Embracing Subjectivity with Objective Self-Awareness: A Balanced Strategy to Tackle Epistemic Injustice, Gaslighting, Trolling, and Unequal Justice
Fritz Heider (1946)In today’s interconnected world, our personal experiences and perspectives, or subjectivity, play an essential role in shaping how we view and respond to the challenges we face. Subjectivity—the lens through which we interpret the world—can enrich our understanding of others and the social dynamics around us. However, when it becomes unbalanced or weaponized, it can lead to harmful consequences like epistemic injustice, gaslighting, trolling, and unequal justice.
To combat these issues, we need to embrace subjectivity while balancing it with objective self-awareness. This blog post outlines an approach that celebrates personal perspectives while fostering a reflective, inclusive mindset, providing a problem-solving strategy that encourages both personal expression and fairness.
Why Subjectivity Matters
Subjectivity is valuable because it allows us to express our unique perspectives, shaped by our backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences. It fosters creativity, empathy, and diversity in thought. However, subjectivity without self-awareness can lead to biases, emotional manipulation, and a failure to acknowledge the lived experiences of others. This imbalance can manifest in serious social issues:
• Epistemic Injustice occurs when certain groups are marginalized or discredited in their ability to contribute knowledge because their subjective experiences are dismissed.
• Gaslighting involves manipulating someone’s subjective reality, causing them to doubt their own perceptions.
• Trolling thrives on exploiting people’s emotions and subjective experiences, creating conflict and toxicity.
• Unequal Justice stems from biased legal and social systems that fail to apply objective standards equally, often influenced by subjective prejudices.
A Balanced Approach: Subjectivity + Objective Self-Awareness
The key to solving these issues lies in balancing subjectivity with objective self-awareness. This balance allows us to honor our personal experiences while remaining mindful of how they intersect with broader truths and the experiences of others. Here’s how we can apply this balanced approach to tackle the core issues:
1. Epistemic Injustice: Embrace Diverse Knowledge Systems
Focus: Valuing all voices and experiences as legitimate sources of knowledge.
Problem-Solving Strategy:
• Celebrate Diverse Perspectives: Acknowledge that different communities—whether based on race, gender, culture, or socio-economic status—have unique insights and knowledge. Rather than imposing a dominant narrative, create spaces where these diverse voices can share their subjective experiences.
• Objective Self-Awareness: Ensure that we recognize our own biases and how they may impact our acceptance of others’ knowledge. Reflect on questions like, “Why do I find certain knowledge systems more credible than others?” and “How does my background shape my understanding of truth?”
• Action: Institutions, workplaces, and community groups can host inclusive dialogues, ensuring that historically marginalized voices are heard and respected as experts in their lived experiences. This approach also encourages people in power to actively listen rather than dismiss differing perspectives as irrelevant or uncredible.
2. Gaslighting: Validating Personal Experiences
Focus: Preventing the manipulation of individuals’ perceptions by validating personal realities.
Problem-Solving Strategy:
• Celebrate Subjectivity: Encourage individuals to trust their own perceptions and emotions. In relationships, workplaces, and communities, we must cultivate environments where people feel safe sharing their experiences without fear of invalidation or manipulation.
• Objective Self-Awareness: Recognize when personal biases might lead us to question or dismiss others’ experiences. Reflect on our own motivations when we challenge someone’s perception—are we genuinely seeking clarity, or are we uncomfortable with their reality?
• Action: Promote practices such as active listening and empathic inquiry, where people engage with one another’s subjective experiences without immediately challenging or minimizing them. Training in conflict resolution and psychological safety in workplaces and schools can also help combat gaslighting.
3. Trolling: Creating Constructive Digital Spaces
Focus: Fostering respectful online environments where differing views are handled constructively.
Problem-Solving Strategy:
• Celebrate Subjectivity: Recognize that online spaces are full of diverse perspectives, and this diversity is a strength. Encourage individuals to express themselves authentically while being aware of the impact their words may have on others.
• Objective Self-Awareness: When engaging online, be aware of how emotions drive interactions. Trolls often prey on emotional responses; practicing self-awareness helps individuals avoid getting baited into toxic exchanges. Reflect on why certain issues provoke strong reactions and how to respond in a measured, constructive way.
• Action: Social media platforms and online communities can implement stricter policies against harmful behavior while promoting digital literacy that teaches users how to engage respectfully. Tools like AI moderation can also detect trolling behavior, but ultimately, educating users on empathy and accountability is key to fostering healthier digital interactions.
4. Unequal Justice: Addressing Bias and Prejudice
Focus: Ensuring that legal and social systems apply objective standards while acknowledging personal and communal histories.
Problem-Solving Strategy:
• Celebrate Subjectivity: Acknowledge that personal backgrounds—race, gender, culture, socioeconomic status—profoundly shape how people experience justice. Courts, law enforcement, and policymakers must consider these subjective realities in decision-making, particularly when assessing the fairness of laws and their application.
• Objective Self-Awareness: Legal professionals and policymakers need to consistently reflect on their own biases. Ask questions like, “How might my background influence my interpretation of laws?” and “Am I applying these standards equally to all individuals, regardless of their identity?”
• Action: Implement bias training for judges, lawyers, and law enforcement to promote fairness and equality in the justice system. Additionally, create community-based panels that bring diverse voices into the legal conversation to ensure policies are shaped with a broader understanding of social realities.
Conclusion
A strategy that celebrates subjectivity while embracing objective self-awareness offers a balanced, compassionate, and fair way to tackle the pressing issues of epistemic injustice, gaslighting, trolling, and unequal justice. This approach invites everyone to express their unique perspectives while fostering a deeper, more reflective understanding of how our personal realities intersect with the experiences of others.
By promoting empathy, active listening, and self-reflection, we can build a society where diversity of thought is celebrated, manipulation and injustice are challenged, and justice is applied fairly across all communities. This balance between honoring personal experiences and applying objective standards is key to creating an equitable world where everyone’s truth is respected.