Subjectivity & relativism (the search for truth)

A grand title, but just because I needed to write a few more of MY thoughts:

I shouldn´t have to apologise for having or expressing opinions, thoughts, or impressions of a place or event; seeing from my point of view, or relative to my own history or culture - the world that I know. I don´t profess to tell the "truth" or to be giving an unadulterated or objective view. I don´t and I can´t, and that assumption should be read into everything I write, every photograph I take, every word I speak...

Words that I write might be interpreted by someone else according to their own set of histories and cultures - their own point of view. That´s fine: take them and mould them as you wish.

A blog is a space for subjectivity and relativism. Just as most public spaces for expression (the newspaper, the art gallery, the advertising billboard, the bumper sticker...) are equally spaces in which individuals express their outpourings the result of their own histories, cultures, expectations...

Better not to see the world in terms of "truth" and "lies", "right" and "wrong", black and white (etc) but to see it, and to read it, as an amalgam of accumulated histories, each of which weaves its own way to reach a given point. The given point being the text, the painting, etc from which meanings can then be further generated. Better to think about how we generate meaning, where we generate that meaning, how different individuals arrive at different meanings with the same input - the same "given point".

A clever person knows that the "world as they see it" is nothing but an amalgam of meanings generated from their own personal histories. Meanings float, bend and twist to the reader / viewer.

Being self aware has much to do with knowing your own point of view is an illusion constructed by yourself (sub-consciously) from the culture, history, experiences, and shared memes that have been passed to you from various sources. The self aware individual knows that he or she is not the centre of the universe, but that they can never see anything other than from their own point of view.* Their own universe is one of billions.

Just to make it plain. The writings on this blog are my thoughts, from my point of view. Nothing more and nothing less. (And, quite apart from anything else, I doubt anyone reads them anyway).

* They can, however, imagine accurately another point-of-view with the aid of their own. This is usually described as "empathy". However what most people think of as empathy is as illusory an impression as thinking we know the "truth" about something.