Relativism

Nowadays we hear a lot about relativism. In layman's terms it means that absolute truths don't exist, that things are relative to the thinker (e.g. what's right to me isn't what's right to you) This way of thinking is, of course, severely flawed and can be shot down in a few simple steps;

1) Clarify the difference between "Universal truths can't exist," and "Universal truths don't exist." It can be proved, very easily, that Universal truths can exist. For example, all other truths, relative or absolute, are based on the assumption that the Universe exists. Hence the existence of the Universe is held to be a Universal truth.  Furthermore the sentence "Universal truths don't exist" is self-contradictory, for it assumes itself to be Universally true.

2) Objectify the idea. Do not take the traditional approach of jumping into a topic (for example, ethics) and messing about with the definitions inside the topic itself. Instead, objectify the topic and extract the topic's fundamental qualities.

3) From the idea's fundamental qualities, deduct absolute truths about the idea. For example, right and wrong involves moral decisions. Hence all moral beings are of utmost importance. Therefore, values which better the state of mind of moral beings are definitely good; value such as freedom, peace and equality. These values are good and that is a universal truth; for no matter what you consider to be good or evil, moral beings will always be the ones who are doing either good or evil.

Granted of course that this line of reasoning will not give you accurate definitions of what is true and what is false. It will, however, indicate the general traits of what is true (in the given example, equality is one of the traits of what is good in general. Hence anything which disrupts it in vain is evil)

P.S.) The definitions extracted from objectifying the topic are true for all subjects of the topic. Hence if one had to choose a subject for a topic which didn't match the topic's characteristics (e.g. racism in the questions about right and wrong) than that subject is surely false (racism contradicts equality freedom and peace and so is evil). It is much like a maths equation. One cannot grab any equation, say x+2 = 4 and say that x is 9, just because one wishes to do so. It must make sense within the equation's boundaries.

That's all for now.