Subjectivity, Religion, and Politics

 I remember when I first heard the word solipsism, signifying that we have no sure knowledge of anything outside of our own minds. This seemed an obvious tautology. We know what we know. It seems to me that anybody who rejects this modest form of solipsism hasn't thought very deeply. It doesn't deny the reality of the outside world, but notes that that world must be unpredictably different from the shadow-show that percolates through the senses and coalesces as personal "knowledge." Indeed, anything I know has been so modified by the percolation that, by the time I know any objective thing, it's something else altogether, an image.

Many trivial experiences demonstrate this. For instance, the backup camera in my pickup truck shows an LED display over half of my rearview mirror. I can choose to look either at the display or through it at the reflection in the mirror. When I look at one, the other disappears. Similarly, when I drive past a detailed, multi-part road sign at highway speed, I can read only one part. I may choose to read an upper or the lower as I approach, but if I choose one, the other (for knowledge purposes) is illegible. And, unless I choose to focus on one or the other, both word-sets blur into the landscape, no more communicative than the shape of a cloud.

At present [written pre-Covid], I am sitting at one end of a Starbucks cafe, and, as I look out, I seem to see the entire room as if captured by a video camera. But if I rest my eyes steadily on the blond boards of the far wall and ask myself how many customers are present, it becomes obvious that most of what I imagined to be a clear picture was, in fact, a blur. Not only can't I count customers without moving my focus, but the blazing red hair of the woman along the right wall, well within my apparent picture of the cafe, fades to indeterminate as long as I stare at the back wall. At no time do I clearly see the entire Starbucks, but only a patchwork composite of tiny in-focus bits.

It is as if I am under perpetual house arrest in my own mind and can see only tiny patches of the world through narrow, moving windows--and then only when I go to a particular window and open the shade. The world beyond the interfaces of eye, ear, nose, is a fabrication of nerve impulses from those organs. This is obvious, but it warrants solipsism only by emphasizing the word sure in the definition: Sure knowledge is impossible because mind is always at one remove from everything but itself. All that I see (in the most inclusive sense of the word) is second hand, analogous to decrypting Morse code from another continent rather than hearing the voice (much less sharing the thoughts) of the sender. Only by a leap of justifiable faith can I take for granted that the cosmic dots and dashes mean roughly what I understand them to. Optical illusions--and much more--demonstrate the constant risk of misreading neural code from the world "outside."

None of this rises to evidence that only the individual mind is real or that the material world may not exist--extreme forms of solipsism that justify the term's use to describe bad philosophy or insanity. The general orderliness of the perceived world certifies that something really informs the sensory code--the correlation, for instance, between the sight, smell, and touch of a rose and its predictable persistence, locality, slow decay--its connection to bushes, sunlight, water, and the earth. Anybody who believes that thinking alone can create a rose is delusional. That kind of magical realism, however--the belief that thinking makes it so--is common in politics, morality, and religion. People, for instance, routinely act as if as if "I believe in X" (a private mental act) justifies passing public laws to force X on non-believers. To account for this and avoid the negative connotations of solipsism, it's better to focus on the distinction between relatively subjective and objective realities. Acting as if abortion is murder because you believe it to be is significantly different from acting as if a red rose is white because you choose it to be.

I was at least sixteen, I'm embarrassed to admit, discussing the meaning of life with a clique of would-be intellectuals in Lynn Stalnaker's attic, when he explained the objective/subjective distinction to me, and it has haunted (or guided) my thought ever since. Objectivity may imply a thing described from no particular point of view--such as a square geometrically described--but in most cases it's established by agreement between multiple points of view (a representative subset of all points of view). Given a single grading key, true-false tests are "objective" because all readers assign exactly the same grades, but essay tests are subjective. Ideally, in a given school and discipline, subjective grades will be broadly consistent--an A student differing from a C student--but readers inevitably assign a range of different grades. 

Two subjective graders who disagree may appeal to a third to adjudicate between them, but, whatever the third decides, a fourth may validly disagree. Two graders may agree to abide by the third's judgement--much as co-religionists settle a dispute with scripture quotation or lower courts with appeal to higher courts--and this can achieve a form of quasi-objectivity, an epistemological armistice, but isn't to be confused with objective facts such as the direction of earth's gravity or the human need for air, water, and food. Such objective facts defeat extreme solipsism, but most of human life is inescapably so mired in subjectivity that a useful rule is "Don't believe anything just because you know it."

Subjectivity approaches pure solipsism when we ask What is the right thing to do? in a communal situation or What is true? in a religious one. Politics and religion are quagmires of subjectivity allowing no sure knowledge outside of our own minds, and consensus seldom provides even quasi-objectivity outside a given "echo chamber" because different parties and sects have different grading keys for any true-false poll. If you think you know that a given political or religious premise is objectively true (as opposed to believing it but knowing you don't know it), then either you delude yourself or you have the wisdom of a god. This is so unlikely that I need not take your opinion seriously and may reasonably leave you enthroned on your private cloud. The only sure way to be objectively wrong in a subjective matter is to be sure you're right.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to subjectivity in the United States today is to imagine--really imagine--a distant end of the political spectrum as an equal but opposite subjectivity, an alternative, honest image of the world seen by a person of good sense and character. For me, it's understanding how anybody could support Donald Trump. If I can grasp that one, religious universalism is easy.

In the first 2016 Republican debate, one of the other candidates challenged Trump on a fact that he had faked, and, instead of admitting ignorance, Trump attacked the candidate with juvenile name-calling. Another time, he answered a factual question with a soggy BS word-salad--obviously faked. He was clearly the least informed candidate on the stage but refused to admit it. This was enough for me. I saw, or thought I did, a man incompetent to manage any project where bankruptcy wasn't a good option. Ignorance I can forgive. It's universal. But denial of ignorance is a mortal sin. I saw (and still see) a man incapable of taking notes, weighing advice, calming down, and making a fact-based decisions free (as much as possible) of personal bias. 

          Trump seemed, unlike any other candidate, to be an impulsive, half-literate self-centered bully--a bloated, overage facsimile of the worst kids in public school, a kind I've been able to avoid ever since. The man creeped me out, but nearly half of voters selected him. Clearly, millions of Americans saw something I didn't, and vice versa. My challenge is not to admire a narcissistic, venal, pitiless liar (as I see him), but to wrap my head around subjectivities that see him as Presidential. I'd vote for any plausible politician before I'd vote for him. I call myself a yellow-dog Democrat, but I'd even donate to any normal Republican if the Dems nominated a Trump.

And yet I maintain friendships with people who similarly loathed Obama--a gentle scholar of unimpeachable moral character--and who trust Trump with our nation's future. I can't imagine crossing that political chasm, nor do I want to, but the least I can do is maintain contact with these friendly aliens, hear their concerns, and struggle to visualize the alien vistas of their subjectivity, vistas that must seem as concrete as the red-haired girl in my Starbucks peripheral vision. To see all colors in the political spectrum as equally valid might be insanity, but we can move closer to something that is desirable--a slightly more objective world-view--by comprehending incompatible others without betraying the moral passion of our own subjectivities. This is a spiritual exercise.