Human Subjectivity in Crisis (Part 2) How many times have we reduced people into objects?

                  Human Subjectivity in Crisis (Part 2)

How many times have we reduced people into objects?

Dr Abe V Rotor

A modern Narcissus by the lake with images of materialism and fantasy. 

Painting by Leo Carlo Rotor, author's son.  (circa 1989)

We tend to comprehend less and less about human feelings as we amass material things and power. It is as if the more things we possess the less we know others. The inequality of rich and poor is more than a question of material values. But we are consoled by the fact that irrespective of material and social status, happiness equally sets the premises of acquisition. People who have less in life find happiness with the same opportunity with those who have more. In fact they may even be happier because their source of happiness is simpler and easier to find.

Take affection. We do not attach affection only on beautiful and luxurious things. We do with ease to simple things. To the ordinary person. To a small pet. The untouched landscape no matter how barren it may look. Affection is subjective; the object merely symbolizes its essence.

The absence of real beauty would be the major problem of modern life. When we talk of beauty, he requirement is a perceived harmony or integrity both within the object and between the object and ourselves.

What affection can you find in 

this pastel drawing of an 8-year old?

It is desolating to see something new that we only despise or that we have no feeling for it and to recall with pleasure whatever it displaced – or to see nothing where something once cherished stood. Our affection attached to that which is not there but we are there. Thus, the absence of things of value becomes a form of self-hate.

Thus, reflected the work of Matthew Arnold *(PHOTO), “Dover Beach.” Arnold expressed lament about his country’s destructive confidence.

“The eternal note of sadness in the sea xxx the rolling of the pebbles xxx the ebb and flow of human misery tale for industrial England.” His disillusionment is complete in the last part of the poem. “To lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new xxx neither joy, nor love, nor light ... nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”

But why was Arnold disillusioned about his country when it was the riches, most powerful, more industrially sophisticated at that time? He knew that no industry disinvented poverty or starvation. In fact many inventions only threaten to deface the earth into waste. He knew that affluence destroys people. Wealth is a product of material exploitation.

The strange disease in modern life is in numbers, the numericals of material values, the inaesthetics of things around us. We seemed to have sold ourselves to such objects, losing our subjectivity.

Likeness of Dover Beach in postmodern art. AVR  

As I carry my load of numbers to turn ultimately to face the sea, I imagine Arnold looking across the English Channel on Dover Beach that calm evening more than two centuries ago. For I have learned to like the sea, the edge of human habitation. That it seems to be the last place on earth to find recourse. Its rugged rocky shores or its monotonous sands, the never-ending remind me that the sea is the cradle of aesthetic beauty, the arena of human submissiveness, the proof of God’s mysterious processes and immense power.

I would like to cast away my load of numbers, but then, between the sea and me is a chaos of resorts, laughter, fishing boats, beer cans and oil slicks. I perceive the alienation of life itself. ~

* Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic. Dover Beach is one of the most read poems in the school.