Perspective – a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.

Hello again, I have returned from a slight internet hiatus to talk about a topic of conversation recently had between a co-worker of mine (Shoutout to Mr. Kalin Byrd!) and myself that has sparked plenty of analysis and thought in the time since. The conversation itself stemmed from me introducing this blog to a few people I work with (thank you all for being my first audience, it was quite stressful to even mention this whole thing to you guys). With all that said, the point of this post is about the importance of perspective and its numerous benefits. In my continuing effort to battle ignorance, I find perspective a massive and relatively inexpensive tool to greatly improve knowledge and awareness in the world around you. Without getting too deep in, I want to clarify that perspective has its pitfalls as well, because there is such a thing as confirmation bias. In short, sometimes we search for perspective that will lean towards those who agree with us or give us more stock in our own existing viewpoints. This is inevitable as you dig into more polarized issues such as religion, politics, and belief systems. My goal today is to avoid any of those specifics and aim to look at perspective altogether as a concept and why it should be sought after on levels equal to education and experience.

Let’s begin with those last three words on the previous paragraph, education and experience. I believe perspective can be a perfect marriage of the two in the right circumstance. Take any job posting on the internet, the two most defining factors in why you may or may not get hired into a position will undoubtedly be your education and/or your previous experience and that is entirely valid. Past having a trial run, most people will agree those factors to be the best descriptor of performance prospect. That is all and good to get a foot in the door, but what allows you to make the real impact when you match up even on paper with others? This is where your perspective steps up to bat for you. Having the right perspective can win over most people in a mere instant. It can be reliant on your natural charisma or character, though it could also stem from proven experience or a superior knowledge base. I tend to think it is more of mix of the two, but this example does not do perspective justice in the full scope of life. Work may be pivotal to our well being, but it is in the personal aspects of life that perspective’s potential entrely expanded outward.

We all rely on our own unique and intricate perspectives to make sense of what goes on around us. Those perspectives develop in tough times as well as the best moments of our lives, giving us two ends of life’s spectrum. All things fit within that spectrum and fall upon a imaginary line drawn in our brains. We decide that anything important in life gets a spot on this line, whether it be a memory, belief, experience, or nugget of knowledge. I learned how unconscious this process is through two separate lessons during my undergrad years at college. First came a very simple question during a philosophy class my freshman year. “What is a table”?, asked by my smirking professor to a class of confused students. He attacked our understanding of what a table consisted of by having us define not what tables were, but how we knew to automatically call them as such. I could not get anything past just “I just do.” for the first 20 or so minutes, as did the rest of the class. The process of labeling everyday items as what we see them to be is a socialized and normalized thing we do throughout life, but the items themselves are merely a perspective. Rolling back from the really philosophical stuff, the perspective we generally hold as a society is actually very similar. Try finding someone who would say that a table is anything but that. Without any prompting, you could count on someone giving the expected answer every time if given a easily identifiable example. This is all to say that almost everyone’s perspective on what they see around them is entirely the same. We all come to agree on these things without any argument because there no point in having one. Imagine if half the population thought chairs were tables and vice versa for the other side, what kind of world would that look like. It is a silly argument but you could see that changing the topic on a this or that issue highlights the simplicity it can be boiled down to. Perspective allows for more than just a yes or no, black and white answer to everything that we see in the world. If it could all be tallied up, I suspect that all the disagreement in the eyes of people would pale greatly to the things we see as the same. It’s a given that tables are pretty safe to agree on compared to other topics but more perspective shows we all are a lot more similar than we think we are.

My second lesson had more to do with the grouping of things to fit into our perspective and how we simplify them for our own mental processes. Our brains are great at boxing things up to cut out clutter. The technical term for this is assimilation but that word has a box all of its own, so lets avoid the harsh terminology and stick to examples. As children, we are imprinting lots of things from our parents and those frequently around us. It allows to gain a wealth of perspective without having to venture out on our own or put in too much effort. This is expected, it is nothing particularly harmful for how we generally see things. We gain good and bad perspective from those older and more mature than us. Some things may be archaic or out of date, some may be based on experiences we do not share or understand from lives lived before ours but the familiarty of the person holding those views carries a lot of weight on its own. My professor at the time explained this with wooden blocks and a pitcher in front of 100 students. He asked for desciptive words or phrases of two subjects: what described friendship and designated them into a box and then did the same with a box for family. He then asked us to tell us what we did not agree with our families and friends about and some of the answers were heated to say the least. He then asked us if these things sat in a box separate from the existing boxes for family and friends and the answers were mixed but most agreed that they tried to keep the bad separate from the good. This is when the script was flipped and we were asked to look at the person next to us and imagine they agreed with us on the issue of conflict but knew nothing else about them. Most were quick to say that they were still cautious to look at the stranger favorably as compared to a friend or family member regardless of the common ground, as expected. The pivotal point then landed on me and many others. The roughest edges of perspectives we know are smoothed over way faster than the acceptance of something foreign, regardless of how strongly we agree with it on face value. Fighting this urge to conform and assimilate our perspectives because of how comfortable or familiar it may be is one of the greatest tools to fight ignorance and make your own path in life. It does not mean that you radically have to change all of your viewpoints, it could easily reinforce and strengthen them. This is not a solution to all arguments, people will still disagree with one another and fight for their sides. However, it does give you as an individual a certain enrichment to how you see the world and may open your eyes to a more true and complete version of yourself.

These lessons, in my eyes, are worth thousands and thousands of words trying to convince you to simply step outside what you know and explore. This blog is an example in itself, putting myself and my thoughts out there is difficult, but feeling as though I can connect with others and gain just a little better view of the picture makes the effort worth it. Reading words on a blog can only do so much so I suggest looking at a different perspective on something more specific or divisive. There are a lot of bad opinions and perspectives out there, but there are also plenty of good examples of perspectives being challenged and debated. Something I stumbled on just today is the Middle Ground series from the YouTube channel Jubilee that pits people on both sides of a polarized topic and ask them come together and discuss their views. In almost every video of the series, I gained perspective on the other side of an issue I disagreed with. I am not in any way affiliated with them, just found the series really informative and a great supplementary resource. I’ll link the series here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0SpzIIHEaE&list=PLBVNJo7nhINStbXuOKFpvfVtHXBlKh6At) if you are interested. Thanks for stopping by The Surreal Ordeal and feel free to comment and discuss your perspective.