The Subjective Man

The Subjective Man.

1.

Subjectivity and the subjective man is what is wrong with the world. What is a fellow object, a thing, a being, is only a means to an end for the subjective man, so much so that the only way to value something other than himself is to posit fictions in them, lest they remain mere machines in his eyes.

Even if the world was falling down around him, as long as his feelings were at a preferable level, as long as his intentions were, at least according to him, "good", and as long as his suffering was without what pains and bores him, he would observe the destruction of the world in peace. In other words, he puts reality aside so that only he may prosper.

2.

Meet the subjective man. He cannot directly see his face, his neck, his back, let alone anything concealed by his skin. He cannot hear or smell the blood coursing through his veins, the white blood-cells fending off subtle intruders, the brain activity, the metabolism, or any of the flora and fauna contributing to his persistence as a being. The eyes face forward, outward, never backwards or inward; the sense of touch remains at his supple surface, never beneath it; the size of the ears and nose are conducive to their limits and are fixed in direction, leaving much of himself and what isn’t directly in his immediate awareness outside of his interest, and consequently, outside of himself.

All of these hidden activities and processes within him are noticed only through the symbolism he applies to the subtle sensations and effects he can vaguely feel, name, but never witness. No matter this limitation, he prefers his circumscription to that of any objective endeavours. For instance, “Suffering” represents an entire host of bodily injury, pain, stress, discomfort, boredom; “feeling” encompasses the bodily sensations of mass, weight, gravity, touch and warmth; “thought” acts as placeholder for a vast variety of bodily and environmental phenomena; “consciousness” or “mind” stand as fictional metaphors for the body itself, of the subjective man himself – all of these are the result of a being unable to identify with this sensation or that sensation, this feeling or that one, let alone the entirety that he is, so he devises fictional "selves" to compensate for these inadequacies. But like every sensation or experience of those sensations, they say a little but conceal a great deal more.

Hence, a very large percentage of himself is beyond his grasp, hidden, obscure, confused, leaving him to prefer the path of least resistance: the fiction and his symbols to the actuality, while the rest remains hidden behind an enfeebled first-person periphery. He is trapped in his limited world with only his limited selves to comfort him. Imprisoned there, he becomes the solipsist; he loves and prefers what he most understands, or at least what he is most familiar with, namely, this limited portion.

These are psychologically-divided people, not yet whole, who have maliciously or habitually eviscerated their body into political factions, preferring one faction over the others, the brain over the flesh, the mind over the body, the conscious over the subconscious, the "higher" over the "lower" faculties, ironically all from the mouth of one being. He then must project these selves to the other, not in order to improve it, but ultimately, to deface it.

3.

What the subjective man sees when looking at a body, or when he hears a body described through naturalism and a physiological nomenclature, is not a body, but a machine. Because he cannot identify with the whole, the body is not enough for him, just a machine, that he carries in his pocket a variety of placeholder terms to settle some sort of personal anxiety towards the objective, which only his favorite lullaby can satiate. He needs to tell a story.

Humans, animals, and any other organism, can only have value according to what fictions he adorns them with in his fancy, not with what they are. As long as an animal doesn't feel – or at least as long as an animal doesn't express that he feels – he has no quams about destroying it. An animal must have "feelings", sagacity, subjectivity, according to him, which are essentially his own personal notions and names he has given to various sensations, and in a sense, he must attempt to posit himself in the other organism in order to appreciate it, instead of seeing it and loving it for what it is and what it is capable of.

Yet, an organism is not a machine. Organisms and physiology are the inspiration of machinery, and any muse is not a statue. Ironically, his own organism is the inspiration for the vast multifariousness of fictional "selves" the subjective man likes to posit.

For some reason, any naturalistic account seems cold, mechanistic, and hard to the subjective man, despite how warm, organic, and soft an organism can be. One need only compare any organism to any machine to see that they are incomparable. Rather, we might find comparison between the technology of machines to the technology of subjective notions, which are both built for the purpose and use of human beings, so as to exploit the organic. Any dualistic nomenclature, whether it be the postulation of souls, spirits, or any variety of disembodied selves, is cold, detached and mechanistic on this account.

4.

A dangerous virtue: the value of a human action according to the subjective person is not derived from the result and ramification of the action, but from the intention, feelings and purpose of the actor. It is the thought and hardly the action that counts to the subjective man, which when examined in the world, is the complete opposite of what occurs.

If we were to approach this idea with any sort of curiosity, we may wander into a group or crowd of people and test the hypothesis that intentions, feelings and purposes are of any worth to anyone else besides the subject who has them, finally determining whether this attitude towards action has any value. Try feeling, intending and thinking one way and record how the people around you are affected, and compare that to your observations when you feel, intend and think in another manner. I would surmise that there is no difference; and the people around you would be none the wiser, and are probably better off having never known at all.

Of course, it is the action and results that matter. Whether an action consists of performing an action, or whether that action consists of asserting one’s intentions, both are actions, both have intended or unintended results, and it is always the action and its results that people notice and react to. Thus, your intentions and feelings and your inner-worlds have no bearing beyond yourself.

We should then ask the subjective man, "what is the intention in you telling us your intentions?" The intention, since considered only in hindsight or in prognostication, is simply a subtle and conniving way to distance oneself from the intrinsic responsibility of being an acting object. It is to convince others of one's innocence, or to paint oneself in a better light — another self-seeking fiction in a long list of them.

This isn’t because our subjectivity is invisible to others – quite the contrary – but that the subjectivity is a fiction we tell ourselves in lieu of the reality we do not wish to be, or cannot fully grasp. Our own objectivity is nearly invisible to us, but to everyone else, we are entirely visible and objective. The question is: do we take or own word or it, or everything else’s?

5.

The subject… what we think, what we feel, what we speak, what we wear, what tattoos we have or what books we read – what jobs we have, our chosen labels, beliefs and what words we use to convey what we think we are – we are not that. Though we can identify with these fictions, it is impossible to actually be them, no matter how much the subjective man tries to live his life inside-out. The object that does that, and that we do it, is the reality.

6.

The subjective notion of “true colors” or “true self” is a dogma, and admittedly, is difficult to rid oneself of. “I know how you truly feel”. “Not until you sit and talk with him, learn his mind, will you truly know him”. "We learn who someone truly is when we hear their story". This dogma is so deep-seeded that it is counter-intuitive to think otherwise. We are told that in order to understand someone, to know them, we must listen to their story, their thoughts. But this is knowing a fiction, a story in the literal sense, while the reality presents itself in every moment.

If a good friend were to confide in us that she has violent or racist thoughts, contrary to the always polite and respecting behavior that we’ve come to expect from her, the subjective man believes he has somehow witnessed her “true colors”, as if this whole time she was deceiving him, and her body and her actions were a mere fiction or play before his very eyes. However, nothing could be more absurd, and we can see that the exact opposite is the fact of the matter. The subjective man has assumed his friend is some violent and racist being, despite no violence or racism finding their way through the motor cortex; or in other words, no violence or racism at all. We are not the content of our thoughts and words and emotions, as the subjective man supposes.

When someone demands "tell me how you truly feel", they want to hear a story. They want to be comforted, and they should be told what they want to hear, lest they end up destroying the reality to save their fictions.

7.

Beware when a subjective man attempts to put you in their universe, in their “subjective experience”, for it isn’t their universe, and you are in nothing of the sort. In an attempt to remain solipsists, they would prefer you to be an object of their experience, an object of their perception, or an object of their consciousness, like a mere character in a movie, instead of an object on your own accord. This cloud of perception is, for them, a subtle way of remaining within their surreptitious solipsism, where reality is reduced to a movie screen, where only one being matters more than all others, the center of their universe: the subject, a point from which a fictional boundary of feelings, perception and experience is believed to emanate, engulfing whatever it notices and ensnaring them in it.

But the moment this assertion is made is the exact moment this assertion isn’t true. This is a claim of one person, and one person only, the subject, who believes other objects are simply the motley effects of its own subjectivity, instead of themselves causes of these effects. However, beyond the periphery of the subject’s confused and strained identification with its most favored portions, anything and everything else in the universe besides the subject himself sees it as quite the opposite. No one is in the subject's experience at all. No object is contained within any boundary of perception or experience. Everything except the subject is outside of it, and upon looking at the subjecty, it is simply another object – finite, bounded, but itself ensnared in its own experience.

8.

The idea that something like a mind or a self emerges from a complex system such as an organism is this same subjectivity and soul hypothesis but exaggerated and given a psychological dress. He can only feel that something is emerging or has emerged, but he never verifies through another's eyes whether something is emerging at all. All he needs ask: "Has my mind emerged?" But if we look at someone, we never see a self or mind emerging from a complex system, and we only see the complex system. Of course, the subjective man with his limited grasp of himself feels otherwise, trusting the obfuscation of his own emotions. Luckily, no such thing has emerged at all. What has emerged and has remained is the body.

9.

Where does the subject end and the object meet? Where do feelings and the body meet? Where does consciousness end and the body begin? Questions the subjective man cannot answer, but he no less distinguishes between the two, prefering the non-existent fictions of his own story-telling, to the reality verified by everything but himself.

Interesting.

It gives meaning as to why people say strange things like "my hands, or my feet" as though they're something owned and separate from themselves. Most people don't pause to consider the things they're doing inside themselves, circulating their blood and oxygenating their brains. It's a strange state of affairs and, in my opinion, breeds hostility.

Because when something is separate from you, it can hurt you. Being totally free of this would, no doubt, make you a brilliant Zen Buddhist or eastern mystic, no doubt.

There was a man who said that the secret to everything was (looking at two trees) What a long one that is, what a short one that is.

a reply to: Joneselius

That argument would not explain the latin based languages, particularly Spanish.
They use the impersonal la mano (the hand), los pies (the feet), el dedo (the finger) etc... for body parts.
As an example; me duele la mano = my hand hurts.

a reply to: Jonjonj

I was more referring to people today.

Though thanks for that, I didn't know that Probably irking the OP that I have said 'I' hahah. After all who is 'I'?

Insightful observations, thanks for the thread.

This part I find especially relevant to my life experiences of relationships and people's perceptions.

It also could be that the cause of 'subjective man' in the western world and many other cultures is literally the activity of ego satiation of males in male centric cultures where they naturally are surrounded by subliminal interactions that appease them whilst appealing to their ego, eg. media portraying woman as sexual objects, men as powerful.

Effectively there are societal blinkers on many 'unthinking' men / women that only ever see the surface and things from their own point of view, even if they appear to be doing otherwise on the surface, mostly they are afraid of really looking at themselves for any blame or wrong doing, for many they cannot see anything as their fault, they are afraid of really knowing themselves and others beyond the surface as they are experiencing a superficial world build upon superficial interactions.

They surrounded themselves a cocoon of self centred 'belief', a web of self deception through which they view the world, a tainted self serving mode of believing that which they want to believe as it suits their purpose of further self serving. However the truth is stronger and their bubble only a weak facade.

Most religions preaching male egocentricity and serving of deity /deities in a male dominated culture where thinking beyond that which is preached isn't part of their plan, hence causing superficial emotions and lack of looking beyond themselves and that which they were told.

I recommend Buddhism as a way of looking beyond the self in a superficial way and reading the Bhagavad Gita as a means of recognising consciousness.

6.

The subjective notion of “true colors” or “true self” is a dogma, and admittedly, is difficult to rid oneself of. “I know how you truly feel”. “Not until you sit and talk with him, learn his mind, will you truly know him”. "We learn who someone truly is when we hear their story". This dogma is so deep-seeded that it is counter-intuitive to think otherwise. We are told that in order to understand someone, to know them, we must listen to their story, their thoughts. But this is knowing a fiction, a story in the literal sense, while the reality presents itself in every moment.

If a good friend were to confide in us that she has violent or racist thoughts, contrary to the always polite and respecting behavior that we’ve come to expect from her, the subjective man believes he has somehow witnessed her “true colors”, as if this whole time she was deceiving him, and her body and her actions were a mere fiction or play before his very eyes. However, nothing could be more absurd, and we can see that the exact opposite is the fact of the matter. The subjective man has assumed his friend is some violent and racist being, despite no violence or racism finding their way through the motor cortex; or in other words, no violence or racism at all. We are not the content of our thoughts and words and emotions, as the subjective man supposes.

When someone demands "tell me how you truly feel", they want to hear a story. They want to be comforted, and they should be told what they want to hear, lest they end up destroying the reality to save their fictions.

7.

Beware when a subjective man attempts to put you in their universe, in their “subjective experience”, for it isn’t their universe, and you are in nothing of the sort. In an attempt to remain solipsists, they would prefer you to be an object of their experience, an object of their perception, or an object of their consciousness, like a mere character in a movie, instead of an object on your own accord. This cloud of perception is, for them, a subtle way of remaining within their surreptitious solipsism, where reality is reduced to a movie screen, where only one being matters more than all others, the center of their universe: the subject, a point from which a fictional boundary of feelings, perception and experience is believed to emanate, engulfing whatever it notices and ensnaring them in it.

But the moment this assertion is made is the exact moment this assertion isn’t true. This is a claim of one person, and one person only, the subject, who believes other objects are simply the motley effects of its own subjectivity, instead of themselves causes of these effects. However, beyond the periphery of the subject’s confused and strained identification with its most favored portions, anything and everything else in the universe besides the subject himself sees it as quite the opposite. No one is in the subject's experience at all. No object is contained within any boundary of perception or experience. Everything except the subject is outside of it, and upon looking at the subjecty, it is simply another object – finite, bounded, but itself ensnared in its own experience.

a reply to: Joneselius

Yes, to a Spanish person using personal pronouns for parts of the body doesn't just sound strange, it sounds funny/weird when translated.
The idea of why however...
Perhaps, nah never mind lol.

a reply to: Jonjonj

hahahaha! Point taken!

It's easy to speculate eh, but I see why you wouldn't to avoid monumental thread drift!

Sociopath,right?

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Eh!? You're gonna' have to expand on that one!

How do you get sociopath from this?

I think you've confused a lot of things into one, but am not going to pick it apart. Western man is actually known for using extroverted thinking, at least the ruling culture values it. It's only been recently that we take on some of the eastern philosophies regarding the subjective nature of reality into consideration. Some people go far overboard with this, while others find it balances out what was a lopsided view of reality.

Though I don't put much weight in it, for simplicity sake, we could look at the difference between the cognitive functions extroverted thinking and introverted thinking. There are neuroscientists who have taken on the task of finding neurocorrelates to the 8 functions of the MBTI. The way you speak reminds me of Te (extroverted thinking), so I'd assume a natural clashing for people who prefer Ti (you guessed it).

I just think some people really don't get others, so go to extreme with their views. Even when they're otherwise a reasonable person, they can seem rather blind when describing people they simply differ from in a big way. Think of the republicans bagging on democrats. Is either truly the evil work of Satan himself? Nah. It's just the people who are more extreme into their category tend to hate the extreme opposite. That seems natural. So I'd suggest your "subjective man" is just as extreme as you are with being an "objective man". Generally extremes don't turn out well, but hey they sure are fun, right?

a reply to: Joneselius

The description, it is mostly narccissistic of course but to be THAT obseesive would obviously require an abandonment of moral values.
A pathology for it.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

I just think some people really don't get others, so go to extreme with their views. Even when they're otherwise a reasonable person, they can seem rather blind when describing people they simply differ from in a big way.

I usually hate summing up, as I believe it is more commonly used to hide or obscure points.
Here however I think the words nail and head are absolutely in order.