Hearing an opinion on a subject from an information source, one Chooses to dismiss, believe or to accept the given info as part of ones understanding. If “believed”, and the information is incorrect, one should retract his belief (relative opinion) and admit the error in order not to offset a chain reaction of erroneous information interpretation and then distribution. To eliminate the problem of error, one must know from direct experience and not “knowledge of the experience” “know about”. One must strive for a true understanding, not an opinion or belief of another, & if not… he will go on with the false opinion throughout life, the false opinion being the source of ones collection of misinterpreted thought, with a sprinkle of righteousness whole life is a miscalculation and a hindrance to evolution of self, thus all. In human case opinion & belief is labeled as part of absolute knowledge, while being only relative separate collective of views of the human experience (the separate “I”). Relative opinion has been passed on as “absolute” truth throughout “civilized” human existence in form of Identification of self with opinion. To be good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. Are not all those relative and merely opinions in form of language & calculation coming from different perspectives and only humans? Example: my god is more powerful than yours… That makes me right and you wrong, which makes me good and you bad. This being Your exact view of me. So how can 2 wrongs and bads exist while both claiming to be good and right? Impossible, which makes it an opinion and not an absolute truth but a relative one which is an individual perspective which can’t be right or wrong it can just be a different calculation of the information while at the source it might be the same information. Language is a classifying tool, we created calculation by watching the stars and learning from nature, because we are part of it, and we participate in the process of its universal evolution. We are form with free will, we are offspring of the universe we were once dust of the stars, we are the marriage between air water wind fire and earth we prosper we separate we move we evolve we learn we grow complex we speak we calculate we trade we fight we love we come and go we’re never the same and will never be, we are change, we are now, we are one energy in different shapes, moving at different speeds & on different frequencies. birth, change, and destruction all at the same time in different places and on different levels and in different ways. Entities are separate mechanisms of change in a nature of their own, dealing with their own conception and destruction while still being under karmic law. (Universal Law) Absolute Law. There can be no good for self if it isnt good for the survival of all. That is if survival is our goal?
I believe there does exist absolute truth, which emerges in the rational mind that is not distorted by ego/emotion.
It seems to me that the ego is the source of all delusion and evil in the world, and the more rational and logical one becomes, the less delusional, wasteful, and evil one becomes.
So the movement from ego to enlighenment is the movement into the absolute. The absolute, which is a spiritual thing because an increase of rationality increases the quality of life, and our chances of surviving.
most living things survive perfectly well without fabricating any “absolute” standards of rationality - in fact, they survive without “thinking” of any sort as humans know it at all
rational thought is not a key to survival - to prize rational thought over any other sort of thought is an aesthetic judgement, based on arbitrary prefences, not any “absolute truth” - like preferring one painting to another - the rational is relative just as beauty is relative - rational thought engenders a certain kind of satisfaction which we then seek to reproduce by setting standards of reason - that’s part of the job of philosophy - but those standards are no less a question of belief or opinion as artistic tastes are
it’s all aesthetics - there is nothing in human thought that is not affected by “ego and emotion”
We are not talking about most living things we are talking about about humans since we are the ones with all the problems. Survival & pleasure is a goal of every human being, its how you do it and at what cost? There is an absolute truth, we just have to look hard enough. 4 dynamics of survival 1. Self 2. Group 3. Country 4. World. There is no one without the other, neither one can be ignored and any idea or action should be in sync with all four. Karma and change is the Absolute truth. In order to understand anything you must first understand that.
Define “absolute truth”.
How so? If anything, I would say ‘movement’ and ‘death’ to be among our most undeniable “truths” (if you’d like to call them that).
Also, from where do you draw your assertation regarding the “4 dynamics of survival”?
There is no “self” without a group? No “group” without a “country”? I don’t see the logic.
In both cases the latter is comprised of the former, so - at some point - there must have existed one without the other. In order for a Lego castle to exist, the Lego must first exist in order to comprise the castle; no?
I would say that little to no thought or action is in sync with all 4 of your “dynamics” at once. If thoughts and actions operated on such a level, why would we need morality? We would be in constant consideration of effects produced by our actions – from the smallest “self” to the largest (that we know of) “world”. Not only would I assume this impossible, but I may also say that people do not, and never will, care near enough to consider every action in such a broad spectrum of possibility.
Humans have all the problems precisely because they are always convincing themselves that their beliefs and opinions are absolute and then doing all sorts of futile intellectual gymnastics to demonstrate that - i bring up the example of other living things because they survive perfectly well without any notions of truth at all, absolute or otherwise - so if there is truth linked to simple survival then clearly it is not a human intellectual truth at all - thus, rationality and logic as purveyors of absolute truth go out the window
as far as karma and change - those are beliefs - you may have faith that they are absolutes, which is fine, but you’ll never demonstrate their status as absolutes using rationality and logic - if by the “true understanding” you speak of in the OP you mean faith, then you’re talking about things that go beyond human intellect, and i can’t argue with you there, except to say that things that go beyond human intellect can’t be established by intellectual means, meaning they are, even seemingly by your own definition, matters of opinion and belief, rather than absolute truths that can in any way be universally established as such.
Total and unconditional relativity might qualify as absolutely true, but I’m not sure.
The only problem I see with that theory is that “relativity” in itself is conditional, based upon human perception and justification through mathematical theory and such. In other words, at some point, “relativity” would transcend the realm of experience and become mathematical theory.
I’m not sure we could ever be certain that anything is “unconditional”, so I can’t really fathom the absoluteness of such an idea…
mmm
Uglypeoplefucking,
Anon,
Let me begin with what I know for certain to be absolutely true. First of all, I know that all things are appearances to the mind, appearances that are dependent, defined, and emerge from other things. So no thing can just pop into existence from nothing, all things emerge from other things. A thing cannot be what is is not. A thing is defined and broken up by the mind, so how we break up reality is arbituary and based on our subjective experience, but there is a objective reality outside of the mind, but it is the mind that projects the picture of reality. The ego is irrational, it wants all its animal impulses constantly satisfied. It identifies strongly with status, wife, possessions, and even clings strongly to ideas for security. Absolute security happens when the mind lets go of all ideas that it is clinging to for security. All attachments the ego has are a potential for delusion and tragedy. A spiritual thinker is very careful with attachments. An enlighened person has very little ego, they do not react to the world in the same manner as an unenlighened person whose reactions are based on impulse, promises of reward, and immediate emotional knee jerk reactions.
An absense of ego is the present of emptiness. With emptiness, there is a vast space to think. A vast space that has a spiritual quality to it, it is peaceful, sane, and rational. All creativity as it relates to wisdom is born from this vast space, so creativity is not an individual thing, but something that is possible only when the individual overcomes the stranglehold the ego has on the brain.
And at the deepest level, all things are one, but are divided up as separate things for the need to analyze and make logical sense of the world.
This is the absolute truth I know with certainty.
exactly
and that is what Humanity has been missing for millenium(s)
that , regardless of ones god , we seem to miss , our own , Human survival
we have taken any god(s) as more important than our own survival , which not only wrong , but in a sense a Humanity blasfomy
I guess what I’m saying is if nothing could ever be established as unconditional, whether empirically or logically, then no absolute can ever be established. More strongly, if something unconditional can be shown to be empirically impossible and logically nonsensical then conditionality itself has been established as unconditional, though there is no “conditionality” as such. In other words, such a stance wouldn’t involve somehow substantializing “conditionality” into something self-existing. There’s no need to turn “conditionality is unconditional” into a mystical stance, as if Buddhist “emptiness” were just another name for the Judeo-Christian “God”.
Ryan,
See my response in this post to statiktech. When I say that “conditionality itself has been established as unconditional”, that probably can’t really be taken as some sort of ultimate statement. The irony is that the empirical and logical impossibility of having an objective point of view naturally prohibits us from ever making objective statements about “reality”. Having made that important qualification, I like what you have to say.
Its not I who fades away from the body its the body that fades away from me
This topic is continued elsewhere, it will answer many of your questions and confusions.
facebook.com/topic.php?topic … opic=12447
Its worth a read.
Great point Anon – “conditionality is unconditional” – that is an interesting thought. I do think that statement holds some truth, though I would also say one would have to draw a very clear, definitive line between “reality” and “theory” in order to come to such as conclusion. I just don’t see how that is possible considering that our entire perception of “reality” is essentially the sum of our best estimations, or closest possible theories. Even “scientific laws” are essentially our strongest theories; they will evolve as more accurate theories emerge.
I wrote out a much more detailed and well-phrased response only to find out that it was never actually posted. I’m kind of pissed so I’ll leave it at this for now…
On a side note - to moderators or whoever else gives a shit - the timeout for composing a post on this forum is absurd. I probably loose 1 out of every 3 posts that I attempt to submit because I have to re-authenticate and no cache or auto-draft system is put into place to preserve what I was writing. What really fuggin’ urks me is that the posts I put the most thought and research into go to complete waste, while my sarcastic comments that mean nothing never fail to post. The crap is ridiculous.
I can only imagine how people like ‘Peachy’ and ‘The Last Man’ manage to post up a damn novel every time they want to express a thought (no offense). I mean, do you guys just compose your replies in Word over the course of a day, then copy the content into a thread? If so, that just seems a little unnecessary to me. How is the timeout even remotely useful or practical? As a means to prevent seriously deep thought or proper grammar?
I mean, c’mon. this is a philosophy forum, not Jeopardy.
I do not know of this problem, statik. Are you using Mozilla?
Statiktech, I have the same problem with this website, it logs out automatically from inactivity every 45 or so minutes, if youre not moving around. What I do is, when done with a large post that took me awhile to write, I just copy it and then hit post - if it forces me to log back in, I do so and then go back to the post-edit page, paste my article, and then post it. Its a bit of a pain in the arse, but seems necessary else I tend to also lose much of my best postings.
You mean that you use more than 45 minutes to write a post? Not that there is anything wrong with that. Maybe you should just write on a Word doc and then just copy/paste.
I assume you have a word processor program of some kind. Write your post in the word processor, highlight it, hit control C, open a reply window in The thread, hit control V and everything you wanted to say plus everything you’ll regret saying later will be there in blazing black and white. 
Sorry to hear about your posting problems. I always highlight my text and copy it periodically while I’m writing any longer post - at least right before hitting the submit button. Sometimes it just doesn’t go through, and disappears in the process. So at least that way I can try again - paste and resubmit.
Too bad I don’t get to see your more detailed response - no problem though. I think maybe all statements that strive for ultimacy end in paradox. I wonder if just by recognizing that, a clear and definitive line between reality and theory is automatically established.
Anon,
Yes. But now we have the problem of where that definitive line lies. Mess with duality and you’ll go away stinkin’. 
