RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
On the matter of a moral baseline, I keep having the following thought, which is a general and important observation on the process of knowing in general:
The objective reality is always there and does not depend on our awareness, acceptance or rejection of it. It is self-sustaining. But our awareness of reality is conditioned by numerous factors, all of which are in flux and so our awareness of reality is always in flux. Relativity is in the realm not of reality itself but of our awareness of reality and the factors that condition our awareness.
This is an important distinction to grasp. Many egoistically want to assert that reality is no more than their awareness. This is cultural relativism on a bender. Philosophically it is called Nominalism or, more recently, Positivism. It is just autistic ego on a bender and made to sound respectable by giving it a name. Epistemologically it is nonsense and operationally it is dangerous, both to the bearer and to those around who can be affected by the bearer.
Having an open mind is of the greatest importance because it is always best to be as aware of reality itself as is possible and so, since our awareness of reality itself is incomplete at any given moment, we want to keep open the awareness that our awareness can always be improved, expanded, made more complete. The completer and more accurate our awareness is, the better will be our decisions for the simple reason that they will address and deal with reality as it is.
Nominalists get people killed because they make decisions based on the stupid assumption that what they know is reality and all there is to it. Nominalists cannot respond to changing circumstances — for example, Hitler and the Japanese in WWII, killed by their autistic epistemology.
Realists, who assume the objectivity of reality and the relativity of our awareness of it, win battles and wars because they have the mental agility to respond to changing circumstances, never assuming that what they know is all they need to know and always assuming that their awareness of reality can be improved, completed, etc. Perfection, by the way, means completion in the sense of done well and fully (Latin, per + ficare). It has nothing to do with morals one way or the other.
The distinction between reality and our awareness of it — which is always partial and therefore requiring an open mind and dancing feet — serves one well through life in all circumstances. Gather all the information you can, then make your decision … and you will always sleep well at night.
Exercise care always. The careful are never sorry. They have a smooth life.
Relativity means relative to something. That something is the base line, which is Dharma. So when we say something is relative, we mean it more or less accurately reflects Dharma, the standard or base line.
Dharma is the strength which holds the consciousness bound to truth.
The base line may not always be visible. Or it may be — usually is — only partially visible. But that fact does not mean it does not exist or that our preferences supersede it. It means the thing is not or is only partially visible. Our sensing apparati are not plenary in either scope or accuracy. Therefore, we frequently do not see what is present. An old way of noting this fact is to say that the best place to hide something is in public view — which is true!
The base line or Dharma is always present, unconditioned. This is what gives strength and functionality to life. If it were not always present, unconditioned, functionality would be impossible because nothing would stand to work. We see this phenomenon playing out in many so-called culturally diverse communities and lives: with no backbone, the system cannot function except randomly, which will be of short duration and then the system merely collapses. The base line is always present. Those who do not feel allegiance to it or its authority are blobs waiting to disintegrate. They harm others as they do.
Even when there is the appearance of no base line, namely, in the case of a meta-random system (in Alice and Wonderland, the croquet game where Alice uses a flamingo for a mallet and a hedgehog for a ball), there is still the condition of a meta-random system and that condition is a base-line in the sense that it defines the situation. A condition, in other words, even though transitory, still functions proximately as a standard, a definition or backbone for operations, which in this case are meta-random. Meta-randomness is a thing, a base-line, although a proximate one.
Actually, even in meta-random systems the genuine base line lurks behind the scenes, namely: the thing (scene) itself Everything is related to itself. This means every relationship is tautological and nothing is merely relative in the sense of take it or leave it. Even the relative is objective and permanent because it is related to itself.
This phenomenon is what the great German philosophers called das ding an sich. The thing in itself. This is a very profound concept and realization on their part. It came from their Veda study and informed their military elite, such as Rommel, as well as the other intellectual circles, such as Schweitzer. Das ding an sich is, in other terms, Dharma when taken as a general base line but ding an sich when taken as concretized individually. They are saying that even the least particle is actually an embodiment of Dharma, the base line.
Another way of saying this is: Everything is related to itself. That is the base line of everything. And self is related to self which means all share the same base line, which is an absolute. I is the name everyone uses. There is only one I.
So, when someone says all is relative, agree and say, “Yes, all is related to the base line, to Dharma, to itself. We more or less approximate conformity to that base line and the more we do the happier and more expansive we are and the less we do the unhappier and more dissolute and wasting away (contractive) we are.
One will note that people who insist on cultural relativity in the sense of chaos must rely on theft to support themselves. They are non-productive and so must rely on hunting and gathering from those who produce.
Update 1: In the USA, we see copious concretizations of the truth of that concluding paragraph since 20JAN09.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
