Processing Progress - Pilot

The topic? Intersubjectivity. The research? A work in progress?

As I think about and narrow my topic, I've been putting the majority of my focus onto determining how my topic will function as a project. I love the idea of intersubjectivity, it is an affinity that I have tried to stress throughout my blog posts up to this point. I feel that human relationships are at the heart of existence. Now I'm certainly not trying to be extravagant--after all, I am somewhat of a solitary creature myself. This being said, humans are (on a whole) social beings. We seek love. We seek friendship. Even our wars speak to an existence rife with interaction.

And what, pray, is interaction? Certainly there are many forms of interactions. There are those of passion and of coercion. Of affection and of spite. I want to look at the motives behind, and the function of, human interaction. Most specifically, I find myself consistently in an unnerved awe of the other--or more exactly, I suppose, of "otherness". Again I query: why must there be a you only insofar as there is a uniquely separate me? Why is there an us only given a them? Or is there an us that exists independently? Do we define things this way because of physical borders--clothing, flesh, the empty space that pervades the room between you and me.

What's more, people in different areas approach intersubjectivity in drastically different ways. My father is from New York, and hence I have spent much time in the city. Now, its not that the people are mean. In fact they are rather nice till you infringe upon their personal bubbles--the issue is that said bubble is a couple avenues in diameter. In all seriousness, New Yorkers can be incredibly aimiable. In fact, if you are on good terms with one, he or she will probably treat you like family. Most New Yorkers, however, do not feel an obligation to be nice for no reason. I suppose you must earn their courtesy. Compare this attitude to our very own "Seattle nice". Now I had never heard this term until a year or two ago, but in retrospect, its somewhat fitting. We've all done it: "Oh yeah, how have you been? Let's get coffee sometime." We say these things to our "fair weather friends" with little to no intent of actually getting coffee. The entire statement is ultimately a formality. This mode of interaction is distinctly different than what one would encounter in, for example, New York.

When I approach you on the street, what goes through your mind?
...who is she?
...what does she want?
...is she trying to sell me something?

Why, if we are truly such social creatures, do we have a noticeable aversion to interacting with strangers? Stranger. Is today's friend not yesterday's stranger? Stranger would seem to be the ultimate of otherness. We define and reduce someone to an abstract that defines him or her solely by his or her lack of a prior relationship with you. You are defining your current interaction by virtue of this "non-relationship".

Why do we seek to perpetuate the image of the other as an abstract rather than the other as simply a person we do not yet know? Does everyone do this? Does everyone do this to the same extent? If not, why not--and to what end?

Just Desserts

The streets are dirty. The walls a pristine white. Your stomach is in knots. Amazing really, how the intestines will twist and turn upon themselves when they have no food to bide them. Why do you find yourself here? Torn apart and thrown under the thumbs of four separate nations. Nothing but a pawn in a grand chess game of ever growing intensity. And there you sit, cold and hungry, leaning against an iron curtain. You cringe as the planes fly overhead. What now? What more could be done? The planes blot the sky. And yet, this time, the darkness it dotted with parachutes of white. You smile cautiously as you see the boxes descend, dancing across the sky. Food. Coal. Cars. 16 tons of vitality floats down on a daily basis. The airlift is here.



Decades after the war, as May rolls round Berliners rush out of their homes to celebrate the anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. To be sure, the airlift meant the vitality of hundreds of individuals. But look to the context. The Cold War raged as a brutal waltz between the Allies and the Soviets. Gaining its name from the distinct lack of physical, "hot", conflict, the Cold War was fought through strategic foreign policy. Ever since the the first world war, Germany had come to play a unique role in the global community. The Treaty of Versailles sought to cripple the German economy, to cripple the nation into impotence. The second war left the nation similarly devastated--gutted and divided into a multinational occupation. Each nation gripped voraciously onto its share. To be sure, Germany was more than just a nation. The airlift favored the West. It showed the compassion of the West in the face of the heartless tyranny of the Soviets. And yet, without the occupation, without the destruction of infrastructure, the airlift need not have occurred. Did the West engage in the airlift to save the Germans, or to defeat the Soviets? Are these intents mutually exclusive? Why does Germany honor the airlift, when its agents were also the ultimate source of its necessity? Perhaps, it is so as to avoid resentment. After all, resentment does not but hinder amiable foreign relations. But the Germans, of all nations, understand the importance of maintaining an awareness of the negative aspects of history. Certainly we cannot "resent" Hitler in the same way we can resent a body that still exists. But why should the policy not be maintained? Does the celebration of the airlift mask a relevant historical shadow? Or does it speak to the hope of peaceable foreign relations?

Altars and Others

There is me. There is you. We often ask "who am I?", perhaps to the detriment of the alluring question "who are you?" We ponder at length on the nature of the self. Perhaps because it is beautifully infuriating that the we can perplex ourselves to such a degree; or maybe because philosophy is ultimately narcissistic (I like to blame Ayn Rand). We struggle at such lengths to understand the self, implying that the self is fundamentally impossible to understand. By logical extension, if the other is also a "self", then the other should be equally irreducible. So why then is the question "who are you?" usually satisfied by the return of a name, which is ultimately an arbitrary label?

We talk of borders. The border between east and west, the border between nations. The border between the id and the ego. I wish to look at the border between me and you--between the self and the other. Intersubjectivity looks at the way in which people interact, at the capability of people to interact. Why the divide? Is there only a "me" given that there is a "you"? Is there only a "we" insofar as there is a "them"?

My idea is, admittedly, somewhat abstract. Yet, were I to build an alter, it would include the following:
A MASK to represent the persona one fronts to others and the face that others perceive.
A SCRIPT to represent the disconnect between general conversation and meaningful dialogue.
An ID to represent the radical reduction and objectification.
A TINTED WINDOW to represent the seemingly invisible wall that separates individuals and skews their perceptions of each other.