On the Struggle of Absoluteness vs. Relativeness in Human Nature

Human beings live in tension.

On one side, everything about us is relative:

We are born at a certain time, in a certain body, in a certain culture.

Our language, beliefs, habits, even our memories are shaped by circumstance.

We age, we change, we adapt. We are finite.

On the other side, something in us refuses to be satisfied with the finite.

We seek permanence.

We demand truth, not just opinion.

We ask about meaning, not just survival.

We pursue justice as if it should be universal, not local.

This is the struggle:

the relative condition of existence versus the absolute impulse within consciousness.

I. The Relative Condition

Relativeness defines our biological and social existence:

Our bodies obey physical laws.

Our minds develop through experience.

Our knowledge is partial and revisable.

Our identities shift across time.

Everything we can describe is embedded in space and time.

Language itself is contextual.

Relativeness means limitation.

Yet limitation alone does not exhaust what it means to be human.

II. The Absolute Impulse

Why do humans ask:

“What is ultimately true?”

“What is the ground of existence?”

“What remains when everything changes?”

No animal writes metaphysics.

No machine spontaneously wonders about eternity.

This impulse toward the Absolute appears as:

The pursuit of universal laws in science.

The search for unconditional morality.

The mystical intuition of something beyond words.

The dissatisfaction with purely pragmatic answers.

The Absolute here does not mean a thing among things.

It means that which is not confined to particularity.

In your own framework, this tension resembles the difference between AR-level existence (natural instance) and the pull toward AA—the unspeakable background that does not belong to structure.

But even outside Instancology, the structure of this tension appears in nearly every civilization.

III. Historical Expressions of the Struggle

Plato sought eternal Forms beyond sensory change.

Kant distinguished phenomena from noumenon.

Hegel pursued Absolute Spirit through dialectic.

Heidegger asked about Being beyond beings.

Eastern traditions speak of Dao, Brahman, or emptiness.

Different languages. Same tension.

The relative human condition refuses to stay merely relative.

IV. The Psychological Dimension

The struggle is not abstract—it is existential.

We fear death (relative end), yet long for permanence.

We experience change, yet demand identity.

We live within culture, yet seek universal truth.

We act in time, yet imagine eternity.

This produces inner conflict:

Skepticism vs. faith

Pragmatism vs. metaphysics

Survival vs. meaning

Structure vs. transcendence

The relative self wants comfort and stability.

The absolute impulse wants truth—even if destabilizing.

V. Two Ways to Respond

Humans typically respond in one of two ways:

1. Collapse into Relativity

Everything is contextual. Truth is social. Meaning is constructed.

This dissolves the absolute impulse but leaves quiet dissatisfaction.

2. Dogmatic Absolutism

One declares a fixed doctrine as final truth.

This often confuses a relative formulation with the Absolute itself.

Both responses miss the tension.

The struggle is not a problem to eliminate.

It is structural to human nature.

VI. The Deeper Interpretation

The struggle itself may reveal something fundamental:

Humans are finite beings with an orientation toward the infinite.

We are structurally relative, yet cognitively capable of reaching beyond structure.

This reaching may not capture the Absolute as an object.

But the very act of reaching signals that human nature contains more than biological survival.

Perhaps the most mature stance is neither denial nor dogma, but clarity:

Accept relativeness in practice.

Acknowledge absoluteness in orientation.

Do not confuse language with what it tries to gesture toward.

VII. Conclusion

The struggle of Absoluteness vs. Relativeness is not a philosophical luxury.

It is the engine of civilization.

Science emerges from the desire for universal law.

Ethics from the demand for unconditional justice.

Religion from the longing for ultimate ground.

Philosophy from dissatisfaction with appearances.

The human being stands between structure and what exceeds structure.

That tension is not weakness.

It is precisely what makes us human.