Relatively Speaking

I use the word "relatively" a lot... I.E. So and so it ______ relative to _______... You're relatively intelligent, you're relatively fast, i'm relatively slow... blah blah blah.

Well last night I was thinking, all of our statements about ourselves or other people should have that word within them. Our entire world view is skewed to our relative surroundings. I consider myself a slow guy, but really i'm only slow compared to the friends and people i know who run or play competetive sports. And even then only compared to the 'fast' group of those friends. I know that I'm faster than most people my age... and certainly WAY faster than most people in the U.S. or the world.

Every judgment we have... every adjective we apply to ourselves or others is entirely dependent upon our world. Positive or negative, it's relative.

I'm not entirely sure what that means in terms of our lives, and how we view ourselves, but It's an interesting thought.

I guess that's what it means to be a philosopher without a direct job in philosophy; The most you can hope for is to make arbitrary statement about how humanity carries on and hope someone finds it interesting.

But anyway, I think that it might be a good mood changer. If you are thinking negatively about yourself and getting down about things. Think about relativity. I don't mean you always say "well i could be starving in a third world country", I mean place yourself on the entire plato of people similar to you. You just lost your job? Well really it's not becuase you're a bad worker or something, there are TONS of people who are losing their jobs or can't even find one! You just lost your girlfriend? There are people who are stuck in relationships that don't work, lie to themselves, and hate their "significant other".

Just a thought that i had that i can't articulate very well...

that's all.