sense and subjectivity

subjectivity is a subject I've been thinking about for a while now. (you're right, that is a horrible sentence, and yes, I am going to leave it that way). I'd been musing on it internally for quite some time when, after a filling dinner at HB with my friend Natalie (one of the supremely honored women in my life and undoubtedly one of the world's best listeners), half the bottle of pink wine I had consumed prompted me to share some very fuzzy thoughts with her on the way home. what I tried to relate (no doubt, poorly) was (and continues to be) my awe with the simultaneous independent and intertwined experience of the some six billion people on this earth, and as if that weren't enough fodder to keep me chewing for a few lifetimes, how those subjectivities relate to God. if you've ever seen the movie I Heart Huckabees, it's sort of the blanket concept--that here's a war, and here's a tree, and here's an orgasm and they're all connected. (disclaimer: I've been reading Alfred North Whitehead and even taught Adventures of Ideas in my Human Nature and the Social Order class, and these have both undoubtedly colored my own subjectivity). part of each of our subjectivities is our past experiences and how we bring those into the future. i've often thought it interesting that in my nuclear family there are (currently) something like 164 years of experience between my parents and sister and I, some of it shared, but all of it experienced uniquely. JD and I have about 51 years of experience between us, and given our extensive long-distance relationship prior to the present, the stuff that we've directly experienced together is a fairly small percentage of each of our lives. learning to live together in community and to understand how the other formed their outlook and opinions is certainly among the blessings and challenges of marriage.

learning to identify with and trying to understand "the other" (I believe it's called "alterity" to use a philosophical word coined by Emmanuel Levinas, but even earlier described by Adam Smith and perhaps others...even St. Paul?) seems an important task for a wannabe ethicist such as myself and for all humans who would be humane (me too, and hopefully you). alterity seems to me an important counterpart to judging well and growing in wisdom. thinking theologically for a moment, to laugh with those who are laughing and weep with those who are weeping are rather biblical commands that ought to put Christians in a perpetual state of tension and discernment. and one more thought for the road: I can't help but think that God must derive some pleasure from the varieties of subjectivities of those made Imago Dei. (well, perhaps some pleasure and probably a lot of grief.) I venture to think that the uniqueness represented by his creatures, and indeed, his creation, mirror the gratuitous abundance of God...

more about this, and perhaps some conspiracy theories, thoughts about my possible shift toward populism, and musings on globalization and the middle class soon. your comments are warmly welcomed. what are you thinking about?