Since everything is relative how do we know what is going on, read on?

Question

Everything in this universe is relative to each other. Since that is true, how then can we be sure of any of the things that we normally take for granted.

For example, you are out with friends and you look over and see that one of your friends has an expression that indicates that your friend is saddened by something.

You do not know if that is the what is really going on. Yes, we are able to draw history to show us what may be in curtain situation, but my point is that we can never be sure.

That having been said, (and for our example) there are those born with an inability to read emotions at all. For them it is even harder to work out what is going on with the friend since the emotion just looks blank to them.

So my question is, how can we know anything for sure? Is it just a delusion that we know what is going on around us or is there something more to it?

Please note, this is not a nature of existence question, it is a nature of perception question.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Excellent question.

The point you make is fundamental to the very nature of what we laughingly call 'reality'.

In your situation of a group of friends sitting at a table, suppose your group is of four different individuals, then, right there, is thin small group you have four completely distinct 'realities' unfolding.

It is said that our focus is our 'reality', and this is the simple fact of it. Suppose while you are sitting with your group, a complete stranger approaches from behind your and gives you a mighty blow on the head, what might the various reactions of you and your friends be ?

You would probably be feeling hurt, enraged, perplexed, dizzy from the blow, wondering why your friends had not come to your defence, considering, or even delivering, a blow in retaliation.........and so on and so on.

To the friend on your left, who dropped his wallet on the floor just before the stranger hit you, and was bending down to pick it up, thus didn't see what happened, he would be wondering what all the commotion was about.

To the friend on your right who saw the spider drop onto your scalp from the thatched roof of the bar, and thought it was funny, then saw the blow from the side angle, and assumed that the attacker was someone who had a grievance against you, would be split between thinking about the spider, and what you had done to upset this person.

The third friend, sitting opposite you, who saw everything, and was an amateur arachnophile ( spider fan ) and recognised that the spider that dropped on your head was an extremely venomous species, and could cause you severe injury, even death, saw the stranger also identify the beastie, and realised that he was coming to your aid, he would be feeling relief on your behalf, and some sense of identification with the stranger who shared his passion for little 8 legged creatures.

My answer to your question is simple, none of us 'know' what is going on for anybody else, we all cruise along perceiving input and making of it what our collection of life experiences leads us to perceive.

Very often our own individual perceptions are also completely erroneous, if we don't have comparative data for a situation our brains have a neat trick, they compare the imput with previous, similar, or apparently similar, circumstances, and cobble together an explanation which may not even vaguely represent what has occured.

Marcel Proust said that "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. "

Never a truer phrase was uttered. Every single experience can be transformed by the simple expedient of changing our perspective. For example, a neat trick I have developed is the understanding that whenever something happens that seems 'negative', or undesirable, at the time, I know that in every single case, eventually I will come to understand that that thing had a 'good', or desirable, outcome.

This completely changes one feelings about the apparently 'negative' side of life. I could illustrate with current examples of actual events that have occurred in my life recently, but they are so extreme that probably no-one would believe me anyway ! ;-)

In conclusion, we don't and indeed can't, 'know' what is going on, we construct our individual 'reality' out of the matrix of apparent happenings, every one of us, so that, at this moment, human 'reality' on this planet has around 6 billion different versions, and every one just as valid as any other.

We're all making it up as we go along.

Answer 2

You were not very direct in your question.....nobody said we know what is going on for sure, and so there can be no delusion. We can only try to understand the world and people around us. Some people are better at it then others. I can read peoples emotions easily by their body language, the way they sound and just the look on their face. It comes easily to me but you stick me in a bar or in a big social type situation and I am like a fish out of water, I don't know whats going on around me at all. That is why I am an individual with certain skills, you have others, and the guy reading this has something else.....doesn't make anyone better or worse at perception just different............Man, I don't think I really understood your question, but I gave it a shot anyways.....how was my perception?

Answer 3

Well, in Plato's allegory of the Cave, he explains that everything that:

So we're all prisoners in a cave, and everything we see is just a shadow of what it really is. We, the prisoners, practice predicting which shadow we see, and if we get it right, we assume that we have knowledge of these shadows. If we get dragged out of the cave, we'll be blind at first but then we'll see truth and reality. And the beauty it is. Then we'll see that the sun is really the origin of everything, etc. etc. Afterwards, we'll remember the prisoners in the cave so we'll run back to them to tell them of this splendid reality. Of course, our eyes have adjusted to the bright reality of the outside world so we're blind again when we first return to the cave. If we try to tell the prisoners of what we've seen, they'll question us and test our sight with the shadows. But, we're blind, right? So we'll fail the test and lose their trust and be shunned forever. And, they'll probably want to kill us for being so stupid.

Basically, relativity is because what we see is not the "true form."

Also, Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" "I think therefore I am" came to be due to his inability to find concrete evidence for the reality of things other than self.

Answer 4

That's where faith comes in. For example, in a class we take it for granted that the teacher knows the subject and is giving us true information. To us this is an absolute. When we ask a friend the state of her well being and health, we assume she will state it honestly. It is true that one can go through life thinking all so-called wise men are wrong and all relationships are based on lies. But who would want such a life? Personally, I prefer believing that Thomas Edison invented electricity, that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, that my mother truly loved me, etc., etc.

Answer 5

First, your major premise is incorrect!! Not everything is relative, in other words changing. There are immutable laws such as the laws of physics (gravity, etc.). You can be sure of many things. Touch a burning match to your finger and see how it burns and hurts. You will be SURE not to do it again. You can be sure that people will disagree with your thinking. Trust me!! I am one who does!!

Chow!!