Perspective taking is a peculiar ability, as it’s predicated on a self-deception. You can’t actually take another person’s perspective. Not you. Not your parents. Not your pastor or priest. Certainly not your therapist or counselor. Nobody can. The only thing that is possible is to imagine what another’s perspective is, based on your own. You simply cannot get outside of your own mind.
What perspective taking is, is an imaginative guess. A projection of one’s own view within reality with, hopefully, an active attempt at broadening the information being used.
Thing is, perspective taking is really just another way of saying: I’m thinking. At every given moment our embodied mind and the extended apparatus that we use to gather information, is constructing what we call experience. It is the context within which we are engaged in this practice where various identifiers like perspective, worldview, and so on may be used to highlight a particular aspect of what is included in the construction; and where perspective-taking, or mind-reading, is a way of identifying what is being attempted.
A note on mind-reading. Since nobody can step outside their own mind, the practice of mind-reading in the context of a proclaimed supernatural action (as opposed to it being simply a flippant way of saying perspective-taking) is almost entirely concerned with getting the other person, or mark, to agree with the perspective that is being offered. It’s basically about convincing someone of a different viewpoint, rather than an illumination of their own. It feels like being seen because we’re essentially repeating what the other person is saying to ourselves, because we want to be seen. This is the foundation of motivated reasoning.
Motivated reasoning is the acceptance of another perspective as one’s own because it serves a desired outcome.
This desire to be seen, to be understood, is at the heart of every form of intimate contact. It is also, when thwarted or maligned, at the center of nearly every argument, sense of betrayal, and/or dissolving of relational connection. Mind-reading, in the colloquial sense, or perspective-taking, is what we hope to achieve in socially bonding with one another. It is the reciprocal practice of motivated reasoning, where instead of taking on someone else’s perspective as if it were our own, we see the other person doing it about ours.
Incidentally, and not without a great deal of potential harm, this is why when someone says “I want you to understand me” what they’re often really saying is “I want you to agree with me.”
We desperately need to be right, to feel that the reality we experience is accurate. Healthy dialogue, where the practice of holding multiple perspectives lightly to be reviewed, reflected on, and critically considered, is anxiety-provoking. It’s why we’re generally so bad at it. Much easier to simply declare such-and-such to be true unequivocally than it is to hold the future that is our truth claim in suspense.
A note on ‘holding multiple perspectives.’ You may be wondering, but wait, didn’t he say we can’t actually take on other perspectives since we can’t get outside of our own mind? Yes, I did. I’m using the phrase for the sake of parsimony. The task of holding multiple perspectives really should be seen as the act of organizing information to come up with various constructs of varying degrees of probability. But that’s a lot to say every time.
Here’s why I appreciate the kaleidoscope metaphor so much. Turning the device doesn’t add any new information, it simply rearranges what is already there in new ways. That’s the real practice of perspective taking. Just remember you’re the one turning device, and everyone else has their own.
You’re Unique, and You, and You, and You Also
That we’re in a constant practice of perspective taking is why thinking of ourselves as unique individuals is so limiting, and ultimately socially destructive. Every single one of us is engaged, as embodied and embedded creatures, in the construction of experience, actively seeking out those who are able to run parallel with us as co-conspirators of living relationally.
Recognizing this desire is not simply about being mindful of the interconnections pervading every moment of our lives, from the mundane of molecular combinations giving us air to breathe and water to drink, to the complex social patterns of whole societies and the familial webs of each person. The desire for interconnection is our very breath and blood of life. It’s part of that embeddedness that we as human beings can never get away from.
I’m reminded of a scene from “Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” where Cary Elwes and Dave Chappelle are giving a speech to rouse the people of Sherwood Forest. Elwes as Robin Hood gets lost in a hilarious Churchill mimicry moment, so Chappelle steps in, declaring that the people “didn’t land on Sherwood Forest, Sherwood Forest landed on us.”
You can watch the whole speech below, it’s truly hilarious, as is the whole movie.
Humor definitely not being set aside, the point here is that we don’t show up in the world set apart from it. We are always a part of it. Our desire to find co-conspirators is an extension of our existence as a social animal, where survival, in all ways, is better done together.
Still, though, much like Thoreau lamented that centering morality on individual liberty doesn’t necessarily mean people will engage in political action that is morally superior, so the recognition that each of our perspectives is limited doesn’t necessarily lead to people being humble and less dogmatic in their assertions.
Let’s try to undermine the hubris of our ego then. Imagine four bounded circles, each one encapsulating the others like a set of mixing bowls. From inner to outer, they can be labeled as 1) personal constructs,
3) social and cultural triggers,
and 4) flexible potential.
If looked at from the inside-out, one's uniqueness is never in doubt. In fact, it becomes the means of determining whether to give consideration for any idea, advice, or information. Beginning here, notions such as "my truth is my truth and doesn't have to agree with anyone else", "nobody understands what he/she and I have together," and the basis for the belief in the primacy of “lived experience” stem from.
If, instead, one begins from the outer circle, that of flexible potential, everything shifts. Rather than the self-being primary, "I" exists as simply a narrow perspective on a realm of possibility. There is uniqueness, but it’s a form shared by everyone else. Think of it rather as an immersion.
From this, we can see where being caught up in the uniqueness of perspective is both understandable while also myopic and limiting. Behavioral patterns and social triggers support the self-deception that we’re correct, as our actions reinforce the collapsing possibilities we think are open to us. The feeling of being stuck we so often have concerning our behavior is this, the reduction in freedom to do something else, and we avoid it by declaring “I was just being me.”
When considering next how different personal struggles are from another person’s or how a particular relational dynamic one is involved in is so distinct from another, it is important to remember that one's perspective is a form of passive blindness to other possibilities. We are as unique as the next person, and because of each remains embedded in the same reality, we can learn to harness the multiplicity of perspectives that reside in our fellow human beings. That’s when we learn to create and build things greater than ourselves while never losing sight of who is part of the process.