Re-Visioning "Things": Part 1

This is Part One of a five-part series called Re-Visioning "Things." It inspires us to consider how seeing the everyday "things"of our lives as meetings rather than it-objects can transform our lives for the better.

Why “Things” Are Important

It is impossible to live and not experience “things”. Our interactions with “things” weave the fabric of every moment of every day of our lives. Rather than take “things” as granted, we do well to look closely at the “things” of our everyday lives. By re-visioning “things,” we can transform our lives in more life-affirming ways. When we transform our own lives, we transform the lives of others and the world.

Things as It-Objects

Things as mechanical objects dominates the view of “things” in Western culture. Isaac Newton inspired this view. In this view, we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste things as objects. They are objects other than and unattached to us. We do things to things. We test, measure, and form opinions about them. We own them, give them away, and throw them away when we are finished using them. They are it-objects.

We distinguish between living and non-living things, but we see and treat them same. We see and treat them both as it-objects. Seeing and treating each other as it-objects is the norm in Western culture. 

Take visiting our physicians, for example. Physicians tend to treat us as it-objects. They work in the health care industry like assembly line workers in factories. They have a quota of patient visits to produce each day. To reach their quota, physicians must limit how much time they spend with us. On average, they limit their time with us to seven minutes per visit. During those few minutes, many get financial bonuses for “giving” us injections, prescribed medications, and diagnostic tests. Treating us as it-objects on an assembly line serves the capital investors who want a quick return on their investment in the business.

Businesses other than health care follow the same factory assembly line model: manufacturers of products, insurance companies, department stores, agribusinesses, grocery stores, gas stations, music producers, mining companies, and any business driven by reducing all costs of production to increase the financial gains of the capital investors. To increase profits, they must spend as little time and money on us it-objects as possible. It is the matrix in which we live, move, and have our being.

Part Two of this series sketches how we Westerners, dominated by Christianity, re-visioned things as either earthly or heavenly and what happened as a result