Western positivism

Take the statement, “My main impression” or its variant “What I see is...”.

In Western culture, these statements have authority.  In Eastern culture, not so much.  And where there is already an established hierarchy, not so much.

The Westerner wants to proclaim his impressions because it is presumed that seeing, itself, has some kind of mystical validation.

The thing is, it’s a bluff in a way, or at any rate mostly an unconscious (unthought-through) bluff.

One “sees” something – but unless the power relations make that seeing efficacious (in other ways than just “seeing”), one may as well not see anything at all.

So it is really the power relations that underpin and lend validity to any kind of seeing, which we should be interested in.

---

The psychological blind spots that pertain to a Western style of seeing comes from an implicit positivism.

One “sees” something – and consequently one imagines that this is all there is to see.   Or, perhaps there is actually something more (a rare concession from a Westerner), but this has to do with passively making oneself open to having more insights.

It’s one-sided and therefore (only to that degree) delusional.

----

What one sees is, after all, not simply “what is there” or even “what one is capable of seeing”, but also what the other ALLOWS you to see.

And that is why all attempts to dominate a self-aware person are doomed from the start.

If I allow you (generic) to see something of me and you abuse that opportunity, I can immediately retract that permission by making sure you see less in future and that the information you had gained is not longer relevant – especially in the particular gestalt or compilation you have made of it. 

All abuses of trust form an impetus to move beyond what one had been before.  (It’s a bit like changing the locks.)

-----

I have the capacity for extreme fluidity but I don’t always use it – perhaps because I don’t require you to “see” it. 

----

Am I a master or a slave?

I am the British colonial personality, but with some modifications, something as young mechanics used to say, “Suped up”.   I am, almost never, what I ‘seem’.

----

I like the Japanese use of silences.  What is not said is sometimes more important than what is said.