There are a few things in life that bring profound change to the way we perceive the world; examples include travelling, abrupt trauma, and falling in love, whether romantic, plutonic or paternal. Each have a profound way of shifting our perspectives with immediacy. But most change is gradual and requires conscious effort.
A few years ago, I attended a lecture on the rise of polarised ideas, and its impact on Democracies. At the time I was working on a master’s thesis in International Relations. My attendance to the lecture was more out of necessity, rather than interest. I hardly anticipated a perception altering experience and yet that is precisely what I got. The lecturer’s message was simple, human awareness is limited to our belief systems. Every idea or concept resides on a continuum. Concepts, ideas, challenges, and opportunities are all open to interpretation. There are as many interpretations as there are people on the planet, nothing is black and white. This difference in perspective creates chasms between perspectives along these continuums. This chasm is a “perspective gap,” and where disagreements emerge. While we have the ability to empathise, are ability to increase our span of awareness to bridge the gap is limited without a concerted effort. Outside of a life altering experience, this evolution is not instantaneous, it’s a process.
I have illustrated this concept in the visual below. For simplicity purposes, if we assume the ideas continuum is a 180-degree line, there are 180 different perspectives along the continuum. For this example, perspective one is at 20 degrees on the continuum, and perspective two is at 90 degrees. Each have the ability to expand their span of awareness by 10 - 20% in either direction on the continuum. Any further and they lose the ability to fully grasp an alternate perspective. For perspective one their awareness range is 0 to 40 degrees, for perspective two its 70 to 110 degrees. In this scenario, a gap of at least 30 degrees emerges between the two perspectives. This means that neither perspectives are able to fully understand or relate to the other without the motivation to do so. Filling this gap requires listening, humility, and an open mind. Without these things the gap will remain, and likely widen. All ideas from shared opinions, minor disagreements and diabolically opposed positions sit along this continuum.
Illustration: Ideas Continuum
The key takeaway from the lecture is that a perspective gap does not emerge out of human fault, or error but a byproduct of simply being human, its unavoidable. We are subjective beings a reality we are unable to divorce ourselves from. For me, this was transformative. It helped me foster patience for people outside my span of awareness on the continuum and reinforced the notion that right and wrong, or black and white is a matter of perspective and situationally based. As “just” as you may find your view, there is another perspective along that same continuum with an equal belief in “justness.” Determining who is right or wrong, is a futile exercise with no real winner or loser. In order to truly bridge the perspective gap, we need to recognise it’s there, and be willing to invest the time and energy in bridging it, otherwise no real progress will be made.
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