The eternal distinction: subjective vs objective reality

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY - 1.1 - THE PROBLEM OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE

Society does indeed possess objective facticity. And society is indeed built up by activity that expresses subjective meaning. And, incidentally, Durkheim knew the latter, just as Weber knew the former.

A way to observe these two phenomena - subjective and objective reality - from a close range is their different legitimation processes. Objective: to be found as sayings, journals and expressions out there in society. Subjective: relates to an individual’s biography, life experience or life story.

Threats to the subjective reality can, for instance, come from confrontation with the past when you “were a different person”. So in re-socialisation, such as becoming religious, past truths and realities run counter to present realities.

Threats to the objective reality can, for instance, come from a deviant group that has operated segregated long enough to pass on diverging versions of reality.

Here we clearly see the difference between subjective reality and objective reality.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY - 3.1.3 - MAINTENANCE AND TRANSFORMATION OF SUBJECTIVE REALITY

[…] reality as apprehended in individual consciousness rather than on reality as institutionally defined.

Two widely different and grossly asymmetrical perspectives, and yet, both are to be understood as knowledge.

Objective reality can accrue in massive amounts and collide like plate tectonics. The contours of such huge institutions require a high vantage point to be understood. Two realities will divide the masses and require processes of maintenance of each reality to avoid devaluating each.

Subjective reality relates to one’s own biography, one’s experience of a life. The affective experience of a reality requires a personal vantage point to be understood. Two realities will divide the mind and weaken and diffuse the accent of reality that we acquire in childhood, where it is also the strongest.

Maintenance procedures such as nihilation and therapy apply to both, as they both are methods of subsuming one body of knowledge under another body of knowledge.

Maintenance of subjective reality is undertaken by the individual herself. Solutions may entail associating with other people to “borrow” their reality and repeat the language and habits which refresh the reality accent of routines of daily life.

Maintenance of objective reality, though, is undertaken by a corps of professional legitimisers, at least if the society in question has produced a highly advanced legitimating knowledge.

Schemes of universe maintenance

Somewhat surprisingly, the authors legitimise the traditional Western approach to anthropology by suggesting (loosely) an evolution of grand symbolic orders from mythology to theology to philosophy and finally to science.

While the sequence is well established in Western social lore, it is here dissected through their own lens.

Mythology

For our purposes, it is sufficient to define mythology as a conception of reality that posits the ongoing penetration of the world of everyday experience by sacred forces.

Since their project is about reality, which means knowledge and other objectivations as cultural artefacts, they attach no significance at all to the data provided. The term “sacred forces” is merely another sign in the culture under observation.

Several myths can coexist, as there can’t be much conflict around several postulates of the existence of different forces.

Mythology requires little of the intellect, hence we can all be priests. Therefore:

To safeguard the specialists' monopolistic claim the non-accessibility of their lore must be institutionally established. That is, a ‘secret’ is posited, and an intrinsically exoteric body of knowledge is institutionally defined in esoteric terms.

… Which is the obvious legitimation a sociologist must invent to safeguard his position as explainer of the ethnographic universe.

Theology

With the transition from mythology to theology, everyday life appears less ongoingly penetrated by sacred forces.

The body of theological knowledge […] becomes intrinsically more difficult to acquire. Even where it is not deliberately institutionalized as esoteric, it remains ‘secret’ by virtue of its unintelligibility to the general populace.

Theology is the midway between religion and (almost) secular philosophy. Dialectical intricacies extend and later supplant the religious reality.

Philosophy

Not dwelled upon. They say nothing except that it was a historical form preceding science. I will venture that they consider philosophy almost, but not quite, secularised and highly esoteric.

Science

Science not only completes the removal of the sacred from the world of everyday life, but removes universe-maintaining knowledge as such from that world.

[…] the ‘lay’ member of society no longer knows how his universe is to be conceptually maintained […]

The ultimate esoteric legitimation. Unless you study it, you are left out of it.

Often we encounter this conundrum of a domain of knowledge that is only understood by those inducted to its secrets and yet forms a part of society’s shared stock of knowledge. Now we are used to deal with the fact that objective facticities have different subjective realities for those who play different roles relating to the institution in question.

Maintenance

Maintaining objective reality is a collective effort and of course especially involves the legitimising elite, who in more evolved societies are the only ones who can operate the language of the theories involved.

The problem: On a large scale, coherence in reality over demography and time is impossible to maintain. Splinter groups are bound to form.

The two solutions:

• Therapy: Resocialise the deviants - typically works for a small minority.
• Nihilation: Protect the remaining non-deviants - often when the deviant group becomes too large and well-spoken.

Therapy

Therapy entails the application of conceptual machinery to ensure that actual or potential deviants stay within the institutionalized definitions of reality, or, in other words, to prevent the ‘inhabitants’ of a given universe from ‘emigrating’.

To “cure” people, a “pathology” is required.

Since therapy must concern itself with deviations from the ‘official’ definitions of reality, it must develop a conceptual machinery to account for such deviations and to maintain the realities thus challenged. This requires a body of knowledge that include a theory of deviance, a diagnostic apparatus, and a conceptual system for the ‘cure of souls’.

Once a majority have convinced themselves that a minority is not different, but also pathological, a process of therapy can commence. The deviant can be schooled to see things “properly”

The subjective aspect of all knowledge - including the symbolic order - as always relate to the degree of how much a reality can be taken for granted.

On a more fundamental level, the deviant’s conduct challenges the societal reality as such, putting in question its taken-for-granted cognitive […] and normative […] operating procedures.

When we come to the part on subjective reality, it becomes more clear that the sense of immediacy and immanence of reality matters quite a bit. Arguing against something is benign. Compromising a reality’s immediacy on the other hand is a real danger.

Successful therapy establishes a symmetry between the conceptual machinery and its subjective appropriation in the individual’s consciousness; it re-socializes the deviant into the objective reality of the symbolic universe of the society. There is, of course, considerable subjective satisfaction in such a return to ‘normalcy’.

Nihilation

Legitimation maintains the reality of the socially constructed universe; nihilation denies the reality of whatever phenomena or interpretations of phenomena do not fit into that universe.

Cognitive mining is perhaps a better word. By making it meaningless to venture beyond the given reality, the protectors in an alternative way guard against walking astray. If nothing else, it may protect those who have not yet emigrated from considering the possibility. “There is only desert outside”.

A very politically sober way of saying it:

Whether one [...] goes on to liquidate physically what one has liquidated conceptually, is a practical question of policy. The material power of the conceptually liquidated group will be a not insignificant factor in most cases. Sometimes, alas, circumstances force one to remain on friendly terms with barbarians.

It captures nicely the problem of politics. Outsiders can against all wishes be filthy rich, and then you can’t just annihilate them.

Denying barren grounds beyond our borders any semblance of reality is one kind of nihilation, which serves to trigger a response as soon as we come near: The feeling of loss of reality. A diminishing of the strong assertiveness that our normal world usually has. This is sufficient to push back most people from deviating.

One could also flip “from heresiology to apologetics”, as the book says.

Second, nihilation involves the more ambitious attempt to account for all deviant definitions of reality in terms of concepts belonging to one’s own universe.

By taking over the deviant group’s own ideas and refitting them into the dominant framework, where they will be ascribed an inferior explanatory power, one has effectively turned them into patients.

The final goal of this procedure is to incorporate the deviant conceptions within one’s own universe, and thereby to liquidate them ultimately. The deviant conceptions must, therefore, be translated into concepts derived from one’s own universe. In this manner, the negation of one’s universe is subtly changed into an affirmation of it.

The obvious consequence of a society’s groups embarking on a process of explaining each other, is that ideological battles will ensue. This is a topic for the next chapter.