This is not an article bashing the age of objective reasoning it is also not an article lauding the wonders of subjective reasoning. It is just a flashlight, pointing quickly in the direction of each.

In a nut shell,

Objective:  (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Pretty much if you can measure it it exists, if you can’t measure it with a device, physical or statistical,  it doesn’t exist, and cannot really be trusted. In the modern world this model has served us amazingly well. We have developed amazing machines that objectivly measure so much of our universe, the leaps of human knowledge have been astounding from this model of sceptisism alone.  This method of skeptisism does have some pitfalls.

Subjective: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.

In short it is the labratory of your own body/mind. Developing a language and the construct of intelligence viewing intelligence to be a better steward of yourself and hone your intuition. This is also a method of skeptisism.  There are amazing arts that have been built in this arena that have yeilded incredible discoveries. One of these is a highly developed personal bullshit meter. This method also has some pitfalls.

 

Imagine now building a model of the subjective for yourself that is constantly being honed and revised and held to exceedinly high standards of honesty and truthfulness with oneself. Where the simple act of lying to oneself would be an afront to All of humanity, and whenever personal bullshit and bias is discovered it is corrected. Imagine if each of us held ourselves to a subjective standard of excellence and would no more knowingly lie about our experience than a true scientist would lie about readings recieved from a precise instrument. Think of how the world would change.

Well, as humans being humans, we lie. Sometimes without even knowing we are lying. Consciousness is a very wiggly subject to explore, though without the personal exploration we are doomed. Without bulding within each of us, models for watching and intereacting with our own consciousness we will start to forget that we can screw up the most well designed machines or the most well meaning philosophies.

Knowing when we lie to ourselves, when we are being truthful, and learning how to make corrections when we discover we are lying to ourselves is an important skill to hone because it not only affects our own lives but the lives of every other person on this mudball rocketing through space. Luckily there have been plenty of people who have walked this difficult path before you. We all need an honest dose of this right now!

The reasons we have skeptisism of the press, is because we have been lied to. The reasons we have been skeptical of science is because where science and commerce meet we have been lied to. It all boils down to the integrity of individual minds. Like yours and mine. To build and hone a bullshit meter within yourself and know without a doubt that building integrity and truthfulness is fundamental to a well working society seems to be a great achievment and one that is worth hours of cultivation. 

Here is a meditative way to watch this process and build a subjective language with yourself. Meditation #2.  Truth be known pretty much everything from the Buddhist and Taoist traditions  from which I have experience is building a subjective language with yourself. Some examples would be:  How do I relax? How well am I directing my concentration? What is Balance? What is playful? What is nourishing? What is Toxic? How deep does this looking go?