maas@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Mike Maas) (09/25/90)
I recommend reading Martin Buber's _I and Thou_. Buber has gone into great depth about objectification of others in this thin but extremely dense book. Someone has commented that the image of women as exhibited in Playboy et al. is an example of objectification. Agreed, and further any time one relates to another with a purpose aside from meeting the other in an I-Thou relationship they are in fact objectifying the individual. Other examples are racial slurs that allow individuals to be classified as something other than a brother or sister and thus allow them to be dehumanized, "meat market" night spots where the sole goal of meeting someone is for a "one-nighter", con games where the goal is to separate a victim from his/her money, or any situation where the goal is other than to meet someone in a relationship where the other is encountered as a fully human subject. There are of course countless other human interactions in daily life that are less substantive but still objectifying; and all of us, functional or dysfunctional, participate in such as a daily necessity. If we could encounter every store clerk, bus driver, subordinate, colleage or supervisor or any other casual interaction without objectifying our relationships life would be great and much more spiritual than it is, most people however, cannot do this. (Those that do, like perhaps Mother Teresa, are virtually living saints.) I would state further that this is the promised "peace that surpasseth all understanding". For those of us in *A organizations the greatest temptations are to use others to support our addiction either as objects of addiction (sex, love or relationship addictions etc. ) or as means to support an addiction (either by using someone to get whatever one is addicted to, or by using someone as a crutch to support the "ok"ness of the addiction). The twelve steps lead us away from objectification and towards fully human relationships. I believe these are the relationships our HP calls us to live. As a Christian, I more particularly believe that this fully human way of living is what Jesus teaches us to do. Finally, I believe the source of "sin" is precisely located in objectification of relationships. Thus the sin of lust is not lust itself, but the underlying objectification of the lusted for individual.