Objectivity Isn't Depersonalization

Journals, Journalists, Weblogs. Tom Foremski, SiliconValleyWatcher, in the journalism panel brought back to mind yesterday these are all variations of the same roots and the same theme.

Journalists strive for objectivity, says Shel Holtz.

Actually, it is spiritual seekers whom strive for objectivity. That's nirvana. I don't know about you, but I'm still a long way from enlightenment.

Instead of objectivity, what we typically get is the varnish of objectivity in the bland substitute form of depersonalization.  Carefully extracting any semblance of life out a written piece doesn't magically make it objective no matter how hard we try.

A former journalist at the Blog Business Summit shares in a conversation that he struggles to find his own voice after decades of reporting.  He'll experiment with a personal blog to see if he can uncover it. He's been trained to be objective. His editor always preached, "I'd rather have a good reporter than a good writer."

I don't think it's just media that strives for this "objective" depersonalization, but corporations and businesses have taken their cue in their own communications to customers, partners, investors, employees and the larger community for untold time.

After nearly a week of traveling (Blog Business Summit, New Comm Forum kicked off by Robert Scoble's 40th birthday party), I arrive home last night to find my long lost journal in a U.S. Customs inspected package. Stamps from Phuket, Thailand give away the contents.

My journal and my disposable camera (with my only photos of Koh Jum) are the only material possesions I cared a damn about trying to get back. I had heard everything was looted in the ensuing post-tsunami aftermath of the evacuation and recovering bodies on Koh Phi Phi. That said, after the wave rolled back to the sea on the small beach nothing tangible was all that important.

I've been thinking about stories of late. They are one of many ways of sense-making (someone used that term this week). Tomorrow I'm off to the Wild Writing Women conference. To write. Stories. I have some stories - not notes - to share from this incredible week soon, but the arrival of my journal has me in a quite different place.

Why do stories matter so much? Where would I start....Well, here's one reason:

An enemy is one whose story we have not heard. - Gene Knudsen Hoffman

My last journal entry is dated December 24, 2004. It's a long piece. The final words I penned before the tsunami that ravaged the Indian Ocean and the lives of all of us caught up in a torrent were scrawled as reminder to my own self.

They are about true objectivity. And that is worth striving for.

Seeing means such a state when all your projections cease, when you have no viewpoints. When you do no have individual eyes to impose conditions, when you have no emotions and desires to project, then seeing happens.

See the desert when you are not thirsty; the desert cannot deceive you then. - Finger Pointing to the Moon: Discourses on the Adhyatma Upanishad, by Osho

Comments

[Shel Holtz]

I suppose it all depends on the definition of "objectivity," doesn't it? According to the school of media ethics, objectivity "means standing so far from the community that you see all events and all viewpoints as equally distant and important, or unimportant for that matter. It is employed by giving equal weight to all viewpoints--or, if not, giving all an interesting twist, within taste. The result is a presentation of facts in a true non-partisan manner, and then standing back to let the reader decide which view is true. By going about it this way, we are defining objectivity not by the way we go about gathering and interpreting the news, but by what we actually put in the paper."

Journalists do, indeed, strive for this definition of objectivity -- at least, the good ones do. The goal of objectivity, in any case, certainly isn't restricted to one group or another. Anybody who finds value in it can seek it.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

I didn't mention I started out in the School of Communications seeking a journalism degree before I switched to computer science (and later electrical engineering). I actually quite like the standard definition of objectivity too - I think looking at things from different perspectives and seeing all sides of an issue or viewpoint and presenting these to the reader and letting them make up their own mind are incredibly valuable skills. It's still on my wishlist to write a ChangeThis manifesto titled "Changing Our Own Minds, Thank You."

I wish more people wrote objectively as possible on blogs. Yet many people mistake objectivity with emotional distance and deathly, leaden writing.

I'm going even a level deeper here - it's tempting to project unto others in the psychological sense in every moment of our lives. We do it all the time without fully realizing it. Dropping all our projections literally is the definition of enlightenment.

[toolfan]

I really liked this article on "objectivity isn't depersonalization". It is so true.

We can gain so much insights if we would frequently pause and drop all projections. Or in another way, we could just train ourselves to be conscious of every projection we experience. Being aware of one's own projections is a very valuable quality.

But instead of seeing everything detached and unemotionally it seems important to combine the personal viewpoint and the objective viewpoint. Maybe enlightenment isn't just being objective, but perhaps it is integrating objectivity with one's own personal experiences and emotions.