Tara! Very well written piece. I have not read this Austen book but just purchased it!
I thought this would be relaxing reading for 2 AM ( my time alone) but you have my mind going and now I will surely not fall asleep quick. The idea of subjectivity is interesting but as applied to the current state of things , was quite interesting. Thank you for writing this. Looking forward to more thought pieces! I’ll let you know what I think of the book!
I'm glad you liked it, June, and I hope you got to sleep quickly! Mansfield Park will probably be more of a relaxing read (except for when everyone is pressuring Fanny about Mr. Crawford!). I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Love this. The conversation between Edmund and Mary about time and distance and calculating and "facts" vs. subjectivity is just wonderful, and wonderful to see it highlighted here. For the Austen Connection series on Adam Smith I'm hoping to tackle the concept of subjectivity - it's a factor in his philosophy that Austen, as you show here with this perfect passage, picks up on, and of course almost always in hilarious ways. Glad to find your Substack!
I’m so glad you are writing here! And I enjoyed this piece! I think Mansfield Park was one of the Jane Austen novels I didn’t really connect with in my early twenties (a time when I wanted to be swept off my feet by Mr Darcy in every Jane Austen novel). Now I want to revisit it.
From my corner of the world (lots of somatic processing) I’d be curious to bring polyvagal theory into conversation with these voices. Polyvagal theory looks at how our bodies gather information (which is in part coded into our genetics and also informed by our lived experience), and shifts our bodies into modes of safety or varying degrees of threat.
Where I think it pertains to your piece is that it teases apart subjectivity a bit. It helps distinguish between the subjectivity of minorities saying “we experience this aspect of American culture as unsafe” and the subjectivity of politicians manipulating facts for their personal ends. One is embodied, the other is disembodied. I do think you did a good job teasing this out in your piece, but the language of subjectivity can blur those lines a bit.
The other way PVT pertains to this for me, is that when I feel threatened by something someone said, I can ask why is my body responding this way? What stories does body hold, and why were they triggered? Sometimes I realized a story was triggered that has nothing to do with the present interaction, and I can proceed with a clearer mind. Other times I recognize assumptions on the part of the speaker that erase some essential part of my experience. I guess what I want to say is that by leaning into my own subjective experience of the world, I’m able to come to a place where I’m more grounded and less reactive in my interactions.
Also, I did read P&P after Mansfield (which I do highly recommend), and wow. Who doesn't want a Darcy?! I may just find a reason to write him into this conversation.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, Shaina. I'm not familiar with PVT per se, but I'm curious to learn more, as you suggest. There is much more to perception or "truth" than dualistic subjective or objective, and I look forward to your input as I continue to tease that out.
This month I finally found the book on polyvagal theory I had been looking for. It’s Our Polyvagal World by Stephen Porges. It gives you the meat of the theory without feeling like you’re reading an academic text on evolutionary neurobiology. I’m only 20% through it, but I highly recommend it.
I'm leaving the topic of subjectivity behind for a moment while working on another post, but I wanted to get back to the important point you make. I think one of the most wonderful things about modernity is how we are learning to take feelings seriously and use them as important sources of information about the world, as you describe. However, the danger of Mary Crawford is treating those feelings as reality itself (this walk feels long, therefore we have walked a long ways). I think we have the best of both worlds when we can treat feelings as clues about reality (this walk feels long, I wonder what the watch says) or as insight into our own response (this walk feels much longer than it's actually been - what is happening that's making it feel that way?).
A way I’ve learned to take my feelings seriously in recent years is trusting that my feelings are always telling me the truth about *something*, but it’s often a great act of discernment, that can can take weeks or months of just sitting with a recurrent feeling, to understand what that something is.
Never read the book before but you really dug into it! Subjectivity ... It seems to have a streak of self importance as well. When I think of myself as most important I can easily slip into defining my own rules that prop me up ... Or something like that.
Definitely. I think this brand of self-importance is the one that rejects an external referent. Austen makes a point of painting Mary Crawford as less spiritually pious than the norm, and I think this has a lot to do with it. If one references no external moral code - no external accountability - then the "ego" is the next most significant referent.
Tara! Very well written piece. I have not read this Austen book but just purchased it!
I thought this would be relaxing reading for 2 AM ( my time alone) but you have my mind going and now I will surely not fall asleep quick. The idea of subjectivity is interesting but as applied to the current state of things , was quite interesting. Thank you for writing this. Looking forward to more thought pieces! I’ll let you know what I think of the book!
I'm glad you liked it, June, and I hope you got to sleep quickly! Mansfield Park will probably be more of a relaxing read (except for when everyone is pressuring Fanny about Mr. Crawford!). I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
This is wonderful, Tara. I must mull. I'm so glad you took this step! More soon.
Thanks, Anna! I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Love this. The conversation between Edmund and Mary about time and distance and calculating and "facts" vs. subjectivity is just wonderful, and wonderful to see it highlighted here. For the Austen Connection series on Adam Smith I'm hoping to tackle the concept of subjectivity - it's a factor in his philosophy that Austen, as you show here with this perfect passage, picks up on, and of course almost always in hilarious ways. Glad to find your Substack!
I’m so glad you are writing here! And I enjoyed this piece! I think Mansfield Park was one of the Jane Austen novels I didn’t really connect with in my early twenties (a time when I wanted to be swept off my feet by Mr Darcy in every Jane Austen novel). Now I want to revisit it.
From my corner of the world (lots of somatic processing) I’d be curious to bring polyvagal theory into conversation with these voices. Polyvagal theory looks at how our bodies gather information (which is in part coded into our genetics and also informed by our lived experience), and shifts our bodies into modes of safety or varying degrees of threat.
Where I think it pertains to your piece is that it teases apart subjectivity a bit. It helps distinguish between the subjectivity of minorities saying “we experience this aspect of American culture as unsafe” and the subjectivity of politicians manipulating facts for their personal ends. One is embodied, the other is disembodied. I do think you did a good job teasing this out in your piece, but the language of subjectivity can blur those lines a bit.
The other way PVT pertains to this for me, is that when I feel threatened by something someone said, I can ask why is my body responding this way? What stories does body hold, and why were they triggered? Sometimes I realized a story was triggered that has nothing to do with the present interaction, and I can proceed with a clearer mind. Other times I recognize assumptions on the part of the speaker that erase some essential part of my experience. I guess what I want to say is that by leaning into my own subjective experience of the world, I’m able to come to a place where I’m more grounded and less reactive in my interactions.
Also, I did read P&P after Mansfield (which I do highly recommend), and wow. Who doesn't want a Darcy?! I may just find a reason to write him into this conversation.
😂😂
Thanks so much for your thoughts, Shaina. I'm not familiar with PVT per se, but I'm curious to learn more, as you suggest. There is much more to perception or "truth" than dualistic subjective or objective, and I look forward to your input as I continue to tease that out.
This month I finally found the book on polyvagal theory I had been looking for. It’s Our Polyvagal World by Stephen Porges. It gives you the meat of the theory without feeling like you’re reading an academic text on evolutionary neurobiology. I’m only 20% through it, but I highly recommend it.
I'm leaving the topic of subjectivity behind for a moment while working on another post, but I wanted to get back to the important point you make. I think one of the most wonderful things about modernity is how we are learning to take feelings seriously and use them as important sources of information about the world, as you describe. However, the danger of Mary Crawford is treating those feelings as reality itself (this walk feels long, therefore we have walked a long ways). I think we have the best of both worlds when we can treat feelings as clues about reality (this walk feels long, I wonder what the watch says) or as insight into our own response (this walk feels much longer than it's actually been - what is happening that's making it feel that way?).
A way I’ve learned to take my feelings seriously in recent years is trusting that my feelings are always telling me the truth about *something*, but it’s often a great act of discernment, that can can take weeks or months of just sitting with a recurrent feeling, to understand what that something is.
Never read the book before but you really dug into it! Subjectivity ... It seems to have a streak of self importance as well. When I think of myself as most important I can easily slip into defining my own rules that prop me up ... Or something like that.
Definitely. I think this brand of self-importance is the one that rejects an external referent. Austen makes a point of painting Mary Crawford as less spiritually pious than the norm, and I think this has a lot to do with it. If one references no external moral code - no external accountability - then the "ego" is the next most significant referent.