Objective Perspective

There were sixty of us at the conference. The anticipation wasn't. No-one was visibly excited. Everyone seemed to have dragged themselves through the scree, and into the stiflingly dull meeting hall.

The muffins were nice. The coffee? Not so much. Too bitter.

I swear the thrumming murmurs of the crowd was blending into one oceanic ohm. I felt if I had to hear it much more than the 5 minutes I'd already been there, I'd fall asleep standing.

But then the classic microphone tap-cum-feedback shocked me out of my growing catatonia. I was grudgingly aware.

A speaker was introduced. I don't know who it was. I was too busy trying to recapture the ennui from a moment ago. It seemed a better course than the one I was barreling into, out of control and with an ever-increasing sense of nausea.

Why nausea? Because that's what happens when your dread anticipations of an event are confirmed in reality by the cackling laughter of a pep-talk speaker who can't seem to get her kindergaarten idioms out of her adult speech.

"Good attendence, people!" She beamed almost as loud as her metallic red and white striped blouse. "You really have shocked me today with how wonderfully happy, and aware you seem."

I think she was still sleeping, actually. She seemed to be in a private dreamworld. The crowd, with eyes at half-mast, seemed to provide an object lesson largely in opposition to the speaker's felicitous naivety.

Her topic? "The Objective Workplace". Wow. An electric excitement rippled through the crowd. Eyes went wide, and lips curved into interested smiles almost in unison.

I'm lying. Everybody stayed pretty much the way they were: disengaged, disinterested, and hoping for an out-of-body experience.


But then it happened. She made a comment that set my brain to thinking (which can sometimes be a good thing, believe it or not). She said, "We always have to keep an objective frame of mind."

I wondered, at first, what subjective layerings she had to go through to parrot that popular sentiment. But then I stopped wondering because it was having a negative impact on my ability to stay bored and disinterested. If I lost that much, I'd have an unwanted lack of cynicism to aide me in my festering disdain for these kinds of empty educational venues. And that just wouldn't do.

But it did.

And my mind started churning. My hand followed suit with a black-ink rapier. And against my better judgmentalism, I penned these words:

Objectivity is an ideal -- a common one. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible.

All people are subjective, biased, and prejudiced one way or another. We cannot, by dint of existential experience, lay aside personal investment to achieve pure, ultra-cognitive, or suprarational objectivity.

'Objectivity' is necessarily outside human capacity.

Once I had written that down, I was able to recapture my angst and continue feeling unreservedly disinterested in the presentation. Thank you, Philosophy, for rescuing me.

*Please make note that the preceding was an unbiased, even objective look at a subjectively motivated perspective, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writer involved. Naturally. ;)