Perspective
In the space of the last 28 days, I have reached the milestone of 22 (37 using my counting system), watched the values of investments decline by six figures, spent four times that on residential investment property, and come to the conclusion that I am getting old. Considerably so. Given it has been a blockbuster month, it is both fitting and in the interest of thematic justice that this be a blockbuster piece of speculative analysis:
*
In the art world, perspective pertains to the way objects are perceived by the eye. This definition parallels in the real world, save it concerns anything potentially subjective as perceived by the individual’s mind. The realms of philosophy and psychology append numerous other dimensions to this working definition, yielding ‘individual perspective’ – how an individual perceives an event, situation, concept or entity and its associated attributes. How this perspective is shaped, and hence, the resulting perception, is determined by such elements as profundity, temporality, plasticity and cognitive bias.
It will be the mandate of this analysis to explore the component parts of individual perspective, and its inherent variability among people; thereby shedding light upon such abstruse questions as why something which is distasteful to one can be beautiful to another.
A Foray into Perspective
First and foremost, perspective is a transitory model that allows an absurd universe to be transmuted into something to which we can attach meaning, thought, emotion, and action. Without it, the links in the chain from cause (stimulus) to primary effect, to interpretation, to secondary effect (feedback) would simply not exist.
A simple anecdote illustrates how crucial this chain is. Whilst sitting on a park bench one dark evening, something out of a tree above falls onto you. This occurrence is the cause or stimulus which initiates the chain. The moment you feel it, you are instantaneously startled (the primary effect). Within a fraction of a second, you experience discomfort/fear as the interpretation of potential danger has been triggered (the interpretation). Then, you swiftly react, brushing whatever it is off you with a sweep of the hand (the feedback). Now, the something that fell may have been a harmless leaf, or something more sinister, perhaps a spider.
Perspective is first activated immediately after stimulus, and hence directs the primary effect, interpretation and feedback. To demonstrate, we will place two different people in our park bench experiment: Yogi, who by happenstance is an expert yogi, and Mukesh, a clinical paranoid. We invoke the suggestion of stereotype to deduce their reactions. Yogi pays no heed and continues his peaceful evening contemplation. Mukesh yelps in shock and jolts about violently to get whatever it is off.
Their divergent reactions are observable products of perspective. Yogi has established a perfunctory interpretation process which evaluates stimulus impartially, thereby making his perspective neutral. Mukesh’s interpretative process on the other hand, is driven by an obsessive suspicion (the world is out to get him); a suspicion echoed by negative perspective.
Though the above example is brusque, it vividly shows the significance of perspective in everyday life. Perspective is the magic pair of glasses through which we each see the world around us in our own unique way.
External Variability
When the perspective governing a painting’s elements is askew, even a layman notices something isn’t quite right. Where the question pertains to people however, we cannot apply the same logic. Objectivity is central to any analysis of perspective. If we were all objective and unbiased, we’d all see things the same. But look at a picture from an angle and it becomes skewed.
Put another way, true perspective (as in a painting depicting a real life scene) is rigid by definition as it must reflect an objective reality. For example, two apples, one near and one far, must be depicted such that the apple closest is larger. If the rule of perspective is broken, the painting capitulates from realist to abstract.
Human perspective works differently because it operates on subjective interpretation; which is to say there is no ‘correct’ way to perceive certain things, and therefore an array of alternate perceptions/angles exists. Despite this array, one ‘angle’ of perception often dominates, from which excessive divergence is socially estranged. By way of example: a moral ‘angle’ dominates matters of human life; in that loss of life is acknowledged as bad. Yet from an amoral, purely pragmatic angle, loss of life can be rationalised as beneficial: reducing the ratio between people and finite resources, easing strain on the ecosystem.
The point of the matter: there is an obvious value judgement which is subjective across people and, in the absence of an objective, ‘correct’ perception (i.e. water is wet), perspective must be variable.
1. Profundity
Profundity, the first metric instituted to shape perspective, is best described as the convergence of depth and breadth. A ‘profound’ perspective necessarily must be comprehensive across both these dimensions.
Breadth (broad versus narrow)
Expansive consideration is the hallmark of broad perspective, and the breadth of one’s perspective is observed through the range of angles one considers. Breadth is a central quality of perspective because it has direct recourse to accuracy of perception. Let’s say you were looking to purchase a house. Would you buy it after driving past and seeing the beautiful façade? Of course not, that would be foolish – you would take it upon yourself to walk around the house, and inspect each room inside; taking in as many angles as possible before making your evaluation and decision.
Situations, people, anything subject to perception is governed by this same tenet of breadth. A broader perspective will always dominate a narrow one by virtue of the narrow perspective being limiting. Metaphorically, it can be illustrated by the analogy of shooting at an invisible target. If you can’t see it or don’t know where it is, the scattered pellets of a shotgun will have more chance of hitting than a single bullet from a revolver.
Where we only consider one angle, our level of understanding is impaired, less is our tolerance for differing perspectives and greater is our propensity to err in judgement and action based on that perspective. Perilous it is to be of narrow mind.
Depth (deep versus superficial)
Depth of perspective is something I constantly get hung up on. It is a foregone conclusion with a great many people whose paths I cross: to look down the rabbit hole, it seldom seems to go very far. When one stops to consider how insidious shallowness has become, it’s hard not to be unnerved.
In the absence of depth, meaning is lost. We live in a universe almost infinite in its intricacy, and the nature of a lazy being is to simplify and rationalise this complexity away to make the world easier to understand, and life easier to cope with. The trade-off of doing this is that we become ignorant, one-dimensional, and cease to grow. Superficiality necessitates not pursuing understanding beyond a rudimentary level, but depth is consecutively asking: ‘why?’ to the nth degree. Evolution of thought and understanding revolves around this premise, for if we did not seek deeper, we would not discover.
Notwithstanding its crucial nature, depth bears a hidden price. It comes at an exponentially increasing psi cost. To move away from simplicity and toward the complex, greater cognitive endeavour is required. Much like solving progressively convoluting algebraic expressions, more variables must be taken to account, and as the level of depth increases, so to do the iterations and permutations of thought. Deep-sea diving apparatus is a thousandfold more expensive than a snorkel.
When this notion of cost is coupled to perspective and human nature, it reveals why superficiality dominates, and will continue to dominate in general society. Questioning, challenging, seeking, interrogating, analysing, exploring – the instruments of depth; are time and energy intensive. Submissively accepting and embracing the shallow offers a comparatively effortless alternative that’s conducive to modern indolence. Under superficial perspective, appearance is used as a proxy indicative of character, stereotypes are applied without thought, and understanding is cast into the fugue of ignorance.
Collectively, breadth and depth engender profundity. Conjure an image of someone you know, distinguished by the narrow and shallow. Now think about how they perceive the world around them, and you will see the weight of profundity carries in perspective.
2. Temporality
Three temporal frames affect perspective: past, present, and future. Though each of the three have their advantages, none can be viewed as dominant in isolation when held against their respective shortcomings. Perspective is optimised when it is not unduly and excessively influenced by one temporal frame over the others. As with most things, equilibrium is achieved when the forces are in balance.
Past Temporal Frame
Retrospect is one of the most useful tools in life. Though a rear-vision mirror doesn’t help us anticipate what’s ahead, it does serve to remind us where we’ve been, and the learning from our past experience often shields us from making the same mistakes repetitively. The inherent danger of course, is that one becomes so engrossed in the past that one ceases moving forward and fails to absorb new circumstances and their current reality.
Anchoring oneself to the past is a sure fire way to lay waste to existence. Whilst dwelling on positive memories can endow us with inspiration, the temptation to cross from dwelling to residing can become toxic: especially so when there is significant disparity between one’s present reality and the opiate history being mentally rerun. Evidently, the danger is the past becoming an avenue for escapism – an easy way out that allays negative reality (albeit illusorily), thereby dispiriting one from acknowledging and attempting to move past that adverse reality. A good dream imbues resistance to waking up.
Shared by many who subscribe to a ‘live for the day’ philosophy is a perspective disproportionately weighted toward the present. At face value, the concept of not having a care in the world and simply enjoying the moment has tremendous allure – all the more where the anxiety of living is becoming increasingly oppressive. However, such a mindset is prone to profligacy and recklessness: direction and sense of purpose are lost. Were civilisation to live strictly in the present, external consequence would necessarily be trivial, and would therefore be ignored. When the future is not a matter of concern, the propensity to take risks, inflict harm and do morally questionable things increases exponentially.
For the purpose of simplicity, take two criminals, who are carbon-copies, identical twins if you will; who committed the same grievous crime. By quirk of their cases being assigned different judges, one is given ten years but is eligible for parole in two. The other is sentenced to death via lethal injection in two days’ time. Let us assume we release both for a period of twenty-four hours and that they cannot avert their sentences. Under the scenario stipulated, the criminal on death row would be incalculably more likely to go on a violent rampage, for the simple reason his/her preoccupation is purely with the present because his/her fate is inevitable. In contrast, the criminal with the ten year sentence has cause to consider the future and thus will be more cognisant to the consequences of their actions.
Looking at it from a utilitarian standpoint, there is nothing technically wrong with having perspective entrenched in the present. Realistically however, we do not live in a socially agnostic world where consequences don’t matter: and this is precisely why perspective geared heavily toward the present is aversive. Imagine all of humanity living with their perspective at or near ‘extreme present.’ Everyone would ‘live for the moment’ and no heed would be paid to consequences – surmising self-serving human nature, the only possible outcome would be annihilation.
Future Temporal Frame
He who lives in the future is a dreamer. He possesses heightened vision of potentiality but is oft incapable of execution. Excessive preoccupation with the future can lead to the formation of unrealistic expectations and via loss of focus, impair the ability to deal with the present.
If there is anywhere this characteristic is particularly prevalent, it is the upper corporate echelons. The tendency of manager and board perspectives to be future-centric is as vast as their remuneration. Problem of course is that pictures of a rosy outlook are a dime a dozen. It doesn’t take much to paint aspirational pictures of the future; pictures which tend to be semi-realistic but plausible. Conversely, realising the future depicted often takes a great deal of skill, a bit of luck, some hard work and more than a stroke of genius.
The association comes about because the future is hazy and uncertain. If perspective is set in a future temporal frame, an ‘anticipated’ future must be invoked as perspective must be based on something at least remotely corporeal. To the extent that this ‘invoked’ future is a fairytale, execution is not feasible and there will be a temptation to discount the present reality in favour of the envisioned future.
What does all this mean with respect to balance of perspective? The future is simply a function of present circumstances, expectations, the subsequent actions and decisions taken as a result of these, and unsystematic shock occurrences. The past features as a precedent to expectations, as we often base our outlook going forward upon history. We need all three in good measure because ignorance toward one impairs the functionality of perspective.
It is analogous to driving a car. If you base all your manoeuvring on what you see far out toward the horizon, you will miss other things in your vicinity and very likely have an accident. The same applies for looking only in the rear-vision mirror or immediately in front. Whilst travelling the road of life, the good driver acknowledges what is happening in the here and now, but also looks further ahead and glances at the rear vision mirror. Though we live in the present, it is imperative to be mindful of the lessons taught by the past, and equally cognisant of the potentialities held by the future.
3. Plasticity
Plasticity is just as simple as it sounds: how easy it is to alter shape. As an overlay to the other determinants, plasticity is key because perspective is a dynamic phenomenon – it changes as it learns and grows.
Drawing on the mention of perspective’s centrality in life made earlier on, it follows that: because life is ever-changing and nothing is certain, perspective must be able to accommodate. As such, it needs to be flexible. Circumstances change, and there is a constant cycle of technologies, ideas, understandings, even morals being outmoded and renewed. It is simply not enough to stand still and perspective must move with each new developments – you cannot fix something upon shifting sands.
One would like to think, that with the degree of change and advancement occurring, the world is continuously re-interpreting things, and perspective is being refined in this way. It remains open to be seen whether this ‘refinement’ is in the right direction and whether or not it is making the world a better place, but the truth remains that if perspective were fixed, improvement would not be possible.
Collectively, flexibility is an essential attribute of perspective precisely because things change. Humanity is normative, and values constantly shift: gender roles for example. The interpretation of a working mother today versus in the 1930s being a case in point. Left alone, a great many perspectives will become wrong and so a dimension of plasticity is needed.
On an individual level, plasticity is crucial because by virtue of being human, we are faulted. Solace comes from the fact that we can use almost any experience, interaction or episode to improve upon these faults and become better people. A dynamic perspective stems from this notion: we have the ability to alter and mould our perspective. The way in which we see things in life or our unique perspective is the product of thousands of minute adjustments made as we learn.
To consign oneself to a fixed perspective is to become a perfunctory organism, because plasticity underwrites our very individuality and sense of identity. A person whose perspective is fixed is no different to an android governed by its hard-coded programming. They are unable to consider or see things differently, and consequently have no cause to think or act differently – mechanical and inert.
4. Cognitive Biases
Perspective is also prone the warping effects of cognitive bias, as alluded to by Mukesh’s paranoia in the earlier anecdote.
Cognitive biases are omnipotent manipulators of perspective and come in all manner of guises. They number beyond specification, but share one common attribute: distortion. Like coloured or contoured lenses on a pair of glasses, the biases alter perspective and too often effect a misrepresentation of what is being perceived.
At the rudimentary level, we have the ubiquitous biases known as optimism and pessimism. On the grounds that they respectively ‘lighten’ and ‘darken’ our perspective, I will term them the ‘luminary’ group. A degree of luminary bias is a normal feature of perspective generally. Which of the two becomes the overlay is determined by the object perspective is being directed at. An example would be the inherent optimism people tend to have regarding stock prices, or conversely, the inherent pessimism they tend to have about work.
Incidence of excessive luminary bias (particularly where one side dominates entirely) will lead to severe distortion of perspective and inevitably bring about flow-on adversity in some form. We all know how excessive pessimism can create a self fulfilling prophecy – tell yourself you’ll fail enough times and that failure will habitually crystallise. Negative consequence is not confined to pessimism: the persistent wearing of Rose-coloured glasses being a case in point. Rose-coloured glasses characterises an outlook that everything will always work out and good comes from everything (somehow).
In order for such an outlook to function in the face of reason (e.g. believe you’ll win next time, even after a string of a hundred losses), a bypass of logic must occur. This bypass, ‘illusory optimism,’ yields from the premise that “something will be different this time”- a rampant cognitive bias that can be seen in everything from relationships to stock markets. It drives people to do some truly obtuse things. The failed realisation: that, in the absence of some substantial intervening factor, history is inescapably repetitive. Some 733,000 times the sun has risen consistently in the common era: reasonable grounds to assume that it will probably do so again tomorrow. This logic helps us add a new dimension to some of life’s perplexing questions such as why do people go back for more after getting burnt? In the context of someone who has hurt you repeatedly, there is a good chance they will do so again. On occasion circumstances do diverge, but generally speaking, to bet against the record is a foolish endeavour.
The impact of luminary biases on perspective is widely known and easily observable. Toward the more complex end of the scale dwell such things as confirmation bias, and, further along still, severe biases that actually cross the line into personality disorders such as narcissism.
Confirmation bias (part of the preconception group) distorts perspective to the extent that it disproportionately filters stimulus, rejecting or re-interpreting anything which isn’t consistent with preconception. Politics, as a domain, is particularly susceptible to confirmation bias, where practitioners have a certain aptitude for selectively filtering and interpreting information such that it supports the political stance held. The danger is not only a distortion of perspective that potentially diffuses to broader citizenry, but especially where the distortion insidiously results in a manufactured outcome, i.e. action with erroneous or no premise.
Taken to the extreme, confirmation bias is what feeds and reinforces the cancer of prejudice. Prejudice can be held directly responsible for the vast majority of humanity’s woes and will hopefully be ironed out at some juncture when we realise how capricious it is and find a way to eliminate it from the collective consciousness.
Reflection
A conclusion isn’t warranted in the absence of a contention, but rather a reflection. Closing the circle from the point at which we began: art. Given a blank canvas and asked to paint an apple, no two people would paint identical effigies. Much of Art’s intrinsic worth comes from it being a form of expression that is unique between people; and it varies enormously, from the bold cubism of Picasso to the hazy impressionist works of Monet. In the same way, human perception is valuable in the broader sense because having such a large pool facilitates advancement in our collective thinking. To the individual, perspective is infinitely salient: a famous artist is synonymous with their trademark style, and just as the artist is defined by their style, we are defined by our perspective. Does yours reflect who you are?
Leave a Reply