On the fatuous romantic idea obsession with absolutes

"It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important." - Madeleine L'Engle

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The Absolutists

"An absolutist might miss that a person can be rational in some areas of thought and irrational in other areas. An absolutist divides people into those who are evil and those who are not, failing to recognize the ease with which otherwise good people can fall into evil deeds. An absolutist might sound like a Zoroastrian and reduce an issue to what he calls a war between good and evil or between light and darkness.

In 2007 an absolutist might see William Jefferson Clinton as totally without morals or political merit because of his womanizing more than a decade ago. An absolutist looks at some narrow part of a person and condemns the whole person...

A few people in this political season are absolutist about political choice. They cannot have everything in an available candidate so they claim there is no significant difference between this candidate and others. In 2003, before the war in Iraq, a few were arguing that if you do not attack everybody doing bad things you should attack no one -- not one of the better arguments against going to war...

In other words, someone is an absolutist when he or she confuses a part with the whole. Put another way, they oversimplify. Analyzing the origins of a war, someone might reduce it all to oil when a variety of issues are involved...

In conversations, absolutists are rigid and tight in their responses to people who point out contradictions in the point of view... These are people with whom one does not have a dialogue. One merely lets them explain.