One more distraction before we continue with our business at hand. Let us consider for the moment the agreed objective phenomenon of an older man sitting outside somewhere rolling himself a cigarette. This scene, considered from the points of view of two witnesses we will call Extremes, could be described in two diverse ways. For one Extreme, this man is described as “…an older, dexterous gentleman, who adeptly and without effort rolls himself a perfect cigarette, then gently movies it to his lips and lights a fire seemingly out of nowhere, all the while never missing a beat in the conversation.” To the other Extreme, this same man “…displays obvious signs of his age and has a glaring cigarette addiction.” For one Extreme, the man “…even exhales his smoke with elegance, the path of the swirl seemingly obeying the direction of his lips, and I had to reach to even get a whiff of his burning tobacco,” and for the other Extreme “…his hideous smoke was blowing everywhere, and he made strange contortions with his face as he exhaled.”
Beyond the Extremes, which any true seeker of the Golden Mean must by necessity seek to find, there are myriads of other possibilities all of which purport to “objectively” describe a scene. I, for one, believe in objectivity, that is that there exist both 1) real events happening in a real world, and this independent of human observation, that if a tree falls on THIS Earth I am it will make a sound. Furthermore, I believe 2) that these events and facts are discoverable by and discernible to the human mind, that is, to people. I also believe, however, that this capacity is for the most part underutilized in our species, and that most souls in this world rather create an instant impression of the thing or event in question and upon that base their judgments and evaluations.
The better alternative is to, in a sense, keep looking. That is, to look differently. I leave this now to your discussion.
