Object & Subject Consciousness

In order to understand the nature of responsibility - its meaning, its nature and its various modes of expression - it will be helpful for us to briefly explore consciousness itself.

The funny thing about consciousness is that most of us - most of the time - are not really aware of it. It is so normal to just simply be that we are not aware of our awareness of being. We take awareness for granted and thus never become consciously aware of who and what we truly are.

Our common daily consciousness could maybe best be described as dualistic. It is a consciousness that sees the world as fragmented. It perceives a "me" and "a world" which are inherently separate from each other. This feels "right" to us and so we rarely - if ever - question it.

Our life experience - which amounts to a kind of mind-training - begins with a process of objectifying all our experiences. When we are young we are increasingly confronted with a world full of objects. Thus, when we grow up, we perceive reality as an object or collection of objects. Everything around us is constantly labeled and thus objectified. When we ask our parents about the nature of something, the answer is almost always a name, a label.

Thus, slowly but surely, all reality becomes a single mass of objects structured and perceived according to our conscious and unconscious thoughts, ideas and wishes. As we grow older, our object-focused mind encounters still more stimuli in its surroundings which it objectifies (through labeling) in order to reinforce itself and its perception of reality.

I call this type of consciousness "object consciousness." It correlates to the dualism mentioned earlier. Most people most of the time are in a state of object consciousness. Being in that state means that we approach reality from a so-called objective perspective. Reality is seen as an object and our view on reality is therefore completely determined through "object" seeing.

This feels natural to us because traditional education plays a significant role in sustaining this approach to consciousness. In school we are trained to develop our objective thinking skills, often at the cost of developing other skills or modes of perception. Eventually, it becomes impossible to even conceive of alternatives. Objective thinking becomes the ultimate - indeed, the only - way of looking at life.

But an important question remains. Is objective thinking really objective thinking?

The conventional meaning of "objectivity" means a certain non-negotiable quality of truthfulness. That which is "objective" is correct. It is right, regardless of what we think or do. When we say "I will give you an objective opinion," it means we are giving a true and honest opinion. In our society, reality and objectivity are considered equal. In a sense, they are seen as the same thing. In science - which aims at knowing reality in the ultimate sense a high degree of objectivity is required. A scientist who does not practice objectivity would quickly see their work dismissed as "unscientific."

So it is clear what we mean by "objectivity" but that still does not tell us whether there is such a thing, such a phenomenon, as "objective thinking."

I do not believe that "objective thinking" exists. We may from time to time have an idea that comes close to objective thinking, but it remains a far cry from asserting that we can approach reality objectively. In fact, we cannot approach reality that way. What we think or see is not reality but rather our awareness of reality. The difference is not insignificant.

Object consciousness is consciousness of separation. It considers life as separate from itself. There is a 'you' and then there is 'life'. Object consciousness focuses primarily on object (the perceived) and actually ignores the subject (the perceiver). This means that it looks at the world and sees objects and does not consciously realize that it is seeing this object through its own vision - through a subject, in other words. Thus, object consciousness addresses reality as if it could address reality directly while in effect it is addressing reality only indirectly, through a subject.

Object consciousness is ignorant of its indirectness; that is perhaps its defining characteristic. It is also the dominant consciousness on the planet at the present moment, and forms the ground or essence of all our daily experience. It is our general state of mind with respect to almost everything we do, see, hear and relate to. It is important to realize and understand this because when we explore the meaning, function and effects of responsibility, we have to be clear that people generally act from this state of object consciousness.

Perhaps a metaphor will help us get a clearer perception of what we mean by "object consciousness." Object consciousness functions like a camera. With a camera, we look through a lens and see what we might call reality, the 'world' or 'life'. But what is the world? What is our life? Our life and world are the result of our experience of reality. They are not objects but perceptions. What is it what we do when we live, when we drive to school or to work, go shopping or jogging or skating? We are experiencing our life and our world. Our world and life are simply our experience of reality. That is what our lives are - they are our own experience of reality.

Thus, you could say life as we experience it is always experienced at the level of relative truth. We can only think from our own awareness, as subjects, and so we are always being subjective. But - and this is critical - we believe somehow that we are not being subjective but...