Should We Live in the Realm of Objectivity?

Objective truth is something we all strive for, but it might not be the best use of our effort.

Howdy 🤠

This week’s edition of Prompted is looking into how we view the world and thinking about how our view of the world differs from what is actually happening.

As always, I hope the thoughts/prompts below help spur productive reflection, and thanks for reading!

Kevin

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Should We Live in the Realm of Objectivity?

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anaïs Nin

When I noticed my girlfriend’s graduation was on the same day as my sister’s 21st birthday party, my girlfriend and I immediately reacted with disappointment. I was bummed I wasn’t going to make it to her graduation and my girlfriend was bummed I wasn’t going to make it to my sister’s party.

It didn’t take us long to realize we had completely different versions of what was more important. In my view of the world, I never put an emphasis on my education and viewed graduating as an expected outcome, not something that needs to be celebrated. In my girlfriend’s view of the world, she always valued her education and made many sacrifices to prioritize it, so the celebration was extremely important to her.

We each believed if we surveyed 1,000 people our opinions would be validated by the masses, but the only thing we would have found was 1,000 more unique views of the problem instead of an objective truth or “right” answer.

No matter how hard we try to mash things into the realm of objectivity, there is no such thing.

When we’re interacting with others, we pass everything through our own view of the world, because it’s all we know. Our views of the world can be so different from others that it’s like trying to fit a record in a CD player. They’re both plastic discs with music on them, but they couldn’t be more incompatible with one another.

If we come to every interaction as a CD assuming everyone is also a CD, we’re going to have a very hard time understanding and interacting with other people. Some people will be records, others will be iPods, cassette tapes, car radios, or even playing their own music.

To understand ourselves and the people around us we need to understand not just the music they’re playing, but how they’re playing it and why it’s one style instead of another.

Despite the fact that there is only one version of the world, we all see something different. We’re all looking at the world through glasses tinted by our experiences which lets us all see the same things but interpret them entirely differently.

After a while, it’s easy to forget that we’re even wearing glasses, and it’s confusing and frustrating that those around us don’t see what we see. We become trapped trying to get others to see what we see instead of considering what the world looks like through their glasses.

There will never be an objective or concrete version of the world and we’ll never be able to force other people to see things how we do, but if we spend more time trying to look through the glasses of others we can build stronger relationships and understand the world in a new way.

Prompts

1. What experiences and opinions color your view of the world?

2. Who do you care a lot about that has glasses with a very different colored tint? How can you better understand what they see?

3. Is there anything that colors your view of the world that you think should be removed?

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Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.

Kevin