Long before I was an undergraduate, there has been an adage in the humanities and social sciences that “everything is subjective,” or that “objectivity is a myth.”
These statements hail from quantum physics’ discovery in the 1920s that the observer’s mere inclusion in an experiment influences that experiment, which is to say that detached observation is impossible. Moreover, this discovery was compounded in the 1960s’ critical movements when Western culture became self-aware. In a sense, what happened at this point is that guilt arose as the natural consequence of centuries of domination, and theorists recognized that there was indeed a “subject” behind what had been formerly taken for granted (e.g., colonialism).
At this moment, hardly a person in the social sciences or humanities believes in objectivity, and the hard sciences have effectively split in two. In some brands of science, such as medical science, practitioners still operate as though objectivity exists despite the century-old challenge within their own field; on the other hand, theoreticians of science explore the ramifications of a science divorced of objectivity. For the social sciences and humanities, a version of objectivity is still sometimes attempted through what is known as a positionality statement; in effect, this entails the author declaring their own subjectivity in order to get behind that subjectivity and asymptotically approach objectivity. (I say asymptotically because defunct objectivity can never be regained, but it can be approximated through self-awareness.)
I relay this history because to the contrary, I believe we all act as though objectivity exists in our everyday lives. This is perceptible through the movements we make in stillness and the impulses that direct those movements.
A week ago I was in a grocery store and a female customer tripped against a display, knocking over a glass bottle of dressing, which shattered. In response, this female customer started to cry. My sense is that something in her personal life undergirded this deluge of emotion, but without knowing any more than I did, a staffer of the store rushed over to the customer, put her arm around her, and repeated affirmations like, “You didn’t do anything wrong,” “This happens all the time,” etc. While the mess was being cleaned up, the staffer walked the customer over to the bathroom and ensured she was okay.
While acting, did the female employee question the “objectivity” of what she did? No: she simply did the objectively correct thing without asking; this impulse arose within the silence of the moment.
Regaining objectivity in this way is important because it reminds us that we are all connected. Although each of us dwells within an isolated and irreconcilable subjectivity, through mechanisms like silence, each of those subjectivities opens onto a field in which objectivity can be glimpsed. The catch is that we are unable to define or articulate this objectivity; instead, it is manifested through action, an action which in retrospect can only have occurred in a single way.
Living as a subject within a field of objective truth is a constant dance, one which promises grace, love, morality, and play.
Jackson Holzberg Buckley 