The Tyranny of Pronouns

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com

I keep hearing these phrases more and more. People talk about their own lived experience and speaking my truth. What people seem to be describing is their subjective perspective as being more important than objective facts.

Now, this is something that philosophers have debated about from time immemorial. Is the truth merely something that we perceive apart from any external reality or is there a real external reality which we perceive and gain knowledge of and must adhere to?

But if we set aside the abstractions of the great philosophers, this has very practical implications which became a real problem for these two pundits as they could not find any ground to agree upon and we as a society are suffering something similar as we attempt to live our lives to a multiplicity of incompatible philosophies.

And this is the problem with insisting that your truth or your lived experience is what matters most – because what happens when your lived experience doesn’t corroborate someone else’s lived experience?

How does a society with a million different lived experiences and perspectives agree on anything? And don’t forget… we DO have to agree on things; a LOT of things. Think about education, for example. Education is the agreed upon facts that we transmit to successive generations so that they don’t have to start from scratch, that they will have a head start in achieving the prosperity we’ve come to enjoy.

If claims of truth are just about subjective perspectives, then we’ve completely thrown the concept of education into the dumpster and sadly, this kind of post-modern subjectivism seems to be rampant in our education systems. It’s regrettable modern day example of the snake eating its own tail and it has catastrophic consequences for the generations that are formed by it.

This is why objective reality is a great blessing for us who might perceive things differently. External reality is a neutral plain upon which we can encounter each other and set aside our own selfish perspectives in favor of something that is shared between us.

But as soon as we start disregarding what is neutral between us and insist on merely asserting what each of us perceives, subjectively, then we will never be able to agree or get along because there is nothing that we can appeal to in order to compare our individual perspectives and the only way to resolve a dispute like that is through the assertion of power – and that doesn’t end peacefully.

So if we want peace in our time, we have to insist on looking at what is shared between everyone. We don’t all share the same perspective, but we do share what is external to everyone… which are the logically perceived facts and conclusions about what is true.

And it’s much better if we find ways to appeal to reason and known truths to resolve our conflicts than the assertion of power.