#Individual Perspective

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Subjectivism

Subjectivism is a philosophical viewpoint that posits that knowledge, values, and truth are dependent on individual perspectives, experiences, or feelings, rather than being independent or objective realities. In subjectivism, what is considered true, good, or meaningful can vary from person to person, as these are shaped by one’s personal beliefs, emotions, and perceptions.

Here’s a breakdown of the main aspects of subjectivism:

1. Epistemological Subjectivism

Personal Perspectives on Knowledge: In epistemology, subjectivism argues that knowledge is always influenced by the individual’s perception, experiences, and mental framework. According to this view, there is no universal or objective knowledge that exists independent of human thought.

Relativism in Knowledge: Subjectivist thinkers claim that truth is not absolute but relative to individuals or cultures. What one person considers true may not be true for another, and both views are valid within their respective contexts.

2. Moral Subjectivism

Ethical Relativism: In ethics, moral subjectivism maintains that moral judgments are based on personal feelings, preferences, or cultural norms. There is no objective standard of right and wrong that applies universally; instead, moral values are subjective and differ from person to person.

Relativistic Morality: For example, what one person sees as morally right (e.g., telling the truth) could be seen differently by someone else, depending on their personal or cultural beliefs. Subjectivism rejects the idea of absolute moral truths.

Emotivism: A related idea in ethical subjectivism is emotivism, which suggests that moral statements do not describe facts but express emotional responses. Saying “lying is wrong” reflects disapproval of lying, rather than an objective moral fact.

3. Aesthetic Subjectivism

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder: In aesthetics, subjectivism holds that judgments of beauty, art, and taste are entirely based on individual preferences and emotions. There is no objective standard of beauty; instead, each person’s judgment about art or beauty is valid according to their own perspective.

Personal Interpretation of Art: Subjectivism in aesthetics supports the view that the meaning of art is determined by how individuals interpret and experience it, rather than by the artist’s intentions or any external standard.

4. Metaphysical Subjectivism

Reality Dependent on the Mind: In metaphysics, subjectivism is the belief that reality, or at least our understanding of it, is shaped by the mind. Our mental processes, thoughts, and perceptions shape our experience of reality, meaning there is no mind-independent world that can be known directly.

Constructivism: In some versions of subjectivism, this leads to the idea that reality itself may be a construction of our consciousness or collective agreement. The world is not something we discover, but something we construct through interpretation.

5. Relativism and its Connection to Subjectivism

Cultural Relativism: While subjectivism focuses on individuals, cultural relativism is a related form of subjectivism that argues that knowledge, values, and ethics are shaped by cultural contexts. Different cultures have different standards of truth, beauty, and morality, and no one culture’s standards are objectively better or worse than another’s.

Criticism of Absolutism: Subjectivism and relativism often stand in contrast to objectivist or absolutist viewpoints, which hold that there are objective truths and values independent of individual or cultural perspectives.

Criticism of Subjectivism:

Moral Nihilism: Critics of moral subjectivism argue that it leads to moral nihilism, where nothing is truly good or bad. Without any objective standards, it becomes difficult to justify ethical judgments or condemn harmful actions.

Incoherence in Knowledge: Some argue that epistemological subjectivism is self-defeating. If all knowledge is subjective, then the statement “all knowledge is subjective” must also be subjective, and it cannot be universally true.

Difficulty in Communication: If all values, meanings, and truths are subjective, it can be challenging to find common ground in society. This undermines the possibility of shared understanding or objective discourse, especially in areas like ethics, law, or politics.

Subjectivism, while emphasizing personal perspective and the relativity of truth and values, faces challenges in maintaining coherence and offering stable grounds for moral and philosophical discussions.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

posted this forever ago as part of a bigger compilation BUT i think it deserves to stand on its own. i was gonna add more color BUT that didnt happen; thus it doesnt translate aswell that hes freezing the water around him. BUT now you aware and you can see it. you can see it

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

what in the power of friendship and gay-subtext anime was that sprint finish wdym lando dropped back literally right at the last second to let his teammate past because they’ve been up and down together all season and at times at odds, but most of all they will make the world a better place by making their fossil fuel-sponsored rear wings kiss as they drive triumphantly towards the night lights and a better day, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?????

[hinamie]

- wip -

u won't see this until next month but i at least wanted to share the plans

[good-to-drive]

Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself

I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture. 

Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse. 

It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity. 

It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore. 

I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving. 

One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.

The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.

There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives. 

As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence. 

Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.

And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away. 

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life  – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).

The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need. 

What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence. 

In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.” 

It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied. 

Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.

In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work. 

It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.

When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity. 

It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).

If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?

Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another. 

And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far. 

But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.

[gxtzeizm]

the fact that me, as a fan of both lando and oscar without any bias (maybe a bit on lando but not that much), is going to witness both "oscar fans, lando antis" and "lando fans, oscar antis" posts all in my one dash 🥲🥲

also the fact that atp i couldn't even bother enough with this same situation on both lewis and george. now it happens on lando and oscar as well which got me like....

[bruisedviolette]

it doesn’t make any sense to have mike and el break up once (framed as a positive for el and a comedic moment in the show btw), lie to each other via letters during a long distance relationship, and then have them end the second to last season on bad terms, having not spoken to each other for at least an entire day, just to have them make up in the last season and be endgame?

mike has already said ‘i love you to el.’ she didn’t believe him. why have him do it all over again? to what end?

[dykesynthezoid]

I do think it’s really funny seeing people on tiktok have the whole “there’s a difference between being GAY and being QUEER” in that some gay people aren’t politically invested and can’t be counted as “queer” for that, like it’s literally always funny to see people rediscover discourse from the 70s. I know it’s a very tempting argument to make but queer desire is itself always going to be a non-normative radical action, actually.

And it’s fine to feel disappointed when other queer people aren’t as politically invested as you are or haven’t done the work to unpack or deconstruct certain things, but you cannot just decide that they’re an inherently separate group from you despite being affected by the same politics of ‘difference.’ It actually doesn’t work that way. You are a part of the same group. And you just have to deal w that, even when it’s frustrating. Assigning these hard boundaries on what a term like “queer” can mean in practice is actually antithetical to like. Everything the ambiguity and malleability of the term stands for. There’s no arguing that “queer” is a deeply politicized term, but individual queer people don’t have to be active in politics to be politicized. They are going to be politicized regardless, whether they like it or not.

[hymnsofheresy]

Do you pray for the hostages too?

Yes. I pray for the 110 or so israeli and immgrant hostages assumed to still be alive. And I also pray for the hundreds of Palestianian hostages arrested without charge in Israeli prisons assumed to be alive.

I pray for a ceasefire so that the Israeli hostages are released. I also pray for the end of Israeli apartheid government, so that Palestianians are liberated.

[kaleiidoskope]

“THE ARCADE’S EMPTY, I THINK ITS CHRISTMAS EVE”

FINALLY PICKED UP AND FINISHED THIS PROJECT dear god 4 hours and 30 minutes

[t-u-i-t-c]

Tokucember Day 10: Heisei 1

Ryo Ashihara & Shouichi Tsugami

[pratchettquotes]

"The thing is...I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, 'What about me?' and you can just hear the universe replying, 'Well, what about you?'"

Unity appeared to consider this.

"Well, what about you?" she said.

Susan sighed. "Exactly." She sighed again. "You can't think about just one person while you're saving the world. You have to be a cold, calculating bastard."

"That sounded as if you were quoting somebody," said Unity. "Who said that?"

"Some total idiot," said Susan.

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

[gayofthefae]

Me? Oh, nothing. Just thinking about how when Will breaks eye contact sadly after Mike and Will's interaction Mike doesn't look away.

[veen-da-bean]

more haunted mansion drawings!! This time with the mummy

[artheresy]

Okay listen, playing the Continuance and words cannot describe the effects Ruan Mei has on me. This isn’t like a “Omg her design and voice 😍” kind of thing, this is an “Oh my god HER WRITING?? HER IDEOLOGY?? IM NEVER RECOVERING” kind of thing

The way that HSR handles its divinity of the Aeons, not only has them stretch out across the universe causing multiple factions to pop up in relation to said Aeons with all kinds of outlooks and perspectives about them based upon their paths, their actions and their “blessings”, but also down to individual characters perspectives and relationships regarding individual Aeons and just the concept of Aeonhood in general is AAAHHJJ ITS SO GOOD

I need more Ruan Mei, I need to see more of her desire to create an Emanator and become an Aeon herself. I need that explored so much more I want to know so much more

Her treatment of her creations and outlook regarding her own research is something so interesting to me that I literally can’t put into words. Like the conflicting nature of her feelings regarding them and how they align with her objectives and looking at her research alongside her general demeanor is so????

I need more of her in my life, I need more characters who question the nature of Aeons for whatever reason at all like I love