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A Penne for Your Thoughts: Blandom Rog Day
By 6wd | March 20, 2008
Okay, it’s down to these finalists for today’s title:
A Penne for Your Thoughts (as in penne pasta, yeah?)
Thought for Food
Thood for Fought
I Fought the Thood and the Thood Won
So, yeah. Titles for random blogs…them’s they.
Anyway, according to my calendar, it’s Blandom Rog day, so I’m going to blandomly rog about a couple of things.
First, did you know that less than one tablespoon of HORSERADISH has TEN TIMES the beneficial substance (glucosinolate) as does broccoli or any other cruciferous vegetable, all of which are so highly recommended specifically because of their glucosinolate content?
And that the substance in horseradish works best when pulverized–exactly as it is in horseradish sauce?
And that that same substance is so powerful that it has REVERSED the growth of cancerous tumors in scientific tests, and being looked at as a potential anti-cancer drug?
I eat horseradish every night by mixing a teaspoon full into ketchup and using that as a dip for my raw vegetables. It tastes SO GOOD (it’s the same sauce most people use for dipping boiled shrimp) and has almost zero calories.
Next blandom rog topic: Absolute truth versus relative truth (I TOLD you there would be thood for fought in this blog!)
Absolutist: There is such a thing as absolute truth.
Relativist: There might be for you, but there’s not for me.
Absolutist: No, I mean, there’s absolute truth that applies not just to me, but to you, too.
Relativist: Could be true for you, but that’s not true for me.
Absolutist (starting to freak out): Do you UNDERSTAND ME? There is absolute truth that applies to everyone everywhere at all times whether they believe in it or not!
Relativist: True for you, but not for me.
Credit for the above and below: Robert Nozick Invariances
Ever had one of these conversations? If you’re the absolutist, it’s frustrating.
And of course ANY relativist can be shut down by the following:
Relativist: All truth is relative.
Absolutist: Are you saying that the statement you just made is absolutely true? Because if so, you just admitted the existence of absolute truth. Your position is therefore philosophically “unstable.”
Well, Robert Nozick liked thinking and writing about these things. And being the comical genius that he was, he decided to look behind this kind of interchange and to wonder: Why is that some people WANT the truth to be relative, while others want the truth to be absolute? And which people want which?
So he started asking his students two questions: Do you believe truth is relative or absolute? And which do you WANT truth to be: relative or absolute?
In so doing, he made an amazing discovery about truth and about the people who take one or the other position in regard to truth (believing either that it’s relative or that it’s absolute).
He began to see that truth works one of two ways: Either the truth makes it HARDER for some people to achieve their goals; or the truth makes it EASIER for some people to achieve their goals.
In other words, if you and the truth butt heads, and you’re not achieving your goals and the real reason you’re not is because the truth and the facts are keeping you from doing so, then you find truth “constricting”.
But if you are the other kind of person–the person who faces truth and accepts it, and then USES the truth as a stepladder or platform to attain the goals you want to attain (not ALL the things you want, but in general, to succeed often at achieving your goals), then you find the truth to be “enabling.”
He found that the people who found truth to be constricting were the people who began to claim that all truth was relative. They didn’t like the truth because it thwarted their goals and desires, and rather than change themselves to fit with truth, they began to try to change the effect truth was having on them–not by trying to change truth, because they couldnt do that–but instead by stating that truth was relative. This gave these people a feeling of freedom, because they were no long constrained, they felt, by the truth. The truth lost its authority over them, and they had escaped the truth, they felt, by stating that it was only relative. These people, sociologically, tended to find other people who called truth relative. This gave them comfort. These others also tended to be people who could not achieve their goals. And they tended to be people in groups which were “subordinate” to the more powerful groups in society. In general, their modus operandi was not to stop failing, because they couldn’t do that in the face of obdurate truth, but they stopped their PERCEPTION of themselves having failed by changing the rules into whatever allowed them to create a perception in which they were “winners” under the new relative truth they created.
Similarly, he found that the people who had used truth and facts to achieve their goals, such as by avoiding pitfalls, or by submitting to facts and acting accordingly, were the people who considered truth to be absolute.
His quote: “So which is the true character of facts, constraining or enabling? Clearly facts have both aspects. (Rationality, too, can be seen as a constraint or an enabling means). If generally you are achieving your important goals, achieving them well enough, even if not perfectly or optimally, if there are paths leading out from your actions that enable you to reach your level of aspiration, then you will view facts, in general, as enabling. If there are no such paths, however, then facts will appear to you mainly as constraining. Whether people welcome or oppose relativist doctrines depends, I conjecture, upon which of the two situations they are in. According to this explanation, the desire that truth be absolute arises from satisfaction with the particular truths that are believed to hold, and the desire that truth be relative stems from dissatisfaction with particular truths. The philosophical preference for absolutism or relativism, then, is a derivative one.”
So which situation are YOU in today?
And how, you may ask, does this apply to dieting?
It applies like this: If you are a person who wants to know the truth and the facts about weight, and you believe that fat is bad and trim is good, you will search out the truth about how eating relates to weight, and you will follow the truth in your choices, so as to reach your goal of trimness, which you acknowledge is a good thing.
On the other hand, if you are a relativist about weight, and you simply cannot be obedient to the facts about how what you eat relates to your trimness or fatness, (you can’t even begin to stop eating the things that make you fat), then in order to protect yourself from looking like a failure at weight loss, you will begin to let go of the concept that fat is bad and trim is good. You will begin to say that whether fat is good or bad is only RELATIVE , and that while some people may think fat is bad, other people believe that fat is good. And then you stay overweight, and you join the “Fat is Beautiful and Thin is for Stupid Conformists” club, and in so doing, you just revealed some very telling things about yourself.
And does failing at a diet mean that you are a relativist about weight? Absolutely not. If you believe the facts about fat versus trim, even if you can’t DO it all correctly or even at all, you’re not a relativist. You’re a person who believes the truth, and just has trouble following it.
A relativist is a person who fails, like we all do at times, but rather than admitting that they failed, they simply start claiming that the facts aren’t actually facts, but are relative, and that each person can make up her own facts.
This holds true across the board in life, of course.
If someone with great authority comes along and says, “Here’s a way to live that is consistent with truth,” the people who believe it and try and, to SOME degree, succeed in following those rules, even though they also fail at it every day–those people are people who give honor to truth, who recognize truth, and who honestly acknowledge the truth, even if they don’t like that truth. And even if they don’t succeed in their actions, they have succeeded at truth by recognizing it and admitting that it IS truth, EVEN IF they cannot follow it very well. Kind of like winning by faith, and not by being perfect in your works.
But if another person finds themselves constrained by that true way of living, so that their desires aren’t being met–in a big way–and if they are people to whom truth and honesty aren’t as important as is their getting ahead or looking good to themselves and others, then they will simply throw out the truth because the truth makes them look bad. And they will begin to say that truth is relative.
And even though both groups may fail at following that truth, the difference between them is that the first group admitted that it was THEIR failure, and not the failure of the truth to be true. But the second group didn’t have the integrity to admit their own fault, so instead, they threw out the truth. And they did that by proclaiming it to be “relative.”
Relativist, after reading this blog: The points you make in your blog are all fine and dandy, and they might be true for YOU. But they aren’t true for ME.
Hmmmmmm. I wonder why you say that.
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