The Unescapable Self: Your Perspective Is Both Your Power and Your Prison
It's perspective making all the way down
Whether sitting down for coffee, watching a form of media, or engaging in an online discussion, there’s no interaction where the potential of who I become next isn’t being molded. That’s the reality of a connected life, one where a myriad of different variables are all working with varying levels of emotional weight to shape the possibilities of who you and I will become, but also the lens through which we even see those possibilities. My perspective, and every one that each person has, of the world is both inevitable and a limitation. Inevitable because not having a perspective is utterly impossible, and a limitation because I can’t step outside of it. “Taking another’s perspective” has always been a fiction, as you can’t leave your own conscious experience. This is why mind-reading is also a fiction. You can’t leave yourself behind.
This is why experiential flexibility is so important, because there are innumerable other possible lenses for viewing my experiences. The greater number of data for my mind to draw from in shaping possibilities is a net gain for expanding the web of perception. In fact, think of that web being spun by a spider. If the threads only ever intersected at one point, not only is there a single point of failure, but because of that the whole structure is inherently unstable. The more lines that cross, the more nodes are created, and the greater stability that is built.
Every instance of miscommunication is an example pointing towards the inescapable conclusion that we neither can read another’s mind nor step outside of our own projection. Each person exists in our minds as a facsimile of who they are. Hence, humility is important because we never have all the information needed to complete a whole picture. As well, coming back to the web analogy, looking at someone through a single node or intersecting point is a recipe for bigotry, a lack of awareness concerning one’s own biases, and an unstable and limited picture of who that person is.
That inability to fully grasp the whole of another person is why dialogue and writing are important, if not necessary, for one’s own healthy development. Therapists often point to the power of journaling, but the practice is helpful largely because it makes concrete the limitations of our own thought. When we look back at what we’ve written, we should be able to do so with a head-shaking grin at the hubris that existed. The problems we thought were insurmountable eventually became commonplace. The things we found important ended up becoming less so. How we judged ourselves, hopefully, has become different.
This is what, in part, drives me to write and share within this digital world. I could stay within the confines of my immediate surroundings, interact only with work colleagues, friends, and only those who agree with me (extraordinarily limited such a group may be), and yes, each of these visions of our shared world would and are worth exploring, but the digital world has opened up a potential market of perspectives that borders on gluttony. When faced with such a bounty and working within the acknowledgement that vision is an active engagement, exploring different understandings of the world is like going from a flashlight to a lantern in a dark room.
As Jacob Bronowski notes:
"But we are in any case mistaken if we think of our picture of the world as a passive record. The picture is made by, it is made of, our activity, all the way from the logic of the brain to the use of the plow and the wheel. It is the implication and the expression, in symbolic form, of all our dealings with nature. The picture is not the look of the world but our way of looking at it: not how the world strikes us but how we construct it. (The Identity of Man)"
Be careful, though, as the enlightened room may not look entirely the way you initially thought it would be when you only had a flashlight. We are not passive recipients of the world we are embedded and embodied in, but co-creatively determining what we each identify as evidence for the opinions we believe are true, and therefore, the shape of things we believe we’re dealing with is equally so. Each public offering of writing is not simply a declaration of my own view; it's a request for and a seeking of continued engagement with the world. It’s a way of yelling into the cave and seeing what the echoes reveal.
If all the potential perspectives of the world were a pie, mine is an infinitesimally small slice, though no less important because of it. Certainly not to me, though of course I almost have to say that, don’t I? This isn't an equality of truth claims, but a recognition of the equality in our inevitable creation of perspective. It’s a major reason why the internet and social media are so enticing, as they’re a technological expansion of what we all feel as biological perspective makers: my view matters.
When Persecution Isn’t: The Technological Expansion of Ego
The ego functions to funnel perspective or consciousness, with the original point placed within a framework of holding experience to serve one’s own needs/desires. Broadly, this can be referred to as a worldview, but it is not singular; it is a context-dependent framework for guiding behavior.
The drive for perspective making can be curtailed by insularity or expanded through challenging engagement. An honest, though likely uncomfortable, understanding of life, my place in it and as it, and my connection within it grows not in the echo-chamber of my own mind, but in every contact with another degree of perspective.
If a single perspective is a pinprick through the canvas of ignorance, then a million perspectives will let even more light in, though never enough to see everything.
Again from Bronowski:
"Our experiences do not merely link us to the outside world; they are us, and they are the world for us; they make us part of the world. We get a false picture of the world if we regard it as a set of events that have their own absolute sequence and that we merely watch. (The Identity of Man)"
Whether it be explorations of politics, spirituality, psychology, or the social movements I find fascinating, all is done within a consideration of the active link I have with the shared humanity engaged in the same enterprise. It’s one of the central reasons I left the pursuit of theology and moved into psychology, because the former centered knowledge on a single perspective, and the latter has become an ongoing reminder that we should see the human striving behind every idea, opinion, and exclamation. Sometimes for good. Sometimes for ill. But always the striving remains.
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