In 2015 the internet lost its collective mind.
It wasn’t because of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris. It wasn’t because Walter Scott was shot by Officer Michael Slager. And it wasn’t because of the same-sex marriage debate in Washington DC.
Those events had their moment. But the thing that took over was “the dress.”
This dress specifically. Do you remember it?
And do you remember the debate?
Is the dress blue and black? Or is it white and gold?
To my eyes it’s blue and gold. Hearing that anyone could see it differently, well, it made me think they were crazy. No other way to say it.
Different perspectives have people seeing different things. It’s happening all around us. One giant global delusion. Charlie Munger said, “I don’t think it’s good to participate in delusion, even when it gets quite common.”
Some people might read this post and think I’m delusional, discounting the massive events above as trivial leads on a trivial blog. From my perspective, the dress holds special significance. It reveals the lens with which we see these other events.
Here is another one from the web that had me seeing things. Clearly the man is wearing heels, right?
I mean, I don’t judge, wear what you want, but when this picture first crossed my socials, I was turning my head and squinting.
Now, after having the internet point out that the women’s hair is in fact attached to the women’s body, I can’t even see the old way anymore.
But he does have great legs.
And what about this picture of a man running into the woods?
Oops, that’s a dog running out of the woods.
Perspectives and points of view work like this sometimes.
Once you come across a few examples, you realize how confusing the world is and things become much clearer. Even if you see both pictures correctly on the first pass, can you at least understand how someone might see it a different way? I hope so, because the world is a little more complex than these first two examples.
Shall we continue?
You can’t have a serious conversation about perspective and point of view without discussing “The Pick.”
Clearly, Jerry is picking his nose. Gross!
Except he’s not.
Jerry is upset. Being misunderstood can be extremely frustrating. The lady drives off before she understands the whole picture. Unfortunately, that is the trend. Why spend the time to discover nuance, you’ve got places to go. Jump to that conclusion and hit the gas, quick! Don’t want any new perspectives messing with your preconceived notions.
The Guardian produced an award-winning commercial in 1986 featuring a skinhead wrestling a man’s briefcase from his hands. Typical skinhead, right?
Except he’s not.
The camera cuts to a different perspective and viewers see that he is rescuing the man from falling bricks.
These examples all have a single source of truth. You can see it if you are willing to open your mind and get past your initial gut reaction. If you are willing to watch until the end. But not everything is this binary.
As a child I came across this example, and it blew my mind. I was at the Camelot Elementary School Library enjoying another volume of the Guinness Book of World Records. I don’t know how anyone pulled me away from the world’s fattest twins (Bill and Benny McGuire), but they did, and I saw this drawing of a young lady looking over her right shoulder.
And then I blinked, and I saw an old lady with a big nose gazing down at the ground.
This simple drawing introduces something new to the topic of perspectives.
It has two truths.
And that is where life starts to get more clearly confusing.
We are brought up in an environment where the test has multiple choices, but not multiple answers. The real world has a different operating system.
Thousands of cures, but no antidote.
The part that is hard for people to grasp is if you can’t see and understand the other side, if you can’t see the other perspectives, you don’t really know what’s going on. Accepting a single point of view is accepting an incomplete picture.
But instead, we jump to conclusions and hit the gas. Quick.
Maybe we aren’t talking about dresses anymore?
Here are the top political issues in the United States:
- Health Care
- Economy
- Immigration
- Social Security
- Climate Change
- Gun Policy
- Federal Taxes/Spending
- Terrorism
- Education
- Abortion
- Foreign Policy
- Supreme Court
- Opioid Epidemic
Pretty binary stuff, right?
In a formal debate competition, the topics are assigned but it’s not until just prior to the arguments that a team is told what side they will argue. You may be in favor of gun control and be asked to argue the opposing side. It forces the participants to break away from their egocentrism. Break away from what mommy taught them. They need to understand the topic from all sides, they need to understand how a topic appears to others.
Thanksgiving dinner should work the same way.
X and Facebook too.
Flip the lens.
Stephen Covey said, “We look at our differences as though we stand on opposite sides of the same huge lens. From one side, it’s concave; from the other, it’s convex. Both perspectives have value, but the only way to really understand the other perspective is to go and stand where the other person is standing, to see as that person sees. As we really understand the other point of view, we often find our own point of view changed through increased understanding.”
When we are presented with an issue, we pick a side. We hunker down on our side of the lens, blue and black, pick or no pick, and we never see the full story. When you do that, you never see that the skinhead was actually saving the man.
But it gets even more complex.
Here is a great example from The Art of Possibility.
“A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying:
SITUATION HOPELESS. NO ONE WEARS SHOES.
The other writes back triumphantly:
GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. THEY HAVE NO SHOES.
To the marketing expert who sees no shoes, all the evidence points to hopelessness. To his colleague, the same conditions point to abundance and possibility. Each scout comes to the scene with his own perspective; each returns telling a different tale. Indeed, all of life comes to us in narrative form; it’s a story we tell.”
Let me repeat a line for you.
“Each scout comes to the scene with his own perspective; each returns telling a different tale.”
It’s not always as simple as changing your angle of approach, looking through the other side of the lens. Perspective is established from your point of view and the cumulation of your points of view over time. It carries all of your luggage with it.
That is how we get people who see the same things and come to different conclusions.
It’s not just about what we see and watching until the end of the scene. We bring perspectives along with us wherever we go, and they have very little to do with what is happening around us.
When we bring that luggage (bias) with us, we might not be arguing about dress colors, we might argue about the existence of dresses all together.
Maybe it’s just a long shirt, or a government psyop.
In other words, how you read this sign has a lot more to do with you than it does with the sign.
