Dealing in Perspectives
Posted on November 23, 2021“ Within infinite myths, lies an Eternal Truth Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes Indra, a hundred and I, only two”
– Devdutt Pattanaik
Perception is such a contextual, personal entity, it’s prowess shines through the way in which we acknowledge and understand things, different in every way for everyone. The same story, told with such difference simply based on the storyteller, everything guided by the watchful gaze of the same entity -perception. While we all may look at the same thing, we extract a different understanding from it, we see different things, think about it, despite being at the same place, at the same time, people perceive the situation in their own unique way. All of us have experienced this, haven’t we? So the first musing -how many perceptions are needed to truly understand something as a whole? To comprehend it in its entirety such that it is the most accurate version of what everyone sees.
Adding to the level of complexity, what happens when some of these perceptions are imperceptive? When the hypothetical (and literal) eyes are closed? What happens when the viewing is selective? When the eyes are only half closed -or half awake? What happens when they’re too far away to perceive the situation with significance? What happens when they are too close to the event, unable to see the whole picture? To the matter, what if it’s something entirely different, a completely unique sense of perception, like noses? Do we have olfactory perspectives’? Some might think this is getting a tad bit out of reach, a bit far-fetched, however I implore that ‘some’ to give it a thought, do we not like and dislike smells? Isn’t there an inherent bias towards that fifth of our sense of perception? Back home, the sweetly spiced aroma of tea signified the mornings, an olfactory alarm clock if you will. So here and now when I make tea myself, I am reminded of home, same aroma, different context. We relate our senses to peculiar environments, experiences, events and so on. They are our reservoirs of memories, of interactions, a pathway to our connections with what we’ve been through and where we are.
When all perception goes through a unique, distinct lens, how can we decide what the true form of our perception actually is? I do not mean to say that what we individually discern is or isn’t the truth; all I mean to say is that we reflect our individual perspective of something over what we perceive, everything is a part of the whole but not necessarily the entirety of the whole. Everything we think we know about the world is a model and our models have a strong congruence with the world. Our models fall far short of representing the real world, but at the end of the day, they represent our world.[1]
Everyone resides within their own nested link of vantage points, seven and a half odd billion different vantage points, constantly shifting, evolving, each relative relational and situated perspective.
When we work within so many realms built around such vast cultures, how can we decide on the absoluteness of the perspectives that are held by them. This then raises more questions, feeds more musings, How do we design anything for such a complex system of existence? How do we respond to such complex situations, dealing in perspectives, rather than in absolute truths? [2]
We do have biases, opinions, flawed assumptions and incomplete knowledge of a lot of concepts, but I feel that acknowledging and establishing these facts is an opportunity to learn from what’s around us, human and non-human alike. No system is independent, nothing functions in silo, everything is a subset of something larger, creating an interesting labyrinth.
That’s where I suppose the purpose of trust comes in, when we interact with our surroundings, work with multiple stakeholders, when we collaborate with a variety of people, there is an exchange of thoughts, points of views, experiences and stories. Not all of it might be unknown to us, but something’s will surely be new, unheard of, unthought of, doesn’t matter if we agree with it or not. It instigates a new insight, a sneak-peak into another way of perceiving the same reality. Is that not what matters in the end?
Expanding our outlook towards the world, joining some of the infinite dots, creating another set of connections, sure it does not provide us with an absolute truth, but it does so much more. We learn new ways of contributing to what’s around us, to someone else’s way of thinking and behaving. All these notions we put in the world directly or indirectly shape a view on a particular matter. The more interactions that we have, the closer we get to knowing the whole, as Donella Meadows points out -“Everything seen through each kind of lens is actually there. Each way of seeing allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete.”
This isn’t an overnight event wherein you would wake up and find yourself being more open to possibilities, shift in perspective and a sudden urge to produce an all-comprehensive system. I believe that is a paced process towards a broadening of the perceptive horizons. The closer we get to comprehending the entirety, the radius of its effectiveness increases. I find it similar to one of the notions of spirituality somehow, the more you inch towards the center, the more you stabilize and become in-tune with other forms, attaining levels of fulfillment, i.e. expansion; a movement that would include more perspectives and eventually, in the long run, move you beyond the boundaries of what you thought possible.
This space of questioning certainly is good food for thought. The more I chew on it, the more I dwell into it, the more I get entangled within. These are the kind of questions that one has to stay with. Not to look for an absolute answer, but to seek the process that moves you towards it. For they cannot be defined or quantified to satisfaction, at least not to my understanding. I do not think anyone could have an answer to them, because it could still be considered of relative significance regardless.
To sum up my incongruous musings, we might never be able to understand something in its entirety in a trice but we can make sure that whatever we create next, be it a new community, a system, a perspective, a product, a visual or even a thought, is more embracing and inclusive than the last one.
-cs
Resources
[1] Meadows, D. H., & Wright, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: a primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
[2] Dr. Ansari, A. (2021, September). Decolonisation, the History of Design, and the Designs of History.
[3] Devdutt Pattanaik. (2006). Myth = Mithya : a handbook of Hindu mythology. Penguin Books India, Cop.