, history, science, economics and human behavior derive. Sure, she had here own brand of philosophy that she wanted everyone to follow, but you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything she says. I certainly don’t. But he was 1000% percent correct when she said that philosophy is the most important subject ever.

So with this knowledge of philosophy as being important, I could then read about issues – from both liberal and conservative sides – and see that they were only expounding on their pre-determined philosophical worldvidew. This realization made life easier for me, as I could more or less pre-judge what a political piece would say, depending on the worldview of the person who wrote it.

I’ve stayed out of political debates for years. I’ve stayed away from politics pretty much altogether for about 10 years. I’ve been studying and waxing philosophically during this time. But now I feel that this newfound liking of history will bring me back to the political fold. Like, I still don’t want to get in political arguments; I still don’t want to watch Fox News and CNN to get all these different angles. What I want to do is study history so that I can get a thorough understanding of the cycles of progress in the past, and how we got to where we are today. So first I had to study philosophy. Now I have to study history. Maybe years from now when I feel I have a good footing of history under me, then I’ll move on to following current events. Then, I’ll feel more armed if/when I get into political debates. And I think I’ll be more influential to people around me.