Seeing something with new eyes – a “subject-object” shift

Have you ever seen something with new eyes? A few years ago, I saw a fashion exhibit at the PEM museum in Mass., which used figures of mannequins with disabilities; that stunned me because it hadn’t occurred to me that you could use such a mannequin for an exhibit, much less someone differently abled. I hadn’t really “seen” differently abled people as objects of art, beauty, something to behold, so that was a real lesson.

I’m posting this in response to a Linkedin post by Jennifer Garvey Berger on the “subject-object” shift. When you’re not aware of a belief, you are subjected to it, it lies in your unconscious. Once you notice that you have this belief, it moves to “object” in the sense that now you can see the belief – and you can decide if you want to change how you think about it – like I “saw” the mannequin and realized an assumption that I held. I was able to examine my belief and do something about it, so I created a curriculum on diversity and bias, using pictures from that exhibit.

What’s something that is “subject” for you, maybe a belief about a group of people? It’s hard to ask what you’re not aware of, but it could be an interesting exercise 😉