Brutal Objectivity

October 2025

Here's what I've had on my mind lately: how losing one conjecture after another paints a picture of its own. How the only way of being brutally and objectively honest is taking no position whatsoever about anything. And how it's actually impossible to achieve this.

But it's never true or false, black or white, one or zero. Never binary.

You can try to improve this as a skill of observation. You can try to achieve objectivity temporarily. But it's complicated, and impossible, from an experiential perspective.

What brutal objectivity actually is: it's not about self-criticism or judgment. It's non-position taking. Being a mere observer. It's not about adding a new lens, a perspective whatsoever. It's about dropping every lens you can possibly become aware of. It's subtracting, not adding. As simple as you can understand it, but as subtle as feeling the breath you inhale brush against your upper lip.

A method you can use to become more objective is noticing how your body reacts. Every tension you hold shows where your attention has landed. Every thought and feeling creates small movements, tensions carried into the present moment, often subconsciously. It's the small movements: how you fixate your eyes on a person when anticipating their next words, how you tighten your shoulders when you think about a future scenario.

When you try to be brutally objective in your observations, it pays off in the body's relaxation away from these patterns.

But there are mental projections as well. Thoughts, emotions, sometimes they come one after another. They can be more swift than bodily sensations, like writing on still water. They come and they go. They can be harder to notice, and more likely to build on themselves.

These patterns are not unpleasant, that would just be another projection of the mind. The point isn't to label anything, but to let go of the need to label, accepting things as they are.

Mental projections create narratives of who you are, who someone else is. They serve a purpose: keeping you glued to your story, a story you sometimes share with others to find common ground. But they drift you away from brutal objectivity. They label things which are only conjectures. And if you chase them down their cause-and-effect chains, you see they're caused by another tension arising in your body.

Mental projections and bodily sensations create feedback loops together. You might notice how relaxing the body shifts your thoughts as well.

Once you realize that the tension you hold drifts you away from objectivity, and you start to accept those tensions as they come, you notice they begin to cease. You see the chain of cause and effect, both in your body and in your mind.

Once you unclench your jaw, untighten your shoulders, breathe into your belly again, your second thoughts arrive softer. The following seconds become more objective, more peaceful. Your cravings lose intensity, whether they want something, or want to step away from something. Less magnitude.

Your mind opens space for clearer vision. It's as if the glue that sticks the narrative of your mind starts to peel away.

At first it felt unfamiliar, like I might be letting go of something I was used to holding. But in the end it felt more like leaving yourself to the sea, realizing that holding on to the water doesn't keep you afloat. It was the buoyancy all along.

But the moment you stop meeting these tensions with acceptance, they gather again. The stories return, the patterns reappear. That's just how the mind works.

And then you begin to see their causality. When you step back and watch, it looks like a fireplace.

Each bodily tension, each mental projection, each emotion without an object, at a deeper level they're like firewood feeding the fire.

You feed one log after another, sometimes multiple at once. Each one makes the next burn brighter if you keep feeding it.

There's no life without fire. And brutal objectivity means extinguishing the fire, which isn't really possible while you're alive.

But it is definitely possible to make your observation more objective, your intellect sharper. To be as objective as possible. To accept things as they are. To let go of the tensions and mental patterns that flare up your firewood.

What I tried to describe is as simple as it sounds, but harder to practice. Brutal objectivity is the non-existence of fire. There'll always be some part of me that holds a tension and that's okay. It's part of being alive.