This is http://www.essayz.com/a9312182.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %IDEAL PARTICIPANT OBSERVER OBJECT REFLEXIVE 931218 It is a false ideal to affirm that we can transcend our biases by being detached observers who do not reflect at all upon our participation in the relationships which we seek to articulate clearly. We are always participants in the relationships which we articulate clearly; else we could not be informed about the nature of those relationships. It is dishonest to pretend that we are not participants in the relationships about which we are knowledgeable. The traditional compulsive objectivist is dishonest. The traditional compulsive objectivists cannot without bias reflect upon the ways in which they approach the objects which are the subjects of their considerations. They cannot reflect upon how they affect the subjects of their considerations---by how they inter-relate with their subjects which are often the victims of their manipulations. They cannot honestly reflect upon the nature of their own affections within their relationships with other people who inter-relate with them as they themselves subject objects to detached consideration. Compulsive objectivists articulate elaborate theories about how impersonal objects interact and relate to each other in the absence of them and any reflexive thoughts about each other; but they test those objective theories in the absence of even any simple articulated theory about how they as persons interact and relate to each other in the presence of meaningful reflexive thoughts about each other as affective persons who are affected by how they relate to objects and to each other as persons. We cannot be true to ourselves and each other with personal and communal integrity in the absence of any commonly shared understanding of how we affect each other in our relationships with each other and how we affect the objects which are the primary focus of our attention. Thus compulsive objectivists cannot be true to themselves, each other, or us with personal and communal integrity; because their paradigm requires the absence of any commonly shared personal understanding of how they affect each other and us in their relationships with each other and with the objects which are the primary focus of their attention. It is their exclusivity which undermines integrity. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================