The concept of "perspective" sucks. You can distort your perspective, you can contribute to your perspective, but you can't avoid having a perspective. You can't avoid the way you think. Ideally, the perspectives of functioning minds should fuse together in sort of a "symbiotic relationship" (as we learned last year). But perspective has a tendency to block our minds' potentials to enrich themselves with the comparisons to new perspectives. This is where the idea of confirmation bias really comes into play.
But what happens when this confirmation bias blocks your mind from picking up on the important moments? This is probably what irritates me most about perspective. I know I'm never fully going to be able to understand what someone is describing to me. I'd love to one day try to live thinking about life in that Seinfeld perspective, trying to find humor and irony in the most simple life moments I'd never otherwise notice. But in all honesty, it's hard to change your perspective. Maybe you have a moment where something clicks and suddenly your world will never be the same, but that won't always happen. You could spend lightyears trying to explain the appeal of music on the radio to me, but I will never be able to share that same perspective because I'm stubborn and my confirmation bias will block that opportunity from me.
However, the fact that perspective can be excluding is really the only negative thing about perspective. Our world is shaped by perspectives; perspectives drive creativity. If we didn't have varying perspectives, we wouldn't have our government, we wouldn't have politics, we wouldn't have discussions in class, we wouldn't have arguments with our siblings or friends. We wouldn't have challenges, complications, creations or even change. Yet, if we don't accept the fact that we do have the ability to change our perspective, we won't be able to share new perspectives with ourselves and let in new mindsets. Maybe we should all just take a step back and look at things completely out of any perspective we know.
I think that Anna is making a great point here. Perspective can be limiting, and that is about the only thing negative about it. I think that is very interesting to hear. I would like to agree with Anna's point about the negativity and the benefits of perspective.
ReplyDeleteWhat if you could hypothetically have no perspective at all? Having no perspective at all would be exponentially more limiting. If you don't have any opinion, all you take in is information. You cannot formulate any thoughts based on this information because that further analysis and creation of ideas is interlaced with one's perspective. The way your mind makes its own opinions is based on your values and that by definition is what perspective is.