Realizing the best of both

When we're relying on our eyesight to organize our experience, we entertain an illusion of objectivity. We see separate objects that are certainly cut off from ourselves. The connections are minimal like physical contact when we touch them, breathing the same air in their proximity or being supported by the same surface under our feet.

When we combine our eyesight with our biased perceptions, we switch from objectivity to subjectivity. We've left Modernism for Post-Modernism. We regard objectivity as a dominant narrative in need of deconstruction. We get a sense of relating to physical evidence with our own filters, frames of reference and enduring narratives. We subject the objects of our attention to our inability to be objective.

Both of these abuses of immersive experiences are asymmetric. They privilege our objective or subjective point of view over what we're immersively experiencing. We're somehow different, separate and special compared to whatever needs our point of view to experience it as it really is.

When we lose the subject/object distinction, we can no longer think about our experiences logically. We're left to experience them as interrelated, interdependent and interconnected. Whatever seems to be separate arises from the interwoven fabric of life. We are symmetric with whatever we experience.

With this symmetry comes negotiations. The others-than-us have interests in common and different from us. The connections afford opportunities to work a new and/or better deal. We may be facing a no-win double bind or an irresolvable dilemma. We may perceive a zero-sum game where winning can only occur at the expense of the loser. We may recognize an opportunity to sacrifice for the greater good whether the other's winning brings about a mutual change for the better. We may even capture one of those win/win paradoxes where interests synergize into a combination of benefits instead of conflicting in mutually exclusive agendas.

When these negotiations emerge from experienced symmetries, interests become objects that we subject to our inquiries and understandings. We take an interest in other's interests to find common and compatible interests. We can achieve an objective without indulging in objectivity. We realize particular benefits with our own point of view without subjecting the experience to relentless subjectivity. We realize the best of both: common & different interests, objectivity & subjectivity, as well as asymmetry & symmetry.