Life is Relative - Now What?

Does any of this even matter?

I tried to make a similar point in one of my earlier essays already. But I feel like I failed. So let me try again.

First of all I am not sure how many people so far reading my work are actually on board with the idea.

I am honestly surprised at how persistent the opposition clings on absolute objectivity. It probably stems from the fear that everything falls apart without it.

But relativity still allows us to have consistency. It does not make existence arbitrary.

What it does not allow for is absolutes. We can talk about bigger and smaller relative to something, faster, slower, older, younger. But there isn’t a thing out there that is objectively BIG. The only universals are that there are no universals. Well, except maybe light speed in a vacuum — but even that one is pretty sketchy imo.

We take absolute values for granted because our environment is stable enough to compare against, with a reasonable expectation of receiving the same answer the next day. That is a luxury our universe worked hard for. A consequence of evolution, or more specifically, mutual adaptation.

There is no objectively best string of DNA. No penultimate being behind God that everything else looks up to. Even right and wrong are relative.

But somewhere between this revelation and human ingenuity lies the misconception that relative is bad. That it makes all our conclusions meaningless and false in an even deeper sense.

A century before I was born Einstein already demonstrated this flawlessly in Physics.

There is no such thing as absolute motion. Whether you’re standing still or hurtling through space at half the speed of light depends entirely on what you’re measuring yourself against. There is no cosmic finish line, no universal “at rest” that everything else gets compared to. Simultaneity itself — whether two events happen “at the same time” — depends on where you’re standing. Two observers, moving differently, can genuinely disagree about which of two events came first, and both be correct, from where they’re standing.

That’s general relativity for ya.

Nobody, on learning this, concluded that motion doesn’t really happen. Nobody stood up and said: well, if speed is relative, then nothing is really moving, so what’s the point of running for the train. The car crash still hurts. The rocket still gets to Mars. Relative didn’t mean fake. It meant real, but only ever real from somewhere.

That’s the whole trick. Relativity was never an argument against reality. It was an argument against there being a view from nowhere that dictates what is right and wrong for all of us.

While we know when something matters to us. We dont seem to be satisfied with such a feeble subjective notion of meaning. For something to really matter, it has to matter from no perspective in particular. Matter absolutely and to the universe itself, regardless of who’s looking.

Nihilism is just this demand spoken into the void and mistaken for a discovery. When you shout into space and expect an echo, it’s absence becomes a surprise. But first we have to realize that space never owed us an echo. and that the absence of a universal echo does not mean local echos aren’t real.

So if we want to say we’ve discovered something than at best it’s the fact that nothing matters from nowhere, to no one, universally. Looking at Nothingness itself and expecting it to love us is a high bar. Humanity always wanted itself to be at the center of everything. The sun revolving around earth, the pinnacle of life resulting in the form of a naked biped with a pretty energy hungry brain. We wanted to be Gods chosen folk. And well…

Once you notice the demand was incoherent to begin with, its failure to be met stops sounding like a loss. You can’t be cheated out of something that was never on offer.

Of course you still might ask: so what? Who cares? And why should I?

I want to argue that morality is at its heart only meaningful because it is relative. Objective morality would have no room for growth, no progression, no ability to adapt to changing circumstance.

And worse, it would leave us without the capacity to judge as subjects. What we find to be right or wrong is the single most telling aspect of our personality. It reveals who we are, who we want to be, and how we view the beings we share the world with.

Morality that emerges from us, as subjects in relation to the world, makes us multidimensional, and our choices matter. We shape the trajectory of life in accordance with our values.

Objective morality would mean playing a game with an already-solved meta, and it would make all our effort summarizable with a single word: Good or Bad. In a way, it makes our attempt more meaningless than the alternative. And furthermore, it single-handedly gives rise to the problem of evil. If the mess we find ourselves in already has a solution — if it’s crystal clear what is good and what is bad — why make us suffer through the uncertainty and ignorance?

The answer is simple. Reality is created in the moment. Each decision happens in unprecedented circumstances and requires our active participation and judgment. We are the weavers of our own fate, and we create the values we care for out of nothing, and can always choose to change course.

Is that not the more uplifting message to work with?

There isn’t a single property that survives relativity. The easiest way to see that is by understanding that every single aspect of reality lands on a spectrum. Colors, sizes, sounds. Sexuality, economic success, happiness, and the quality of the coffee you had this morning.

Not only do they fall on a spectrum, but it’s a spectrum that always has your own point of view at its center. Everyone politically to the right of you is a far-right extremist; everyone bolder than you is an adrenaline junkie tired of life; anyone more fearful than you should learn to live a little. Of course we can find examples where we find our own locus inadequate — but then we simply center someone else’s expectations as the new desirable norm instead. We never have a ruler that sits outside the system to measure against which makes all our measurements a comparison.

None of this means the ruler doesn’t work. Inside the room it was designed in, it works exactly as well as it ever did. Your values still cohere with each other or clash with each other. Your actions still fit who you’re trying to be or betray it. Nothing about the absence of a cosmic yardstick erases the yardstick sitting in your own hands, built from your own history, doing its job every single day whether or not anyone outside your perspective is obligated to agree with its markings.

Relative doesn’t mean interchangeable. It doesn’t mean any position is as good as any other to you. It means your position is real, specific, load-bearing and simply not exportable to somewhere it was never built to reach.

And here we are. Me berating you about how everything is a matter of perspective, and how reality cannot be viewed from nowhere, not even theoretically, which is also, ironically, just my perspective. xD

While relative morality gives you the right to decide your own values, relative teleology enables you to carve your own path in every other avenue of life.

Existentialism was always phrased through the lens of conceding to absurdism, but choosing to fight anyway. This makes life’s purpose less than a god-given, objective goal. I fully reject that characterization.

Without the shackles of objectivity, we are not faced with a goal set in stone — but also not an indifferent universe. The universe objectively not caring is just as active a claim as the opposite. Absurdism antagonizes the universe by presenting it as indifferent. And yet we see the universe care, locally, through a myriad of ways.

The love of your mother. The joy of friends rooting for you. The empathy of your neighbors. The loyalty of your pet. All examples of parts of the universe caring.

What hubris drives us to expect the entire thing to care about us with every fiber? We are in a mutualistic relationship with the universe. Do you care about everything the way you expect everything to care about you? Nihilism says there is no care in this world, and that what care exists doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

I say there is care everywhere. In fact, there isn’t a single speck of the universe left uncared for. It’s simply distributed through a web of relationships rather than handed down as a top-down divine expectation befalling every part from above existence.

And this means you co-author your own life. Sometimes you write a whole chapter. Sometimes you’re confronted with a finished contract. But you always decide where you put your signature.

So why should you care?

That’s for you to decide.

Life is a journey in which there is nothing that matters for everyone. While it matters to me to share the beauty I see in this worldview, it is your own perspective that dictates its weight in yours.