A little girl called her father, "Daddy, Daddy," and asked him, "Is it a bad thing to steal?" Her father, surprised at the question, hushed her, "Gosh! Darling, it is bad, very bad. It is a sin before God and a crime in the sight of man." "But Daddy," the little girl persisted, "If you happen to be very hungry and your means of getting food exhausted, then suddenly you stumbled on a basket of food dropped by someone, wouldn't you take the food?" The father turned and looked at the child, mouth wide agape in bewilderment. What could have prompted that little girl to ask such a paradoxical question? From general approach, the question is simple but it is not all that it seems. If you are to take a closer look at that question, you'll find out that it has a twist that cannot be straightened out so easily. How do we really view life? What is our approach to life? Our beliefs, ideas, principles and revolutions, are they based on our personal perception and feelings or are they rather based on true evidences of reality? How would you rather conceive the world we live in, in the subjective or objective sense? These are questions pertaining to our discernment and the reasons behind them. Before we go on, let's consider the following concepts in turn.
Subjectivity: this refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs and desires. Subjectivity also refers to the specific discerning interpretations of any aspect of experience. It is a way of experiencing things from a personal viewpoint, these things experienced are unique to the person experiencing them and these experiences are based on personal consciousness. As humans and individuals, all theories and philosophies that dictate our understanding of science, art, literature and every concept we have about the universe is based on human and individual perspective. It is the judgment of issues and approach to the world that is rooted in personal conceptualism, influenced by one's emotions, feelings, rules, principles, beliefs, environment, what one thinks or feels is right and what is not. It is the experience and the perception of the world from within. On the other hand, objectivity refers to the concept of seeing the world exactly for what it is from a viewpoint free from human perception and its influences, human cultural interventions, past experience and expectation of the result.
Objectivity has to do with truths which are mind independent i.e. not based on the judgment of a conscious entity or subject. To be objective means to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein views are not based on personal perception as an individual but on laid out truth as a member of a scientific community. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Now a conflict is born when these controversial questions are asked, "Are we to consider life from the subjective or objective sense? Can a totally subjective or objective viewpoint be achieved? Can each of these concepts exist independently, or do they need the existence of one another to function?"
I never finished my story about the little girl and the father. After moments of thoughtful hesitation, the father replied the child, "Honey, you can then term it to be providence. You can either wait for the person to return so as to gain permission or take a bit of the food and before leaving, drop a note explaining the reason for your action." Now that is a controversial case. Using the story above as a case study, there are two things involved; the existence of reality which is seen in the form of hunger and the consciousness of the person involved which is based on his moral disposition.
The situation is this; the man involved is torn between feeding his hunger as nature demands that he should and judging his action based on his moral beliefs. His action and opinion are controlled by his subjective sense, he is considering the situation from individuality based on his personal experience but that doesn't solve the reality of the hunger he is feeling. Now as to whether to view life from a completely subjective or objective sense, there is no known answer but one fact remains indefatigable and that is, these two concepts cannot be separated from each other. They actually co-exist. Without the existence of one, the other cannot function. For example, the life we live and everything in it all came through imagination and there is no how ideas from our mind would have been realized without reality itself. These concepts are self-conflicting and contradictory, the more you try to understand it, the more it gets you frustrated but in all these, for man to truly experience himself in the true sense, he should recognize the fact that his consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality. He should embrace the notion that truth is not automatically available to a human consciousness and can be obtained only by a certain mental process which is required of every man who seeks knowledge - that there is no substitute for this process, no escape from the responsibility for it. He should realize that man when it comes to knowledge decides what he chooses to do, according to what he has learned and his experience which therefore incapacitates him to look at life from the realistic viewpoint, however it is expedient for him to understand that he cannot create reality and can achieve his values only by making his decisions consonant with the facts of reality and also to always bear in mind that reality exists independent of one's perception of it. It is only then will he start experiencing the world in its uniqueness.
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