Context: The photograph depicted a rite of passage among a people who, at a certain age, pour deer blood on adolescents.
My essay refers to a short exercise in which we looked at a photograph depicting a rite of passage and then tried to interpret it. My initial thoughts were related to police violence, genocide, and suffering in general, for which there are simple explanations: on that very day, there was a protest against police violence against members of minority groups and, in general, since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza and, more recently, in Sudan, I have been thinking a lot about ethnic cleansing, which causes suffering to people all over the world. When I found out that the photo was of a rite of passage, I thought about how quickly we jump to conclusions about things we don't really know much about, like these photos. We see something red and immediately think of suffering, or, in the case of some of my classmates, a "party." Similarly, in social work and everyday life, we can quickly glance at a person with slightly darker skin and pigeonhole them, for example, thinking that they are an uneducated Roma with seven children who steals gutters.
This is precisely why critical thinking is important. In social work and other helping professions, we are not "observers separated from the observed," but rather, as social workers, we are involved in interaction—we perceive, interpret, and co-create realities (Šugman Bohinc, 2000, p. 289). And this exercise shows that we are never really separate from the events around us, as they always shape our way of perceiving, thinking, believing, deciding, and knowing (Šugman Bohinc, 1997, p. 301).
This raises the question: if, when looking at a particular photograph in the same space and time, we, who are all fourth-year students at the Faculty of Social Work, have several completely different interpretations of it, does the ultimate truth even exist? It is precisely the non-existence of truth with a capital T that Šugman Bohinc (1997, pp. 292, 293), who argues that there is no single unambiguous truth, but rather that truths are manifold, depending on the position of the person who creates and interprets them, and that truth is always the result of social agreement and does not reflect some kind of objective reality. It is precisely this interpretation that rejects the positivist view of the world, to which the natural sciences most often resort.
Why is it that students with similar backgrounds and—I dare say—values see photography and the world so differently? How is it that a classmate who chooses the same exercise for a project assignment will write a completely different essay based on practically the same literature? The model presented by Bignetti (2020) answers precisely the question of why the same event or image—for example, the photograph we observed during the exercise—triggers such different interpretations. According to Bignetti, three intertwined dualisms gradually develop in the mind from birth: biological, psychological, and metaphysical. The first stems from the division between the unconscious and conscious mind, the second from within consciousness itself, where two perspectives are formed – emotional, subjective (first person) and rational, objective (third person) The third arises from the doubt characteristic of the rational mind, which no longer trusts its own ability to recognize the true essence of the world. These layers of perception create internal tensions between feeling and understanding, between personal experience and external observation. It is precisely this split that manifests itself in the diversity of our responses to the same image. If we connect this with the understanding of the epistemology of social work according to Šugman Bohinc (1997, 2010), who emphasizes that there is no truth with a capital T, but only situational truths conditioned by the position of the observer, it becomes clear that all responses are equally legitimate.If, during the exercises, the sight of the red liquid first brought to mind the words "genocide," "suffering," and "protest," today, in light of recent events in Latvia, a country about which we generally hear little, especially regarding its political situation, especially a member of the European Union, which will probably be the first to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, I would probably associate the photo with the suffering of victims of domestic violence, especially women. The issue of violence against women is already quite close to my heart, and at the same time, we are having lectures and seminars on gender and violence this semester, and in January I am going on an exchange to a country that borders Latvia, Lithuania. I would probably have had a similar perception during or immediately after last year's internship at a social work center dealing with domestic violence. This shows how our view of the world depends on our current interests, moods, etc., while the lack of media coverage of the fact that Latvia may withdraw from this important document for the prevention of violence reflects the current state of the world. When Turkey withdrew from the Convention in 2021, the media, as well as people in leading positions in other countries, "jumped up in arms" and protests ensued. Why is it different this time? Because Latvia is not a Muslim country and is therefore not currently "in the spotlight" as the source of all the evil happening in the world? Because it is a member of the European Union? Is the world perhaps simplifying the problem by denying its existence (Šugman Bohinc, 2000, p. 98), because in the current political climate, which is suspiciously reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novels, we simply cannot deal with yet another threat to women's rights, even though it is happening at the heart of what is considered to be an extremely free and just organization such as the European Union?
I think it is worth pointing out the bizarre reaction of some, if not most, of my classmates when they found out that the photograph showed deer blood. I see two problems with this. First, after we shared our thoughts in a circle – I dare say that more than two-thirds of the students in our group thought of violence or some other form of suffering – I would have expected the first reaction to the realization that the only victim was "just" an animal (and that the photo does not represent the suffering of tens of thousands of Palestinian children) would be relief, but many responded with sympathetic sighs. Secondly, as far as I know, I am the only vegan in my year, which means that the rest (or, I repeat and emphasize, at least the majority) of students consume animal products on a daily basis and thus directly finance the torture of millions of animals. Here, too, we see a completely different "color of lenses," a mentality through which we view the world. How did it come to be that some animals are worth less than half an hour of pleasure in the form of a steak, while others make us cry, even though it is "only" (don't overlook the quotation marks!!!) one deer compared to the huge number of starving people being killed by artificially created famine in the Gaza Strip? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should look away without empathy at the suffering of a limping dog or, in our case, a bleeding deer, or that everyone should become vegan overnight, nor do I think that the former is ethical or the latter possible. I just wish people would see the weirdness of speciesism and the system that colors the lenses through which we view and judge the world.
However, this is where the problem arises: Foerster (1993, p. 3) argues in his article that all knowledge is actually second-order knowledge, i.e., not about the world itself, but about how we observe the world. In extreme cases, this would mean that the suffering of animals in the food and textile industries may not even exist, but rather that I interpret their lives as suffering, which would completely undermine my fundamental values. We must also be aware that we are jointly responsible for the reality we produce and that objectivity often represents an ethical excuse (Foerster, 1993, p. 5). In this light, the epistemology of social work is not only a theoretical framework but also an ethical stance: it requires us to be aware of the perspective from which we view the world and how this perspective shapes the world in which others live. Let me nevertheless assume that I remain on the side of my values, in this case veganism. As an "objective" reason against a plant-based diet, I often hear that this way of life is not healthy for humans, that we are omnivores and omnivores, which, from my point of view, is an ethical excuse. This means that when I decide what I see in a photograph—violence, suffering, ritual, art—I am already involved in the act of creating meaning.
Let me return to the topic with which I began this essay, to what I perceived in the brief moment when I first saw the photograph. As already mentioned, my first thoughts were "genocide," "suffering," and "protest." I have already explained why I thought of these words, but the question remains: what did I feel when I saw the photograph? At first, I certainly felt uneasy, a slight tightness in my chest. But then... I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but these feelings soon disappeared. Within a few minutes, I was already joking with my classmates, who saw the photograph as a "party" or a tradition of water throwing. How does this happen? How can we still laugh when we know that day after day, people, especially immigrants and other marginalized social groups, suffer violence at the hands of the police, whose fundamental task is supposed to be to protect people? Do we sleep peacefully, talk, go about our daily business despite—I know I'm repeating myself now—the genocide taking place in Gaza? Or the much less publicized violence in Sudan? Perhaps it is all a survival strategy, perhaps we have already exhausted ourselves. At the beginning, we were driven by anger, compassion, empathy, and shame because "our" Western systems enable, support, and finance atrocities committed around the world, but then, after days, weeks, months, and even years, we had to stop thinking about it all the time for the sake of our own mental health. Perhaps this is precisely what these systems want: the normalization of violence. With the spread of moral panic, right-wing extremists are winning elections around the world, proclaiming that Muslims are a cancer on Western society, without asking themselves who is persecuting migrants and refugees from their territories to "ours."
"The politics of 'big shots'! The politics of robbery! The politics of heroes whose books speak of them, politics that has become evil for all people!" (as Lord Byron says in Toller's preface to The Attack on the Machines) unfortunately always influences the epistemology of people in our society. It colors the lenses of the most vulnerable with hatred: people with low levels of education, the elderly, young people. I have heard the latter defend the genocide in Gaza as "provoked genocide" or claim that they do not oppose it because the victims are Muslims.
So if, for example, high illiteracy rates among members of the Roma community and the inaccessibility of basic human rights, such as drinking water, are perceived by them as something completely normal and everyday, we must ask ourselves who actually determines what is normal and what is deviant. How do we know that a meter is a meter, and how do we verify this, as Šugman Bohinc (2000, p. 95) asks? Who says that a certain percentage of children must live in poverty, working in the fast fashion industry, while others are protected by laws prohibiting child labor?
Finally, let us return to the normalization of violence. So who normalizes violence? Obviously, those who produce it. Precisely by changing the way we view the world, by trying so hard to undermine people's values to such an extent that the lives of people who are not "ours" – Roma, Muslims, migrants, people with darker skin, or those who live somewhere far away, where all our cheap clothes come from (India, Cambodia, Vietnam, China ...) and gold (Sudan), because that is the only way we can maintain our unsustainable way of life for the planet and the vast majority of people, they remain in their positions and preserve the system of turbo-capitalism, patriarchy, and neoliberalism, which proves time and again that it serves no one but a handful of white men, members of the capitalist elite.
LITERATURE
Bignetti, E. (2020). “Dual State”, “Double-Perspective” and “Cartesian-Like Dualism” are three forms of dualisms emerging in mind like in a Matrioska. Open Journal of Philosophy, 10(4), 555-578. Retrieved November 5, 2025, from https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2020.104039
Foerster, H. von (1993). Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics. Psychiatria Danubina 5, 1-2: 33-47.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (1996). Social work – a science? Social Work 35, 5: 403-405.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (1997). Epistemology of social work. Social Work, 36,4: 289-308.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (1998). Epistemology of social work II. Social Work, 37,6: 417-440.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (2000). Cybernetics of change and stability. Social Work, 39, 2: 93-108.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (2005). Epistemology of Support and Assistance. Journal for the Critique of Science, 33: 221, 167-181.
Šugman Bohinc, L. (2006). Social work with involuntary users. Social Work, 45, no. 6, pp. 345-355.
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