Subjectivity Vs. Objectivity
Once upon a time, a friend of mine asked me what I thought objectivity was. I said, "Having no perspective." He chided me and responded that very few things came down to zero, then prompted me for another answer. I thought about it for a second, and then replied, "Having all perspectives." To this, he agreed.
So, the way I see it, objectivity is something you approach by gaining more and more perspectives about something. Having all perspectives is no more possible than no perspective; indeed, it is probably harder. But I think it is far more enlightening, and thus, a more constructive way to look at the world.
The subjective perspective, therefore, is actually a person's default worldview. As a person grows in compassion through comprehension, in my terms, they gain new perspectives. They come closer to objectivity by
leaving behind subjectivity.
Intellect Vs. Experience
You say, "The intellect can only survive on a diet of dualities." But, I haven't seen any proof of this. It seems to me that small minds prefer the simplicity of dualities to the complexity of reality. I consider myself a fairly strong intellect, and I know a number of others whose minds are powerful. None of them deride intelligence; they instead consider their intelligence to be an integral part of their humanity.
Experience is powerful and necessary. But experience is not the only way of learning. The human being may be an experiment in adding a neocortex and an opposable thumb to an ape, but humanity itself is an experiment in culture. And what is culture but a collection of memories that exist outside the human being, passed back and forth by language?
The intellect is the defining characteristic of human beings. Until another sapient species comes along, this is our unique attribute amongst all other species, as far as we know.
It's important not to underestimate the intellect. That is how we learn from each other. How else, after all, is one to learn that jumping off a bridge is likely to result in one's death?
As I move into the third and final section of this post, note what Steve says when he talks about reason: "At this level you transcend the emotional aspects of the lower levels and begin to think clearly and rationally."
Love without a Subjective Reality
Subjective reality differs from a subjective perspective in one crucial regard: it takes the next step and presumes that all things are manifestations of
just you. I may be wrong about my interpretation; I don't claim to know much about it. Please correct if it's inaccurate.
Objective reality, as I see it, is not a cold, dark, dismal place peopled with lifeless things and stilled sounds; instead, it is a cacophony of experience. To take advantage of the notion of a subjective reality, objective reality says that all things are manifestations of
all people. The world is complex, and it is made of people. People who are not you, who have their own intentions and manifest their own desires.
The illustration I love best is Ripples. Every action is like a stone dropped into the pond. The effects of this action ripple outwards. They bounce off the edge of the pond and reflect back, amplifying and cancelling the waves as they go. This is subjective reality; but you also have other stones. Lots of them. Hitting the surface in different ways, frequencies, places. And they each produce their own set of ripples, which amplify, reflect, cancel all the other waves in the pond (I guess it's a lake now). And now you have an objective reality. Cacophonous, unpredictable, amazing to watch, and a joy to participate in.
So we come to love.
I said, at the beginning, that as "a person grows in compassion through comprehension, in my terms, they gain new perspectives." If you read
my definition (same link as above), you see that to love is really to reach for new perspectives. I think that my definition is a better write-up than Steve's description: it shows exactly why love is expansive and encompassing rather than invoking the conscience.
I would presume that, at the Reason level, one becomes capable of acknowledging the noisiness of an objective reality without shrinking from it. To see it and know how to deal with it without emotional torment. And at the Love level, one begins to actively participate in it, with a positive emotional investment, as opposed to a negative one. I don't know; I think I'd need to read Hawkins' book to really decide what is meant by each term without Steve as a filter of interpretation.
As always, I welcome a response.
