Inside Looking In
© Rachel C
Some one once said to write what you know, someone also said to be objective when you look back, write what you see as if you weren’t there but are experiencing it as a stranger. I don’t know who said either, or if either were ever actually said, but I do know that they cannot go hand in hand, for what you know cannot be objective. I’ve not lived a very long life, and for most of it I have been unconscious to the world. But, from what I’ve seen, from what I’ve lived cognizant and eyes-wide open, I have a pretty good understanding of the impossibility of objectivity. It can’t happen. Because, if it could, how many people would revert to objectivity to escape the pains of life? Sure there would be fewer suicides, maybe fewer cutters and burners, drug addicts and drinkers, whores and the men who buy them. Maybe society would seep into a Utopian image, but it would only be seemingly peaceful. The peace would come of thought being forced into a vegetative state. No one would survive to have opinions, only to survive without being hurt. Pain would be obsolete, self infliction would be achieved by slumping back into one’s mind, clearing out one’s history, tucking away one’s emotional thought for a perspective without perception. And everything would fall into itself. There would be no reason to war, no reason to cry. Because, when horrible things happened, we would recluse our emotions and step back, look at the situation as if we don’t know ourselves. Look at the situation as if we are strangers, and the girl being raped, the man being beaten, the wife being cheated and played, they wouldn’t be us and we wouldn’t have to deal with who they were on the inside looking in. So, society would fall into internal chaos, simply unaware of the destructive nature of objectivity, simply closed to the trouble it was inflicting upon itself. Someday, somewhere, when men who have become children and women useless bodies, someone will stand up and realize that living without pain has left us all inhuman. Robots, we’ve become robots. How could we have never seen it coming?
So this is my opinion about objectivity: we can’t have it, unless we are truly objective. Unless we have walked in on the situation from the outside looking in, honestly unaware of the details, honestly unconscious. And, in that case, we cannot know how to write it until we can immerse ourselves, completely, become knowledgeable entirely, and once we have we lose our objectivity instantly. But, at least we have a story.
We have to know what we write, and write what we know.
June 23, 2007
Author's Note: I guess I'm questioning the power of being objective.
© Rachel C
Some one once said to write what you know, someone also said to be objective when you look back, write what you see as if you weren’t there but are experiencing it as a stranger. I don’t know who said either, or if either were ever actually said, but I do know that they cannot go hand in hand, for what you know cannot be objective. I’ve not lived a very long life, and for most of it I have been unconscious to the world. But, from what I’ve seen, from what I’ve lived cognizant and eyes-wide open, I have a pretty good understanding of the impossibility of objectivity. It can’t happen. Because, if it could, how many people would revert to objectivity to escape the pains of life? Sure there would be fewer suicides, maybe fewer cutters and burners, drug addicts and drinkers, whores and the men who buy them. Maybe society would seep into a Utopian image, but it would only be seemingly peaceful. The peace would come of thought being forced into a vegetative state. No one would survive to have opinions, only to survive without being hurt. Pain would be obsolete, self infliction would be achieved by slumping back into one’s mind, clearing out one’s history, tucking away one’s emotional thought for a perspective without perception. And everything would fall into itself. There would be no reason to war, no reason to cry. Because, when horrible things happened, we would recluse our emotions and step back, look at the situation as if we don’t know ourselves. Look at the situation as if we are strangers, and the girl being raped, the man being beaten, the wife being cheated and played, they wouldn’t be us and we wouldn’t have to deal with who they were on the inside looking in. So, society would fall into internal chaos, simply unaware of the destructive nature of objectivity, simply closed to the trouble it was inflicting upon itself. Someday, somewhere, when men who have become children and women useless bodies, someone will stand up and realize that living without pain has left us all inhuman. Robots, we’ve become robots. How could we have never seen it coming?
So this is my opinion about objectivity: we can’t have it, unless we are truly objective. Unless we have walked in on the situation from the outside looking in, honestly unaware of the details, honestly unconscious. And, in that case, we cannot know how to write it until we can immerse ourselves, completely, become knowledgeable entirely, and once we have we lose our objectivity instantly. But, at least we have a story.
We have to know what we write, and write what we know.
June 23, 2007
Author's Note: I guess I'm questioning the power of being objective.
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