One of my favorite sayings: A man with one watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never sure.

I run into people who interpret this to mean that one should have only one watch. But that�€™s nonsense. The point is that you can be certain something is true, yet be wrong. And once you make up your mind you�€™ve found the whole and entire truth, you�€™ve shut your brain off from learning anything. If you want to get closer to the reality of things, stay skeptical.

I bring this up because the new Pope Benedict XVI has issued dire warnings about the evils of �€œrelativism.�€� As explained in this BBC article:

Relativism is “Different opinions, no one authority, and as many ‘truths’ as there are people or societies or cultures advancing different ways of doing things,” says Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University.

It is easy, he says, “to give relativism a slogan: Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” And when that is applied to ethics, then goodness, virtue and duty also lie in the eye of the beholder.

So, for the western liberal, living under western liberal influences, with western liberal opinions, he says, contraception and abortion are in, but for the Catholic Church, they are out.

In his sermon ahead of the conclave to choose a new Pope, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned of the need to preserve the Church’s traditional Catholic tenets against modern trends, against the “dictatorship of relativism”.

Moral standards, Catholic conservatives believe, should be perfect and unchanging.

The folly of absolutism is not that there is no Absolute. The folly is that that no doctrine or belief system perfectly and completely contains the Absolute. Believing otherwise is like the guy with one watch. Yes, there is this thing called time, but it�€™s folly to assume that any one watch perfectly and completely transmits the absolute truth of time, much less measure it accurately.

Some people unfairly blame �€œmoral relativism�€� on Einstein, just as �€œsocial Darwinism�€� gets blamed on Darwin. But as I understand it, Einstein didn�€™t say there was no Absolute. He said that time and space are relative to the observer�€™s frame of reference. In spite of Einstein, most of us still stumble around assuming that the way human beings experience time and space is the �€œabsolute�€� way, when in fact it�€™s actually relative. But to say the way we experience time and space is relative is not saying that time and space do not exist. And even if we understand relativity, we still go about acting as if the way we experience time and space is the absolute way, because as human beings living on planet Earth we�€™re pretty much stuck with the same frame of reference.

And how does this relate to �€œmorality�€�? Ideas about morality do shift from society to society and generation to generation. You don�€™t need a Ph.D. in history to have noticed this. If we could skip back a couple of centuries in our own country we�€™d see all manner of practices the chrono-locals consider to be moral but which we would find appalling, like slavery. There may be some belief or practice we accept as moral now that our descendants will think is barbaric.

The entire history of our species amounts to our stumbling around trying to find ways to get along with each other,[*] and the solutions we come up with in each society are called �€œmorals.�€� If we assume our current moral code is the absolute and perfect one that must never change, we�€™re assuming something about ourselves that hasn�€™t been true of any generation of homo sapiens since, well, homo sapiens.

[* Note that sometimes the �€œsolution�€� has been to eliminate those people we don�€™t want to get along with.]

However, to say that our current moral code(s) is not absolute or perfect doesn�€™t mean that morals don�€™t matter.

The BBC article linked above quotes the new Pope as saying, �€œWe are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.�€� But civilization cannot stand on a foundation of �€œevery man for himself,�€� no matter what the Bush Administration says. Throughout history the moral ideas adopted by each society supported that society as a society, meaning that functional moral systems, even nasty ones, have to facilitate people living together in a society. And, throughout history, change comes when enough people living in a society decide that a particular moral code is hurting people more than it is helping. Very often a society�€™s moral codes are intrinsic to a long-established status quo, and when the status quo changes the old moral codes may no longer make sense. And then they�€™re dumped. This, usually, is progress.

The Pope�€™s ideas about morality are intrinsic to his religious beliefs. I think of all doctrines and belief systems, whether religious, political, or philosophical, as interfaces to the Absolute. Belief systems are essentially just a means to limit your cognitive options so that it�€™s easier to wrap your finite head around infinity. Understood that way, it�€™s possible to grasp that someone�€™s opposing belief system may not be any more right or wrong than yours, it�€™s just that his interface presents a different set of options. Our folly is that we mistake the interface with the Absolute, and assume that because our one and only watch says it�€™s nine o�€™clock, that it must be nine o�€™clock for everyone on the planet.

In contrast to the Pope�€™s insistence that relativism is bad, most sects of Buddhism accept that reality itself is both relative and absolute. People sometimes mistakenly interpret the old texts as saying that reality is just a delusion, but that�€™s not quite it. �€œRelative�€� reality is the way human beings ordinarily interpret reality with their brains and senses. In relative reality, for example, time is linear, and individual objects have independent existence �€“ a chair is a chair, for example. But in the absolute, time is not linear, and no-thing has independent existence; there is just This. As the quantum mechanics guys say, it�€™s all just molecules and space. And in the relative, where a human might see a chair, a dog sees something to pee on.

The Indian sage Nagarjuna is best known for his argument that no-thing has independent existence. Put another way, nothing exists except in relation to something else. The great Japanese Zen master Dogen (1200-1253) expounded on this teaching in many of his writings.

When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this.

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.

Dharma is a Sanskrit word with many layers of meaning, including but by no means limited to �€œmoral teachings.�€� Dogen is saying (IMO) that a profound realization of dharma shows one that all teachings are imperfect. In other words, none of the interfaces gives you full access to the Absolute. Beliefs, doctrines, ordinary human cognition are always imperfect. But understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.

Let�€™s go back to Pope Benedict and his fears of a dictatorship of relativism. I understand that all over the world there are Catholic women who are denied birth control because some old guy in the Vatican interprets a 3,000+-year-old passage in Jewish scripture to mean that God doesn�€™t want people to have sex without the possibility of procreation. And for this reason women�€™s bodies and minds are depleted by too many pregnancies and too many children. Is this not a �€œdictatorship of absolutism�€�? If AIDS spreads through Africa because the Church discourages condoms, is this not a �€œdictatorship of absolutism�€�?

Where �€œmorality�€� closes peoples�€™ hearts to the suffering of others and denies them relief for the sake of dogma, how can this be �€œmoral�€�?

Pope Benedict argues that �€œmorality�€� is either based on dogma or on selfishness. I say His Holiness needs to upgrade his interface.

Yesterday, Riggsveda posted a lovely tribute to Albert Schweitzer here on American Street. Schweitzer�€™s remarkable life was guided by compassion. When he saw suffering, he worked to relieve suffering. He believed that a slavish devotion to dogma can interfere with compassion, and when that happens it is compassion, not dogma, that should rule. A few more Schweitzers in this world wouldn�€™t hurt.

More compassion, less absolutism, I say. And there�€™s nothing at all wrong with appreciating relativism.