It’s so hard to see outside our personal frame of reference. Our frame of reference is like a lens through which we view the world. We’re so accustomed to the way we see through that lens that we believe it shows us an accurate picture of how the world actually is. We have a hard time recognizing the limits to our range of vision, or the distortions in our lens. Simply put, our perspectives determine what we see.
A perfect example of the way this works can be found in the current presidential election campaign. Each media sound bite evokes an entirely different response depending on which candidate you support. The same statement can rouse one group while infuriating another. Every statement and occurence is seen from within “our candidate’s” frame of reference. We tend to dismiss or rationalize anything negative that doesn’t match our positive view of “our candidate.” We become adversaries.
The entire political process plays out as a competition between “opponent” perspectives. The goal is to have the perspective you support assume power and gain control going forward. Of course, it’s never really that simple, is it? After the election is over, the losing, unrepresented perspectives use the congress and senate, the courts, and civil action to obstruct and limit the implementation of the “winning” perspective. The battle goes on.
Abraham Lincoln invited his “adversaries” to join his cabinet, so that he could benefit from their diverse perspectives instead of excluding them. What an incredible idea! I would encourage Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John McCain to consider doing the same. They will have to broaden, not reinforce and defend, their limited perspectives to address the enormous, daunting challenges that we the inhabitants of this one small earth share in common. These are not partisan issues.
The current challenges facing us as individuals, as a nation, and as world citizens right now (population growth and a corresponding increase in competition for resoures, global warming, soaring food and oil prices, declining resources, unstable nations, etc.) require that we all stretch beyond our individual, political party, religious, and national ways of viewing things. That’s asking a lot. We’re so accustomed to thinking that the way we see things–the way things are–is the way they must continue to be. How can we possibly step beyond our current viewpoints and begin to think as a “one world” community?
The only way to begin to think that way and to face those challenges is to expand the lens each of us sees through. We need a wider, more inclusive lens, one with fewer divisions, categories, and judgments. Yes, we’ll have to give up some of the ways that we have too narrowly defined ourselves. We’ll also have to be less short-sighted, and look down the road further. Doing that won’t make us less or smaller. It will make us more.
