No I-witness testimony is totally objective. We cannot separate out the perceiver from the act of perception and from that which is being perceived. In order to have perception there must be a perceiver, i.e., one who perceives. Therefore, I-witness testimony is colored to various degrees by the I-witnessing. What science has tried to do through the periodization of the objectivist gaze is to confine and limit the amount, along with the extent, to which the perceiver colors and affect the act of perception. This is why we have sterile labs, to sterilize the perceiver from infecting the data as much as we seek to protect our experimental results from contamination. Science and religion, or just metaphysics in general, have sought to decontaminate the world of truth and reality from the subject to whom so much infectious scapegoating has been applied --- and very liberally I might add. For science and religion both, there has been the notion that the "subject is a contaminant". Too much, or even any, subjectivity is thought to have been responsible for whatever lack of ideological comeuppance that either science or religion has been unable to avoid. The tainted results: too much subjective analysis. The lack of doctrinal obedience: too much subjectivity. The so-called postmodern "death of the subject" has modern accomplices; the bloodied hands of two of the most powerful ideological forces known to man: science and religion.
Science has been almost suicidal in its conviction to eliminate the subject from influencing the "pure science" of the objectivist doctrine. Likewise, so too has religion. Religion with its jihhads and sacrificial offerings. It's willing Abrahams taking Isaac up to the mountain like a lamb. Offer up the sacrifice of "subjectivity"; for all that is wrong with the world has been pinned on the subject. Maybe we should be glad the subject has been labeled dead to the world here in the postmodern era of global capital flows which seek to opportunize on the many of the "lacks" that have been created by the forefathers of that very system. Colonization of dead to the world subjects. Empty bodies willingly propping up the corporate bottom line. Sacrificial offerings. Science and religion converge in the Market, giving birth to the Unified Ideology of the early technocratic state; where finance transcends national borders and bounds; that is made possible by the very technology that is ever-more the result of ever greater convergences of capital. William Greider puts it like this:
So, what does this have to do with the so-called "death of the subject"? Well, primarily it has to do with being the devaluation of the subject that has occurred through countless generations on both sides of the science/religion divide. The one thing that both science and religion have shared in common --- as far as I can tell --- is this devaluation of the subject. The subject taints the Almighty Blessedness of the One True God; just as the subject has been believed to be the most infestatious factor in relation to scientific protocol and the All Blessed Objective Data. This devaluation of the subject sets up the technocratic paradigm of the corporate politique; powered by the technological offspring of capital convergences unlike the world has ever seen. The subject must pale in comparison to the directives of the multinational ideology of ever-higher returns on capital investments. The subject must pale in comparison to the technological flowerchildren of the next generation. The subject must pale in comparison to the de facto overwhelmingness of the new global constitution. If the subject is not dead it has been devalued. If the subject is not devalued then it is obsolete. If the subject is not obsolete, then both science and religion still have some work to do: their mission is not yet complete. Accordingly, it has been the dastardly "subject" that has prevented us from realizing our Greater Unfolding; be it if that unfolding is scientific and technological or if it is religious and spiritual. The poor subject has been hung out to dry by both a science and a religion that seek their own kind of strict objectivity. This long-running scenario has resulted in a sort of inner alienation; where the subject is at once and the same time devalued, and yet, is kept alive on a sort of psychological life-support (primarily because we are all subjects in intersubjective relation). We cannot very well live without the subjectivity that gets such a bad rap from both sides of the fence upon which it is forced to sit. The subject is what allows for perception of the so-called "objective datum". The subject is what receives a God or Gods, a Goddess or Brahman. The subject is where the intersubjective flows of communality are felt, denied, allowed, received, expressed, impressed upon us. We are subjects in intersubjective communal variations. Or, we are intersubjective communal variations exuding subjects. We cannot get rid of that blasted "subjectivity", which has been a centuries long scapegoat for countless societal, and even, cosmic ills. We have pinned the tail on the subjective donkey numerous times. Maybe it is time to take it off and look at those representational structures that have been empowered during the same time the subject has been labeled "dead" and/or "devalued". Where did the joiussance of the subject go? Where did all of that vitality get reterritorialized to? Where has the subject's vital force been downloaded into? What representational structures have claimed the subject as their own --- only now in a recoded manner, i.e., subjects "mean" this to us here at your new home? What multinational corporate reservations have arisen in our midst? Now feeding on the devalued subject; a subject that can only reclaim value for itself in relation to the propagandicized importance of a bureaucratic or corporate representation al structure, i.e., Church, State, Institution, Multinational Corporation. For only by attaching itself to one of the "death to the subject" ideological machines, can the subject know any true and authentic value and worth. The "subject" is nothing outside of these institutional reservations of manufactured consent and mythicalized meanings. The "subject" has value only in relation to the hiving mentality of the institutionally-inflicted postmodern man and woman. If the "subject really is dead", is a "nothing", a "vacancy", an "emptiness"; then there is really no recourse but to attach one's lifeless subjectivity to whatever object that one can bond with --- be it a corporation, an ideology, or a commodity; that is, unless one is content with being no-thing, i.e., a postmodern vacany. When we are unable to find meaning in our lives we go and look into the lives of others. Other cultures. Other religions. Other philosophical beliefs. Other interpretations. Other stories. When it has been displaced from here --- meaning, that is --- then we go and begin to wander. We slip, like Alice, through the Looking Glass. Meaning? Where does one look? If it has been denied the subject; that is, if the subject has been denied and denigrated, then we must look outside the subject for meaning, right? We must go to the objectified institutions of learning and already apprehended stories of recurring thematics. Or, we can instead go to the charnal grounds, to the burial tombs, to the place where the subject has been laid to rest. To the funeral pyre it is then! To the place of many just and unjust sacrifices; to the furnaces of ideology, where just like Aushwitz, sacrifices go on non-stop. For the ideological tower of ascent does indeed need many bones of support to reach such overarching glories.
Just a crucifixion and hour; We may see similarity, but not also without noting difference. No two perspectives are ever totally alike (not in all categories of comparison, at least). This, however, does not mean that we do not note similarity and commonality. Yet, it does signify that similarity and commonality come hued and toned with the added spice of a unique I-witnessing position and perspective. It is unavoidable. It is what science and religion have had to end up conforming to, albeit begrudgingly. The subject, for all its infectious diversity and colorful tainting of the Hard Truths that science and religion both tenaciously fight for, is what actually empowers. The appearance of the subject on the scene calls to task both religion and science, in ways, that, perhaps, they are all a bit too much aware of. In other words, the institutions are aware of the power inherent in the subject itself; that out of the propagandacized emptiness issues the fount of life itself. For the subject is and was Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau, Jesus the Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed. The subject is the voice in the wilderness, which calls for an accounting of what has been done to the "subject" (for the supposed and alleged good of the subject). How many more crucifixions? How many more negations of the subject on behalf of some fanciful notion of pure religion and pure science? And wasn't Hitler himself hell-bent on notions of purity as well? Indeed he was. So much the same for the Church and the State, the Corporation and the Laboratory, where each seeks out their own brand of purity in the name of ideological comeuppance. As if something sacrosanct has been stolen from them; with the despised and reviled subject catching the majority of the wounds; retribution handed down from ideological superiours. Notions of purity have afflicted the countless masses of subjects; those who constituted cultures unpure as well as those who were just wandering impurities blotting out the bright ideological sun of the transcendentally pure heavens. It is my suspicion that we should not fool ourselves into imagining that isolated purges are behind us, or that there is not now a sort of "sacrificial offering up of the subject" to one or another ideological god or gods. It has been proven time and time again that the human imagination can be just as destructive as it can be creative; and that, even more so, can this imagination rationalize all sorts of wild ideological maneuvers in order to bring about its pure vision through negating that which is perceived to be preventing the immanent reign of God, here on Earth. It becomes a destructive sort of alchemy, which seeks purity and transcendence through death and negation. In principle, there is not much difference in seeking to wipe clean the surface of the earth from one scourge or another, than there is in seeking to isolate elements in a laboratory and achieve experimental purity. In principle, there is not much difference in allocating blame to a certain peoples than there is in allocating blame to subjectivity in relation to tainted data. It is the same movement: the elimination of living, constitutive elements in the hopes of achieving some sort of distant purity. It doesn't matter --- except on scale --- if it is a Hitler or a Pol Pot, a bio-lab facility or a mulinational corporate operation in the tropics. The desire is to extract some sort of "ideal state or condition" through the elimination of the living elements that one perceives as being the obstacle blotting out the ideological sun, the higher returns on invested capital, the pure state, the uninfected and highly resistant body. The multinational needs to displace cultures and peoples when it moves into a region to seize and capitalize on an investment opportunity. It will need cheap labor. So, eradicate the former way of life and make it necessary that those peoples have to supply the cheap labor. First, do away with the "Way of Life", then replace it with the "Way of Life" that is not so good for the peoples and their culture, but is good for corporate returns and stockholder dividends. These same practices occur on a scale as vast and as far-reaching as you or I can imagine; these are not isolated practices. These are systemic indicators of the mode of production and the means of operation that the current Overlords use to achieve ideological superiourity. Again, these are not isolated practices that are only used in far-away places --- that have no relevance right here, right now. In fact, the relevance of these practices continues to grow by leaps and bounds every year. On one end, the carrot being dangled is that of greater choice in relation to the mass-marketed consumer goods and technological artifacts that will help you live longer so you can consume more; while, on the other end, the carrot dangling is the simple chance to survive and get your colonized head above the untreated waters of poverty and third-world status. Meanwhile, there is one group that will always profit from the carrot being dangled like that on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. Poverty is fostered in order to keep a relatively "needy" supply of cheap human labor ever handy and ever at the ready; to be run up and down by the whims of capital. And, consumption is fostered in order to keep a relatively fat and content mass of in-debted consumers who will buy whatever is produced as long as it is always labeled "new and improved". It has been proven that it is possible to manipulate the circumstances on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum in order to achieve power and significance.
Just a crucifixion and hour; Just a crucifixion an hour. We cannot all be reduced to a Singular View. If based upon I-witnessing, which is constituted of an interpretive basis, there is no possibility of ever arriving at a Singular View that is the summation of all that exists. In other words, we may be able to all be summed up to One; but not all reduced down to One. Or, stated differently: adding up all views as necessary, may have us arrive at a Singular Totality, but reducing that Totality to a Singular View is in all likelihood nothing other than the seed of fascism and oppressive totalitarianism. The history of the Being-human has been chock-full of the latest greatest statements from the lips of One who Speaks. We have been privvy to the oracles of visionary testaments; of singular feats of heroism and conduct in the face of adversity. We have been witness to all manner of ideological superiourity complexes; from the techno-scientific present to the medieval Christian past; from the free-market ideologues to their Marxist rivals. There has been no shortage of testimonial visions. Just this past week, as of the first of April, year 2000, there has been the report of mass graves unearthed in Uganda. Apparently, a former Catholic priest convinced the flock that it was the end of the world, that their departure was necessary, ordained from On High. Collective murder/suicides the result, the theological answer to the postmodern question posed in the African backwaters. Next week it will be someone else, some other group... and the week after that yet another... and then another... We want to believe. We want the Truth --- final and certain. Philosopher John Dewey called it our "quest for certainty". We have this capacity to want to lean to this side of certainty. For as much as we do doubt, for as much as doubt is raised, we would so love the Certain Truth --- absolute and ideologically pure. We are thirsty for it. And the collective evidence is on the table, is out in the open. No matter what our particular preference is allied with --- no matter what form it takes --- we clutch with a certitude to that Truth, to that Unshakable Belief, to that Absolute Certainty. In a world of Impermenance it is sometimes all that we have: A firm belief; the cornerstone of the 'self'; a cultural or national identity; a political disposition. We make our stand there. There and no farther. It doesn't even need, necessarily, be that sensible. We can make our stand on something as inconsequential as allegiance with a particular sports team, or a collegiate alma mater. Our national heritage takes a backseat, even here --- here in relationship to the "team". "Forget the Global Commons! I can't even stand the high school rivals from across the river." The human tendency to affiliation; to being "in" the group here, making one an "outcast" there; where to wear these colors here, means to show, to sign, to convey where I am from and "who my homeys are". This view better than that. This territory better than that. I fight for the desert; you for the oasis. We fight. Not seeing desert and oasis as mutually penetrating, as interrelated aspects of a greater whole. No, instead we fight. It is what our parents did before us. It is our "Way of Life". It is who we are as a peoples; defining ourselves in relation to the combatants we wage war with. Capital and labor. Union and management. Democrat and Republican. North and South. East and West. "This here and no farther", we say. For our territory has been marked. That line defines the border of our peoples. This line defines the border of our self-hood, our identity, our person. This here and no farther. We can see how the nature of our times is causing a rise of old nationalistic hatreds. As the old Communist Soviet Bloc crumbled, it left behind the ethnic fragments and cultural rubble that had been mortared together by the Socialist State. When this State fell apart it revealed the old wounds that had been buried deep and out of sight. The ethnic hatreds arose in great force in the Balkans. The strong arm of the Socialist Order was no longer around to cool the passionate fires, to bring an overarching sense of containment and order to the events spilling forth onto the blood-soaked ground. Even if that order is seen to have been dictatorial and oppressive, it was an order that kept in check the persistent tensions. That is no more, though. Now United Nations peacekeeping forces move in to do what the Old-style Soviet led dictators used to do. The events in the Balkans are an extreme example of what happens when order completely falls apart (again, not qualifying that order either way). When peoples have lost the social order, and the meaning of their lives is suddenly divested of them, they can often fall back on defining themselves in relation to the old hatreds. The sense of meaning is suddenly defined as the ages long conflict, one that was just put on hold for several decades while the Soviet Bloc was in the driver's seat. The loss of the old order gives birth to a societal and cultural vacuum. In short, the question becomes "How will we define and determine ourselves as subjects now that the old order has left us?" The old definitions no longer hold the cultural wine. They leak all over the place until they are utterly empty and useless. To paraphrase Christ, "we need new wineskins." The old ones will not do. If we want to be able to carry our wine with us, then we will need new wineskins with which to carry it. In the same way, we also need new suggested interpretations of what it means to live in these, our times. We need new stories. New narratives. But there are challenges abounding in relation to developing new themes. Fredric Jameson puts it in his own brilliant manner, as being part of "the transitional nature of the new global economy [that] has not yet allowed its classes to form in any stable way, let alone to acquire genuine class consciousness, so that the very lively social struggles of the current period are largely dispersed and anarchic." And as much as we would like to imagine that most of us could do without class-consciousness, it is a most idealistic notion. For the majority of us do need some way to map ourselves in relation to our present social and cultural milieu. We need to be able to find and locate ourselves in relation to both society and the cultural artifacts that surround us. It is not just an archaic remnant --- a nationalistic regression --- rather, it is a fundamental human need: to be able to thematically map one's self, one's peoples, in relation to the immediate socio-cultural environment. Where do we stand in relation to our times as a peoples? Jameson, in discussing relevant "themes" as potential "meanings", offers us a viable resolution in being able to discern how we have been and continue to thematically map ourselves in relation to our social and cultural milieu. He goes on to state that "Thematization is... the moment in which an element, a component, of a text is promoted to the status of official theme, at which point it becomes a candidate for that even higher honor, the work's meaning." Of course, Jameson is here speaking of narratives, not cultural and national identities. No matter, though, for the nature of these times is dictating to us that if we do not willingly choose a theme for our lives, then we will, by all potential indicators, fall backwards in time and, perhaps, reference ourselves in relation to a sort of tribal warfare as cultural identity. And it is my contention that this is essentially what can and has taken place; that when the old order falls, and the "meaning vacuum" becomes our sole reality, it is then that we either adopt a new theme or revert to an old one based on conflict and bloodshed. For the fact of the matter is, that, we will thematicize our conditions; we will set up a recurring theme; we will foster that theme as the meaning of our lives, the identity of our peoples, the boundary of our identity. We can say, without remorse, that we each, as subjects, function as interpreters, translators, and transformers --- more so than as totally objective I-witnesses. Given the conditions and circumstances of our times, we then interpret and translate these events. Perhaps those who interpret and translate the world close to how we do, are often seen by us as being just as objective and as honest as we are. While those who translate and interpret the world far from how we do are often seen as being "out there", "lost in fancy and imagination", not at all as objective or as rational as we are, i.e., liars who make it up as they go along! We can see from the examples in the previous section, that just because we have fallen in with an intersubjective 'truth' group --- a group of peer agreement, or a cultural or ethnic pride --- that this in no way signifies that we are, as a group, totally objectively true. No, like any group we are involved in the circumstances that we are thematicizing in our own way --- that we give meaning to according to our own agendas. In Life, just as in dreams, there is, then, no Absolute, Strict Objectivity to be had. Perhaps relative objectivity would be better. For as a journey into space does away with the "absolute objectivity" of gravity, as known here on Earth, so too do journeys across the cultural bounds here on Earth reveal many leaks in the most strict of so-called "objective truths". Yes, then, by all means... new wineskins!
Let's take the Hwa Yen Buddhist realization of mutual penetration, that we discussed earlier, and apply here. As we do so we notice that the observer does not negate the observed. For instance, the existence of the observer, as the one sitting here typing a text, is not in any way negating the keyboard or the monitor, or anything else, for that matter, that is in or out of the field of observation. In the same way, the observed, as monitor or keyboard, is not negating the observer, nor the act of observation as such. There is mutual penetration and total simultaneity of these realms of observer, observation, and observed. They can certainly be noted as being mutually affective, in a relative way, as well. For the presence of the specifics of this environment are affective in relation to the observer; there is a flow of impression expression taking place. The observer is touched, affected, by that which his observed. I must relate to the keyboard in such a way that something intelligible comes from the exchange. If the keyboard was constructed differently I may have to respond differently in order to achieve the same observed results. Or, if the keyboard did not change at all, and someone else was sitting here --- a different observer --- then the observed results would immediately change as well as the whole act of observation, i.e., this portion of the text would not have been written, or narrated, at all. So, we can see how changing or altering one of the three realms of observer/observed/observing changes them all in relation to each other, precisely because they are mutually penetrating and mutually affective. A change in that which is observed is a change in the observer too; while a change in the observer results in a change in that which is observed; hence, a change in the observation itself. This, then, is the nature of the simultaneity of mutual penetration. The effects of change in one realm are immediate recognized in the others; signifying for us a mutuality that transcends difference, except for purely literary purposes, that is.
The very nature of the conditions of our time serves to inform us. We are molded, to various degrees, by the socio-cultural formative conditions. There is no need to speculate on the relative percentage of influentialness that the "culture of postmodernism" has on us as subjects and as groups. What we do know for certain is that the culture is influential, and it is a persistent social field; one that we cannot just "repudiate" and dismiss as insignificant. Ken Wilber, in A Brief History of Everything, reports on how something we take to be as inviolate as a spiritual intuition can be interpreted in the terms of a persistent cultural milieu that thereby distorts and rather limits the full significance of that intuition. He writes that the "modern dissociation (between self, culture, and nature) is so firmly entrenched in the collective psyche that when a genuine spiritual intuition descends, it descends into the interpretive grid of... modern fragmentation." Or, stated in the terminology that has been employed here in this text previously, we could say that a Pure Presentation is forced to conform to the dominant representational structure. Where the representational structure is what forces the lopping off of aspects of the Pure Presentation, the "genuine spiritual intuition". The interpretation is insufficient, in that does not account for the full significance of the intuition itself; or, the representational structure does not do justice to the Pure Presentation, at all. Either way, the same consequences result: The heretofore fresh spiritual intuition is limited, by being interpreted according to a structure that cannot do it full justice. Wilber points out that "Graceful and well-rounded interpretations of Spirit are what facilitate Spirit's further descent. Gracefully unpacking the intuition, interpreting the intuition, facilitates the emergence of that new spiritual depth... On the other hand, ungraceful interpretations tend to prevent or abort further spiritual intuitions. Frail or shallow or fragmented interpretations derail the spiritual process (or any other for that matter)... some aspect of Spirit gets denied or distorted or overemphasized, which sabotages Spirit's full expression and derails the spiritual process in its broader unfolding." All of this points to the veritable necessity of illuminating our interpretive faculties. For, as Wilber puts it, "all depth must be interpreted". We do not just have given depths, "how we interpret depth is crucially important for the birth of that depth itself." Depths are interpreted --- in various ways. Shallowly, in a fragmented manner, glamorously, frightfully, vaguely, specifically, imaginatively. As we have seen, and noted, how we language the world --- both within and without --- reveals how we are interpreting the world; how we are interpreting depth (even if it is to attempt to disregard and deny depth altogether). One thing is certain: We cannot avoid interpreting. We will. Let us be hopeful that it is the kind of interpretation that Wilber describes in greater detail here:
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