I Object!

A student friend of mine was complaining the other day that she had managed to write a fairly bad essay for her philosophy class on the subject of whether objectivity was important or not (or something like that).

It made me think (which I guess is the point).

We can, of course, never be objective. We each see the universe through our own eyes as an individual experience (our own reality), and, no matter how much in agreement we all might be about something, we are each seeing it slightly differently. This concept is pretty much accepted these days, but then forgotten about in the general mush that is our daily lives. (I'm not going to dwell right now on the possibility that our own reality is all there is to dwell on.)

It is, however, an critical point. We are, as human beings, both very alike and very dissimilar. We are homogeneous and heterogeneous all at the same time. It depends on the scale, as meta physicists might like to say.) Necessarily, this also means that we are dichotomous and often contrary. We are, in fact, individually more than one. So much for schizophrenia.

So we see things differently, not only inasmuch as being individual brains and bodies, but within our own entities too.

How very confusing.

Anyway, this all goes to restate just how impossible the Enlightenment-sponsored concept of objectivity is to achieve. Just ask anyone involved in working with witnesses to a crime.

The best we can do is discipline ourselves to try and work towards objectivity. This can sometimes be a very useful tool. Too much, however, it is assumed to be THE way of thinking, and that is as silly, frankly, as assuming that rationality and/or logic (the two tend to go together) are basic human assets (actually, they are socially ingrained philosophies).

Sometimes I really hate the Renaissance...

Which is why I will now drop in 'Descartes was a great mathematician but a lousy philosopher' and 'all facts are widely accepted opinions'.

Also, has anyone noticed that Creationism is doing nothing more than winding the clock back to when we ALL thought that the Golden Rule was God's Own Work? It reminds me of the time I listened to a university chaplain asking us to pray to God in thanks for evolution and hedgerows. That's the only time so far I have ever laughed in a religious service.

So, we are all subjective; insular by default, with varying tints of spectacles.

And this is why we have complicated and subtle forms of communication. It's why we have language (and why our brains are already coded for this complexity), the written word, music and painting. We are constantly trying to say things to each other and that is why we are creative, whether it's graffiti, this blog or the Mona Lisa.

In fact, it is, to me, the most important aspect of human life - communication and creativity. I love it, so I do, as an abstract as much as in the doing. That might have some reference to my involvement with an arts festival.

Finally, subjectivity and individuality are also the reasons why criticism, and other variations on trying to decode these communications into objective messages, are a complete waste of time. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder is a universal.