Morning Glory

Ipomoea quamoclit

Sobjectivity

The notion of "objectivity" carries with it an impressive number of positive evaluative connotations.  From newspaper articles to informal conversations among friends, one notices very quickly that this claim functions almost as a "prefix" to one's point.

I find it very curious, especially when one's confronted with two opposing arguments whose proponents claim to be objective. 

What does it mean to be "objective"?

Well, the obvious, first, meaning, is easy. One states facts which aren't up for debate.  "I have a blog."  This is an objective fact, and even if I am a person -- with all that that entails, i.e. fallibility, bias, and, hypothetically speaking, the possibility I could simply lie or omit something I know to be true -- this is an easily verifiable fact.

From what I have observed & studied, facts seldom come with an announcement or reinforcement of their existence (unless the speaker knows they might be challenged, in which case s/he might say "the fact is... blah").  They tend to be simply stated and/or assumed, especially in conversation, though this also happens a lot in academic texts.  A certain number of facts are "a given", don't need to be stated openly, when one reads a text of any type, and I'd say especially those whose field is specialized (scientific, historical, etc).  Details can be and often are disputed, but there are large quantities of facts which no one disputes, they've been integrated in our collective consciousness/body of knowledge.

This brings me to the question: why, then, do people assert their objectivity?  Surely if it is a question or contention about which objectivity can exist, there wouldn't even be the need to draw attention to it.  

So an "objective view" is something with which I have a very difficult time.  

Let me construct an example.

Person A (PA): "There is a red apple on the table, it smells good."

Person B (PB): "Yes, there is an apple on the table, but it is not red and it doesn't smell of anything."

Objective fact: There is an apple on the table.

Subjective view: Its qualities.

Possibilities that may account for the discrepancy in opinion: PA's positioned against the wind, thus can smell an apple-scented breeze; PB cannot.  PA sees a side of the apple which is red, but PB's perspective may only allow him/her to see a "faded" side, yellowish green or whatever.

So far, so obvious.  But what happens if either PA or PB claims objectivity?

According to me, the only entity in this hypothesis which would be right to claim objectivity (i.e. an external view, a view as a non-subject) is the apple.  It is the object being observed by two subjects, PA and PB.

*****

This topic is not a short, simple one though.  It cannot be "solved" in 500 words, it can't be solved merely with grammatical points, though these help a lot.  There are bigger implications when the claim of objectivity is made.

Objectivity as an approach to everything entails a lot of problems, as far as I can see.  Despite the noble, laudable aims underlying the desire to be objective, my take on it is rather pessimistic, I have to admit.

The main reason is my suspicion that whenever an idea or opinion is thought to be objective, the implication is that it no longer needs to be examined, prodded, reevaluated, and it makes it very difficult to get rid of a notion once it has established itself as the truth.  

Perverting the scientific method even as one claims to apply it (in an erroneous way) is a very naughty intellectual crime.  This is in effect what happens every time a person or company or an institution that claims to be objective, "fair & balanced", "neutral", etc, does.  Treating things like the news, politics, the economy, etc, as if they were an "object" under a microscope, whose truth & inner core would be discovered and scientifically mapped, is an intellectual crime.  Serious scientists know that the scientific method requires vigilance on the part of the observer, the scientist.  Everything, in principle, has to be constantly disputed, reviewed, studied, rethought. 

But this is not the worst element in "objectivity" as a "way of life".

It gets much worse.

The result of what I briefly mentioned in the paragraph above is: now, armed with "the truth", these agents of objectivity can comfortably devise theories which must be applied, since they, too, will be objective, based on cold, hard, facts, as Flann O'Brien would have loved to read.

Objectivity, by virtue of its very construction, results in absolutist theories.   If PA above claimed to have an objective view of the apple, s/he would go on to formulate the Apple Theory:

Apples are red and smell good.

Whoever disagreed, whoever "deviated" from this doxa would then be called that infamous epithet used mainly to discredit people, almost Objectivity's ugly twin: Subjective.  And do we or don't we know how negative its evaluative connotation is?  

But there's a further catch:  subjective views (as views necessarily are, otherwise they're facts, not views/opinions at all) and those who admit to this pseudo-'High Crime', paradoxically, give one a much better chance at neutrality, at least.  (I think neutrality is v different from objectivity, but I won't go into it now).

How?  Well, this part's simple.  Someone who admits to being subjective, biased, prejudiced, allows for other people's biases and prejudices, too, integrating them into whatever argument's being made.  

Subjective people do not see others - or themselves - as machines who can't fail.  We -- I think you guessed it by now, I'm one of these monstrous subjective ppl -- know we're subjective, therefore the necessary implication is we're willing to reevaluate our position regularly, because something more intelligent, interesting, reasonable, etc etc may come our way at any given moment.

When one claims to be objective, though, it is much harder to do this precisely because one's previous position is labelled with the "objective truth" seal, so to suddenly abandon it negates the entire previous ratiocination.

Last and most ironic implication:  Objective stances are incompatible with relativism. (Yes, because if something is objectively true, how can its opposite be objectively true, too? Only in a kind of intellectual sleight-of-illogic.)   Yet, a number who claim to be the former, love the latter.  "Everything is relative, so let's be objective" is, to me, almost the perfect joke, were it not so tragic.    

One short example:  In contemporary Western societies, liberals have an odd mix of "general-purpose atheism" and "respect for other cultures."   While on the one hand, in this political persuasion/affinity one's (tacitly) expected to reject one's culture's own religious traditions (oh, that liberal guilt, the new version of the WhiteMan's-Burden, is never-ending), on the other hand, other cultures and their religious traditions are bizarrely, schizophrenically elevated.   

In this way, we get a crazy mix of rejecting rather standard, traditional Judeo-Christian views (or, for that matter, early scientific Enlightenment views!) as reactionary, while arguing for the protection of other cultures' idiosyncratic and, frankly, stupendously obscene practices (excision, slavery-- er, sorry, "serfdom" in Tibet, etc).

If this isn't pure doublethink, I don't know what pure is.

On the relationship between music and violence

For the past few days I've been thinking about a possible link between music and violence.  Observing people I know and remembering people I knew and their idiosyncrasies, mannerisms, personalities, etc, I've noticed something that interests me very much.  I hope I don't disappoint anyone who might read this: this isn't about any correlations between rap&violence, punk&violence, sexism, gansta rap, etc etc. None of that in this post, so if you were hoping for it, you might as well stop reading now.

Starting from a cursory reflection about my own likes and dislikes, I'm tempted to make a few claims:

• Music cuts through all the "white noise" which exists in our daily lives;
• Musical affinity makes other types of understanding easier and quicker, like between two people who speak a foreign language that isn't their first one (i.e. a Spanish speaker and an Arabic speaker meet and must find a 3rd language in common if neither speaks the other's language);
• People with acute sensibility to music have less patience for the mundane and those who take pleasure in mundane activities. If my opinion on this is at all well-founded, this is the most important part of the argument, because it informs one's reactions to the world;
• Once music is on (and here the necessary presupposition is music which pleases the individual) one has no choice but to experience whatever feeling that piece of music will bring the listener.

I think this is what lies behind that hitherto incomprehesible (to me) practice authoritarian/totalitarian regimes had/have (esp USSR) of sending composers and musicians to camps or banning pieces of music without lyrics (!)---

These censors realized how music cuts through all the white noise, so to speak, how certain pieces have the power to awaken in some a most powerful, usually subconscious understanding of how so much that goes on around us is utterly meaningless.

Bureaucracy is the enemy of sublimation and beauty;  music as art, therefore, can act as a metaphysical experience, which removes us from our immediate physical "reality" -- and here I put reality in inverted commas precisely to highlight how it isn't an absolute but a temporary, physical reality, and not the essential reality of one's own intimate thoughts, feelings, and experiences, or even the reality of one's imagination and hopes for the future, which are necessarily of a better quality than one's present.  The clear inference is the present isn't good enough.

Claims about how "a certain type of music" alienates and "distracts" from The (insert your favorite one here) Struggle, then, begin to make sense to me, when viewed through this prism.

The violence with which the musical experience invades our being, that is, leaving absolutely no choice to the listener as to whether s/he wants to feel it or not, is seldom matched by other experiences, because it isn't painful as such.   It can be the vehicle or agent which brings other painful experiences to the foreground of one's immediate present, but it is done with sublimated violence; indeed, pleasurable violence.  Its effects are the opposite of those achieved with vulgar violence in that the "victim" is happier, more complete, more himself after having suffered music's brutality.

This sublimation is precisely what's lacking in the mundane, where objects/experiences are more similar to a billboard when compared to music, that's to say, in spite of their tangible aspect, they lack the depth and the power to transmit the v special feeling the idea of infinity gives us.  One looks at a billboard and knows, even if it is an expertly crafted one like trompe l'oeil can be, that there is nothing behind it, no depth, no 3rd dimension, much less a 4th one to be imagined or momentarily inhabited.  

So the very fact music is intangible makes it MORE three- or four-dimensional than any physical manifestation of the imagination and any interpretation of the real.  I'm willing to claim this quality is present in music and religious experiences, nowhere else.  Nothing else can produce this ambiguity between suffering and ecstasy, not even sex-- it lacks the sublime quality music and religion share.

Hence: music & religion are totalitarians' favorite bêtes noires.

Hilariously, I understand now how music can be more threatening to any power structure than a novel, than words.  Naturally I'm talking about music here, not lyrics; indeed, I am only talking about music without lyrics.

The violence contained in how music injects itself into a person is infinitely higher and more powerful than any other type of violence, because there is no resistance possible.  External, physical violence is the weapon of the impotent.

beaN Sprouts

Almost exactly one year ago, I started reading M-E Nabe's book L'Homme qui arrêta d'écrire, if you remember.  

When we went to England and had the 2nd volcano incident which kept us there longer than we'd anticipated, I forgot to bring the book back, after only reading 155 of the 686 pages.

I got it back a few months ago, but by then I'd started and finished many other books.  I thought this would have a negative effect on my reading of the beginning of Nabe.  

When I started to read it two days ago, from page 155, I was surprised to find out I was still with the story, I still remembered what was going on when I'd last read that page, and the flavour or ambiance of the last scene I'd read was still present, fresh in my mind's heart.

Then I reached page 157, and a paragraph caught my attention so much that even now, ten pages later, I can't forget it and keep going back to it every now and then.

This doesn't happen all the time with me, so rillly, I must share.

Since it's in French...   I translated it.   It does not do justice to the original, but thankfully the ideas are more important here than the style -- even if that is an absurd thing to say about Nabe's work.  I hope he doesn't read this blog.  -smile-

Without further D.O.A.--

*****

"On a table, serving as a pedestal for the oeuvre, several dishes overflowing with food are exhibited.  The hiccup is that everything is rotten.  The strength of contemporary artists’ swindle is they adapt their vision of the world to their personal insufficiencies.  They replace the act they cannot accomplish with the position of no longer having to accomplish said act.  There are bits of cheese, of meat, and vegetables in bulk.  The artist waited for the lot to be in a state of advanced decay to present it to a public avid for novelty.  An event is always deemed superior to the thing itself.  Comments about an oeuvre’s standing allow one to avoid having to ask questions concerning its quality.  There is purée dripping from the table.  The act of exhibiting a piece exempts one from actually making an oeuvre.  They all find good reasons for not knowing how to create real eternal beauty.  The smell is pungent, especially the mushrooms climbing on the lump of terribly mature maroilles cheese.  It’s the metaphor about the guy who points at the moon with his finger.  In the old days, the imbecile was he who looked at the finger instead of at the moon, today, it is the one who looks at the moon.  The moon’s corny, modern is looking at the finger. Modern is exhibiting the finger.  Modern is giving the moon the finger."

More!

Turning aside (stick your hand out there Joe) from this cliché stuff of which you are not half so heartily sick as I--it occurs to me that I should record (for the benefit) (of posterity) those appalling attempts at adult chat which (invariably) follows certain set introductory formulae. I mean, a phrase such as 'In my humble opinion...' Clearly, no decent person could (bring himself) to start talking with such a despicable preamble. But consider the sort of thing that follows these further phrases I have listed below. If you do so conscientiously I will have you excused from jury service for the next seven years.

'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...'

'I rise...'

'We are all g. t. h. to-n...'

'You all know why we are all g.t.h. to-n...'

'It needs no words of mine to introduce the next speaker...'

'Needless to say...'

'It may be olf-fashioned, but...'

'Your headmaster has asked me to speak to you this evening...'

'I don't know much about art, but...'

'The donor of this banquet is a very shy man; he has asked me to come among you to-night and let you know how much he...'

'I have to speak to you boys this morning about a very painful matter...'

'I yield to none in my admiration for...'

'I crave the courtesy of your columns...'

'At the risk of boring my listeners...'

'In this connexion I recall an anecdote...'

'After all...'

'Double You Bee Yeats once said to me...'

'I remember your poor father saying...'

'I must say it always has been a mystery to me...'

And lashed but not lost, that great trumpet of epileptic perfidy:

'WHEREAS...'

I regret all this. Bitterly.

IN view of the vogue of this drug (which takes care of everything from pneumonia to what your uncle Joe had), why not revise the primary medical degrees to read M.&B., B.Ch., B.A.O.

You don't think that's funny? Well let's hear one of your own. Tell a funny story. Kill us, strangle the life out of us with lethal gurgles. Sad affair at Sidney Parade. Strange man collapses after hearing joke from Irish Times reader. An unknown man, respectably dressed and of middle age, collapsed and died yesterday after listening to a humorous anecdote related by a reader of a Dublin newspaper. With the deceased man passes the last link with Parnell. A man who spoke the Irish language at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular, he had a large circle of friends. (And tell me, pray, why do friends always adopt this irrectangular information?) A popular figure in Irish dancing circles, he was a firm believer in the immutable principles laid down by the Manchester school.

Flann O'Brien

The Best of Myles