Your relative self

How is it that one and the same man can be both large and small, large relative to one person but small when compared to another?

This question posed in the Phaedo brought up an excerpt from a book I read back in grade school, The Phantom Tollbooth. by Norton Juster

“Milo and Tock walked up to the door, whose brass plate name read simply ‘THE GIANT’, and knocked.
‘Good afternoon,’ said the perfectly ordinary-sized man who answered the door.
‘Are you the giant?’ asked Tock doubtfully.
‘To be sure,’ he replied proudly. ‘I’m the smallest giant in the world. What can I do for you?’…

…They walked to the rear of the house, which looked exactly like the front, and knocked at the door, whose name plate read ‘THE MIDGET’.
‘How are you?’ inquired the man, who looked exactly like the giant.
‘Are you the midget?’ asked Tock again, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
‘Unquestionably,’ he answered. ‘I’m the tallest midget in the world. May I help you?’…

…The side of the house looked very like the front and back, and the door flew open the very instant they knocked.
‘How nice of you to come by,’ exclaimed the man, who could have been the midget’s twin brother.
‘You must be the fat man,’ said Tock, learning not to count too much on appearance.
‘The thinnest one in the world,’ he replied brightly, ‘but if you have any questions, I suggest you try the thin man, on the other side of the house.’

… and the door was again answered by a man who looked precisely like the other three.
'What a pleasant surprise!' he cried happily. 'I haven't had a visitor as long as I can remember.'

...'Are you the fattest thin man in the world?' asked Tock.
'Do you know one that's fatter?' he asked impatiently.
'I think you are all the same man,' said Milo emphatically.
'S-S-S-S-S-H-H-H-H-H-H-H,' he cautioned...'...to the tall men I'm a midget, and to the short men I'm a giant; to the skinny ones I'm a fat man, and to the fat ones I'm a thin man.' "

Its not a perfect production, but here is a home-made adaptation of this scene from the book.

Obviously, this a very literal example of that question posed above.
We can be many people and still one person.
Our one person is made up of those many persons, but those many persons can only be recognized relative to certain situations.
For example.... '...to the tall men I'm a midget...' as quoted from above.

Its interesting how a 'thing' can exist in this world and go by many names and many meanings relative to where you are in the world. This is as much true for physical objects as it is for ideas such as piety or virtue. The Web of Ideas concept is identical to what I am getting at here.
Again using my example from The Phantom Tollbooth, who that man was in their world was no one special, but from the perspective of different people, he had distinguishable attributes, in relation to those different people. At the same time, how something like virtue exists in our world can be debated all day by many different people, but in reality, they are possibly all talking about the same being.


On a less related note, but related all the same.....
I'm sitting here talking with my new roommate Karim, who is a foreign exchange student from France. His ability to speak english is still developing but for the most part he is doing very well! He also speaks a bit of Spanish. We have been discussing how certain things such as titles of TV shows or comic book characters like Wolverine have different names in Spain and France. Sometimes, we'll use Wolverine as an example, only the basic idea, as opposed to the original idea, will be transferred across peoples. In Spain, the character Wolverine has a different name and plays a slightly different role in the storyline of the comic series.