The absence of absolute is at the root of nihilism.
It’s definition as the belief in a universe with no meaning, no god, no purpose, no universal morality begins with the assumption that these concepts ‘do’ in fact already exist outside the human mind, or that they ‘ought to’ exist, in a perfect world.
Nihilism, therefore, begins with a negative description of a world lacking what the human mind most deserves and seeks for - demands to be given, pre-made.
The world, as it is, lacking all these concepts it demands and thinks that it deserves, in a positive.
it is so because it makes life, and the evolution of a human what would then negate it, possible.
Nihilism is based on the confrontational relationship of an emerging unity, an ordering, and a universe of increasing chaos/randomness.
Coming to terms with this has been described as a overcoming of resentiment.
Starting with a common definition of 'absolute we can conclude that ti exists in the mnid as a concept, an idea, and ideal, but not outside the mind as anything real, tangible.
The ‘absolute’ as a another way of describing, the ‘whole’, the ‘complete’ the ‘singular’, the ‘immutable’, the ‘perfect’, the ‘independent’, the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’, the ‘telos’, final, certain, indivisible…and so on, is a human abstraction.
The sentences:
“Truth is there is no absolute truth” & “There are absolutely no absolutes” are based on a linguistic method that is contradicted by the real world, creating a paradox.
When words are taken literally and not as approximation, as symbols, as representations, the world, as it is, as fluid, contradicts the way the human conceptualizes it, reduces it to simplified/generalized abstractions.
An abstraction is a mental model, integrating internal and external stimuli by interpreting them in ways the organism evolved to deal with world.
An idea, image, in the mind is not the phenomenon itself. It is triggered by the phenomenon, and in some minds the phenomenon is not required, as with nihilist.
Nihilism takes the real and inverts it, contradicts it, or rearranges it in creative ways and then literally believes that his won constructs are more real than the ‘real’.
Abstractions are real…but only as representation existing in minds, not as tangible, observable, experienced phenomena, independent of minds.
The mind construct mental models, abstractions, and then it demands that the abstractions in the head be proven to not exist.
For example, the concept ‘God’ as the Abrahamic Nihilistic spiritual traditions define it, is a contradiction of the experienced real.
We can describe this as a conflict between the noumenon and the phenomenon - the mental model, abstraction, and the ongoing interactivity of patterns, that appear.
Nihilists then demand that the non-believer prove the non-existence of their own fabrications, and the skeptics, if they fall into their linguistic traps, will have to fabricate an equally absurd absolute to negate the one the Nihilists declared and never justified.
The one proposing an ‘absolute’ that is not merely theoretical, or based on social conventions and abstractions, such as 'All bachelors are unmarried" as an ‘absolute fact’, are burdened with the intellectual integrity of showing us all an absolute, as defined above:
indivisible, immutable, independent, complete, whole, singular.
The concept of ‘absolute’ only refers to a human abstraction and it describes the limit of human cognition.
By simplifying/generalizing the fluctuating inter-activities of world into a singular ‘thing’, a ‘concept’ the mind implodes reality into a representation, converting the phenomenon into a noumenon, or translating the stimuli phenomenon produce by interacting into a form the organism can process, store and recall - code.
Memory is founded on producing and storing codes, and this would also include genetic codes - sequences, sequential patterns representing a tried and tested function.
Words are often used improperly, or metaphorically.
Some do so on purpose, to confuse concepts and support their preferred conclusions, while others do so because they are ignorant, or lack talent, because language is another human representational art-form.
So they use ’ absolute’ to describe a ephemeral relationship, a ‘fact’.
“I am in a room” is not an absolute, but it is a fact.
It describes a relationship between an imperfect, incomplete, mortal, organism, and a boundary, produced by an element, or a congruity of patterns, such as a steel or concrete wall.
This relationship is not eternal, not perfect, not timeless, not indivisible, not independent…
The room and man exist on a rotating planet, going around a rotating star, going around a galactic core, moving in space.
Whether by death or the walls deterioration, in time, the relationship is not absolute.
Space = possibility
Order = probability
Pushed to their theoretical absolutes;
Chaos = infinite space/time, infinite possibilities - Randomness, not to be confused for complexity.
Order = finite space/time possibilities. A pattern would be the consistent, repeating, predictability of order, and as an absolute it would be certainty, or one portability - singularity.
Both absolute describe an end to existence, if by ‘existence’ we understand endless interactivity: dynamic ordered and non-ordered patterns relating.
We notice such confusions emerging with the child-like naivete, some use another word: beauty
Though the concepts refers to physical or mental symmetry and proportionality, indicating a higher degree of order , inherited but not always cultivated fully, most like to confuse the concept with other words, such as ‘like’.
They purposefully, or foolishly confuse symmetry/proportionality indicating genetic health, reproductive promise, probability of higher order, with personal affinity.
To ‘like’ something, or someone does not automatically make ti ‘beautiful’.
Describing how the other makes us feel is subjectivizing beauty to conveniently make it a matter of personal taste.
A more objective mind would see the ugliness of form and still not suffer a reduction in the affinity of liking, preferring, judging by using other criteria. It is possible to dislike a very attractive man or woman, and to like a very unattractive man or woman.
The factor of mental symmetry/proportionality is more difficult to evaluate, as it refers to mental relationships, manifesting as personality or psychology, yet symmetry/proportionality is what we describe as ‘charm’ or ‘humor’, or ‘intelligence’, all of these description have nothing to do with morality.
Another one of those words nihilists throw around haphazardly, with no understanding.
Morality = describing an evolved behavior conducive to social cooperative unities.
That these behavioral patterns would then be encoded by man as codes of ethos, is to be expected.
There is no morality outside social species, as morality describes how a species evolved to cooperate, and to inter-relate.
Morality always sacrifices self to the group, or repressed ego to take advantage of group dynamics.
Morality begins with codependency, as in heterosexual reproduction. The yearly seasonable necessity to repress the fight/flight mechanism for copulation to occur, has evolved a chemical inebriation that begins the evolutionary process towards what we now call ‘moral conduct’.