  Suppose one seeks to free oneself from a symmetric absolute space by
quotienting out its symmetry group. This in general however fails to erase all
memory of this absolute space's symmetry properties. Stratification is one
major reason for this, which is present in both a) Kendall-type Shape Theory
and subsequent Relational Mechanics, and b) General Relativity configuration
spaces. We consider the alternative starting point with a generic absolute
space, meaning with no nontrivial generalized Killing vectors whatsoever. In
this approach, generically Shape-and-Scale Theory is but trivially realized,
there is no separate Shape Theory and indeed no stratification. While the GR
configuration space version of these considerations was already expounded in
1996 by Fischer and Moncrief, the Kendall-type shape theory version is new to
the current article. In each case, this amounts to admitting some small
deformation by which symmetry's hard consequences at the level of reduced
configuration spaces are warded off.We end by discussing the senses in which
each of the above two strategies retain absolutist features, each's main known
technical advantages and disadvantages, and the desirability of replacing
Kendall-type Shape Theory with a Local-and-Approximate Shape Theory. This
article is in honour of Prof. Niall \'{o} Murchadha, on the occasion of his
Festschrift.
