Look at an object through a windowpane. Now, close your right eye and look at the object. Then, close your left eye look out the same windowpane. I just did and the object, a car down the street, appeared when looking with my right eye but disappeared when looking with my left eye – blocked by the side of the windowpane. The object moved to the left or right depending on the eye I used. If asked whether there was a car on the street, my answer of “yes” and “no” would have been equally correct. Perspective matters and there are many of those differing perspectives in our world today.
Thomas Paine wrote, “To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead”. Mr, Paine, I beg to differ. We each are able to use the power of reasoning and because your fellow man does not reach the same conclusion as you does not mean that he is not using his reasoning. He may have a different perspective or lens through which he understands the same facts you understand. You might has well have written, “Any person who does not agree with my reasoning must be dead”.
Perhaps Mr. Paine meant, “It is easier to give medicine to a dead man than to change the conclusions of a man who sees the world differently than I see the world”. In his day, a person who was loyal to the Crown was just as righteous as a person who was a patriot of the revolution given their different perspectives and reasoning. Righteousness depended upon how you viewed a revolution. They each saw the events of their times from a different perspective.
Today, we see differences of perspective in how people consider our local, state, nation, and world issues. We tend to apply labels, like Paine’s Patriot or Tory, to people depending on their perspective. Some labels are partisan, republican or democrat. Some labels are ideological, liberal or conservative. Some are issue-based life, pro-life or pro-choice. Some are very contemporary, vax or anti-vax. Some are school-specific, phonics-based or whole language. Some are fringe, Proud Boys or Antifa. Labeling gives us a quick recognition of our different perspectives of the world.
Too often, focusing on perspective results in micro-differences and blinds us to our macro-agreements. When we isolate and focus on our different perspectives we tend not to see the larger world and the many issues upon which we may agree.
My most differing friends each want orderliness in the checkout line in the grocery store. They want roads without potholes and bridges without detour signs. They want safety on the highway and at city intersections. They want the option to come and go as they please. I have seen the most conservative and liberal of friends hold the door open for an elderly lady. And, equally grumble about the price of gasoline. Last evening, I saw friends of different perspective sitting on a hillside with their respective spouses and friends enjoying a free, public concert. Without prejudice, their heads bobbed and feet tapped to the same music. There is a lot upon which we agree.
Finding the macro-agreements can allow us to understand the micro-disagreements. I am reminded that those loyal to the Crown and those faithful to the Stars and Stripes have been staunch allies over and over again since Tom Paine’s day.
At a school board meeting tonight, proponents of mask and no-mask will speak from their perspectives. There will be disagreement. There also will be decisions about school enrollment made depending upon the outcome of the discussion. The greater agreement is that we get to have different perspectives, to speak our minds, and to make personal decisions based upon our perspective. The greater agreement is that all children need their education. The disagreements are real and, in the greater scheme, are okay. Children will be educated. We will work things out, because we are not dead and refusing the medicine, but living in a reasoning community where we have and always will have different perspectives.
The car is still down the road even though I cannot see it when looking with one eye closed. Such is perception.