Relative to what?

My new favorite saying is “relative to what?” Works great for opinions disguised as facts or judgments disguised as questions.
Man, the food here sucks. – Relative to what? They could do a better job at ______. – Relative to what? What do you think of so and so? – Relative to what? Do you think I look fat? – Relative to what?
We’re all absolutists. Our local environment becomes the world and it’s easy to forget the value of relativity. If we hang out with our family or local peer group most of the time, groupthink cocoons us even more. As Yogi Berra might say, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” Another way I look at it is how we view tribes and villages in third-world countries. Their ideologies seem so backwards to us, even though that’s the only world they’ve ever known. Then, just a little bit of education has an overnight effect on women’s rights, child labor, and mortality in general. They go from an absolute context to one relative to the global spectrum. Same goes for developed countries. The moment they start thinking they’ve made it (relative to what?) is the moment they stop evolving. Information exposure alone is so powerful.