Conserving the subjective self-perception
“Objective through shared subjectivity”
‘Popular belief’ posits that ‘objective’ is based on facts while ‘subjective’ is based on whim.
True enough but facts need to be identified as such first and then agreed upon before they become ‘facts’. Before they are recognized as facts by the interested parties. Before they become the foundation for objective knowledge.
On the other hand, ‘subjective’ is indeed personal. A personal ‘take’ on something which has happened inside the same reality where facts take place. In fact, all the facts we agree upon have started their lives as subjective impressions. Which had been shared with other people and eventually stated as facts after ‘negotiation’.
Furthermore, no matter how subjective a perception, all perceptions are perceived using the same senses. And ‘processed’ using the same brains. According to culturally accrued ‘habits’.
Even a hallucination will conserve some degree of normalcy. If of a visual nature, for example, the hallucinatory perception will be experimented and described in visual terms. Pondered upon and discussed with others using the same brain which usually deals with facts. Shared with others using language and evaluated according to ‘customs’.
Self-preservation
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a rationalization is “an attempt to find reasons for behaviour, decisions, etc., especially your own“.
According to my research, all conscious agents will first attempt to arrange all information at their disposal in such a manner as to conserve the subjective impression they have already acquired about themselves.
Salvation
According to Merriam-Webster, salvation is “deliverance from the power and effects of sin“
Having to do with religion, some people will say salvation is subjective by its very nature.
Being understood in the very same way across various cultures and religions, salvation becomes objective.
Not real in the materialistic sense of the word but real in the sense that belief in salvation has very real consequences. Real enough to become material. Set in stone!
Shared belief in Christian salvation has driven people to build churches while shared belief in Buddhist salvation has driven people to build monasteries. The fact that people involved in so different religions as Christianity and Buddhism share their faith in salvation makes salvation an objective ‘thing’.
Makes salvation something ‘natural’.
Self-actualization
According to Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, for a person to be able to attempt self-actualization that person must have fulfilled all other needs they might have had.
Having fulfilled those ‘previous’ needs is no guarantee for self-actualization being a success, only a prerequisite.
Copernican Revolutions
In a sense, each Copernican revolution humankind has sailed through – of which there have been many – has been a self-actualization.
I’m going to mention three and wrap up this post.
Instrument and possession
Many animals – relatively speaking, are able to use tools. To purposefully alter pieces of matter in order to be more useful towards the intended goal. But nobody except us carry them around.
Furthermore, a lion will defend its pray. And its hunting ground. In a sense, a lion behaves as if it defends its possessions. But only us, humans, talk about possession.
It was us who have conceptualized possession. Who have instrumentalized the notion of property.
This has happened more or less simultaneously with the advent of organized agriculture. Which needs instruments and order. Tools to work the land and the expectation to be able to enjoy at least some of the end-results of your work.
Money and nation
Systematic agriculture has thoroughly transformed human society.
Or, more exactly, the humans who had invented systematic agriculture had to adapt themselves to the new reality brought upon their heads by their own invention.
The spoils of systematic agriculture – abundant food – have created vast opportunities. Some of the people involved in the process were ‘free to do other things but toiling the fields. Hence specialization of work and social division. ‘Professional people’, priests, soldiers.
The source of this new found abundance, and the spoils themselves, had to be protected. And organized…. a.k.a. taken advantage of! Hence ‘rulers’. Arable land had been taken into possession along with the people working the fields. Nation building had begun.
The hoarded produce could be traded. Hence they were. Along with the ‘things’ produced by the ‘professionals’ fed with the accumulated ‘excess’ food.
Trading would have been easier if money was available. Hence it was invented. And used. By traders as a tool for trading merchandise and by rulers as a tool for ruling ‘their’ nations. Which weren’t yet called as such. Only functioning as such…
Rights and reason
Systematic agriculture and trading had been the stepping stones for the advent of ‘industry’. For professional people producing things for sale.
Oekonomy – the art of making ends meet on a yearly bases, as understood by the Ancient Greeks – had become ‘the Economy’. The engine moving society along the passage of time. A process so complicated that a single agent was no longer able to control it. L’etat had become so complex that even Louis XIV could no longer claim it as his own. For the ‘system’ to maintain its ability to function, to go forward, individual agents had to be freed.
Hence the freedom of the market and the human rights.
Hence individual human beings indulging in the habit of thinking for themselves…
Salvation no longer came in an organized manner. According to rules.
To each their own. Reason had been freed once and for all.
Each of us has assumed the freedom to rationalize according to their own wish.
To their own purposes.
To which end?
Only history will tell…
But before proceeding we’d better remember Ernst Mayr’s words.
‘Evolution has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest.
There’s no such thing as ‘the fittest’! The fittest to what since everything changes all the time?!?
Evolution is about the demise of the unfit.’
Until now, evolution has been ‘blind’.
Increasingly, some have become cocky enough to consider they know better. To consider they know where they should lead ‘their subjects’. Lenin, Hitler and Stalin are but a short selection from a long list.
Those who have followed the advice and have facilitated the ‘pestilence’ put in practice by this kind of people are those who have forgotten the deeper meaning of “You must not make any idols. Don’t worship or serve idols of any kind, because I, the LORD, am your God”.
Which ‘God’ brings us back to where we started.
To ‘objective as something agreed upon by many subjective agents’.
You see, I quote the Bible and I mention God quite a lot. And still define myself as being ‘agnostic’.
The fact that I don’t know whether God had actually created the world doesn’t alter the fact that the Bible is a trove of knowledge. As for God’s very existence… things are complicated!
How do you determine whether something exists? You check for the consequences of its existence, right?
A table exists only if you can ‘touch’ it. Since you cannot touch something which doesn’t exist, the fact that you can touch it is a consequence of its existence.
Same with God. Irrespective whether it has actually created the world – or anything else, as a conscious agent – God does exist. People acting as if God was real – people’s faith in God – had and continue to have consequences.
People acting as if God was real have brought God to life. The God we know, talk about and have faith in…
My last affirmation is rather hard to swallow?
Then how about money?
What makes them so valuable? Except for our ‘faith’ in them? Except for our belief, our shared belief, in the ‘fact’ that we are able to get things by paying for them?
And how about ‘rights’?
Do we respect human rights because we believe in them? Or only because ‘that’s the law and there is no other alternative, at least in public’?
See what I mean?
We live in the reality of our own making. And we tinker with it incessantly.
Attempting to make it more and more comfortable. To us!
Each of us tries to make the world ‘a better place’. Each of us working for themselves, each of us according to their ‘own advice’.
Which brings us to ‘how things work’.
Time and time again, reality has told us that we cannot survive, let alone thrive, individually.
That everything we have done is the consequence of us working in concert.
It was our shared belief in ‘money’ which has given us capitalism. Economic effervescence and elevated life standards.
It was our shared belief in God which had convinced us that ‘we were brothers’. And, as brothers, that we should respect each-other. That we should respect each-other’s rights.
Now, that ‘God is dead’ and it has become obvious that ‘capitalism is no better than those who put it into practice’, we have arrived at an inflection point.
Are we able to preserve the true nature of the things which have brought us here?
Or are we going to transform them into idols?
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