One of the most perplexing things I found when trying to adjust to Western society and its conceptions of how reality actually works was the reversal of subject-object relationships. I still find this extraordinarily difficult to cope with. It always takes me by surprise. It seems to me that within Western culture, subjects are not obliged to act under any circumstances. Rather, they are morally committed to sit around and wait for "objectivity" to make its move.
Although it sounds very odd when stated like this, the point can be stated rather more theoretically. Within the Western cultural system at large (there are exceptions to this rule in terms of small subcultures) reality -- including subjective reality -- is deemed to be the product of various kinds of "invisible hands". There is, for instance, the invisible hand of the market, the invisible hand of fate, and the invisible hand of other people's judgements about you. These determine your destiny. To act on your own behalf, on the other hand, is deemed to be egoistic and arrogant.
Westerners generally don't act on each other's behalves either. Instead they sit around and wait to see what the "invisible hand" has to say about the matter. To do anything other than remain perfectly passive whilst waiting for this hand to make its point is deemed to be mindblowingly conceited. "Who am I, a mere mortal on this Earth, to override the will of some potential (but not as yet visibly manifested) invisible hand?" One simply has to wait for fate to pronounce its verdict.
If any invisible hand wants you poor, it will certainly stamp on you in this way. Or alternatively, it might want you to prosper. In that case, any human intervention prior to fate calling forth its child would surely take the shine off such a momentous event, making it seem less valuable. Any invisible hand must surely be allowed to do its work, without others risking their own spiritual sanctification by speaking up. Far better to Rest in Peace.
I find this notion that "objectivity" alone creates subjects (and that it should be left alone to do so) to be laughable!
1 comment:
Hi from Harare
two notes:
one my favourite Mao TseTung (Zedong!) phrases; sometimes our subjective arrangements do not agree with objective reality. This is what we call 'making a mistake'. (eg head in wrong place as attacking fist approaches...)
two have been dabbling in last 1000 years history, one fine chap was William of Ockham (of Ockham's Razor fame) who denied that men (and of course women, but he was writing about 1310 -1340)could know anything except by ascertainable observation, or by experience. His positive effect was to separate philosophy from theology.....
actually, three: western rationalism is individualistic, cartesian - but the ubuntu logic of mutuality, connectivity - I am because you are, you are therefore we are - adds a further dimension of collective objectivity (rather like the somewhat hammed up collective memory and identity of the 'primitive' Na'avi in Avatar...
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