Tag Archives: perspective

Missing the big picture

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A couple weeks back I was in a problem solving situation where I was brought in to give some perspective on how one of my programs could assist with a problem at a school. I was an add-on to a conversation that was already happening, and I found it frustrating. I kept having to speak up and give perspective on the big picture and how what seemed like a simple fix was actually something that would have unforeseen consequences. My grandfather used to say, “Don’t put lipstick on a pig,” and that seemed to be the approach. “Let’s make it look like we are addressing the issue, all the while just making an ugly situation seem like it’s not as bad.

Yesterday I was in a meeting and it was completely different. Everyone was thinking big picture. How does this affect students? Staff? Funding? Optics? When a suggestion was brought up, the team of people I was working with took each idea and put it through a big picture lens. When a suggestion was knocked down, there were no egos attached, it was just a change in frame, and the new perspective provided more useful information.

A one hour meeting took over an hour and a half, and afterwards I had another 45 minutes of hammering out one possible solution, which may not be the one we go with. However, even if the idea I suggest isn’t the one we go with, I know the final decision will be one that considers multiple perspectives, and will be a viable solution to the problem we are working on.

What a contrast it is between these two scenarios. In the first case, the focus was on a quick fix, and in the second case the focus was on a sustainable solution. The difference was being with a team of people focused on the big picture rather than just trying to make a problem go away.

It’s a matter of the frame you put around your problem… and when in fix-it mode, the bigger the frame the better.

Do you hear the music?

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“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes we let our perception cloud our perspective. We get caught up in our own world and don’t recognize that we are focused on minutia that clutter our attention, and we lose perspective.

We don’t see the the early season budding flowers, we don’t feel a light breeze, we don’t taste the food we rush to eat. We don’t hear the music. We don’t dance. We don’t perceive the beauty of the world around us.

When you see someone joyful, be perceptive, what is making their heart dance? Listen carefully and you too will hear the music.

Introvert at a party

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Sometimes the introvert in me really comes out… or rather shuts me in. In a social setting I can find comfort in a one-on-one conversation, but feel totally removed from a larger group discussion. It’s like a switch goes off and suddenly I’m no longer a participant but a distant observer of everything happening around me.

I don’t feel isolated or secluded. It’s not like I’m trapped somewhere I don’t want to be. I’m not suddenly feeling left out or alone, I am simply not fully engaged in what everyone else is doing. It’s not sad, it’s a comfortable place that is just one step removed from the present, or rather presence of everyone else.

A joke is told, I hear the laughter, I smile. It’s like I’m watching a sitcom, and I’m not part of the laugh track. I get and appreciate the humour, it just doesn’t hit me like something that would make me laugh. If someone asks me a question, I’m right there to respond, but it feels like it is filtered through a vail from the outside, remote yet not far away. I answer politely but I’m not fully engaged.

This is not a place I choose to go. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s just a consequence of being an introvert. A loud and busy gathering is not a comfortable place, so I recede to a place inside myself that is more comfortable and I engage with the outside world from there.

Still happy to be with people I like. Not fully disengaged, but also not fully present. A slightly distant observer rather than full participant. An introvert in an extraverted world.

What’s my age again?

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My youngest turns 22 today. Sometimes I struggle to grasp how I am the father of 2 kids in their 20’s? Am I really that old?

I remember hearing old people – as in my current age – say that they didn’t feel very old. I remember the look on my dad’s face when I asked him how ‘my old man’ was doing for the first time. I remember being in my 20’s and seeing old people, like in their 50’s, on tv and thinking they were ancient.

In some ways I’ve earned my way here. In other ways I feel like an imposter pretending to be older and responsible. How did I get here? Wasn’t I just in my early 30’s?

My perspective on what ‘old’ means has changed year by year, or maybe decade by decade. My 60’s are just around the corner, so I guess 80 is old… for now. So what if younger me thought my current age was old, I’m not old… that word will always belong to people older than me!

Going Meta

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If I was going to give this post a subtitle it would be, ‘How do you know that you’re smart enough to know the difference?’

Just to be clear, I’m delusional. But guess what… so are you. The world we live in and the world we think we live in are two different things. We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as our senses are capable of seeing it. Then we go further and apply our individual perspective to add meaning to what we observe.

I say think of a dog, and I guarantee you that you aren’t thinking of the same dog I am. Not the same kind, not the same size, probably not the same disposition… which might be different in our perception even if we were thinking of the same dog.

So we live lives of illusion and delusion, except most of our delusions are close enough to each other’s that we don’t think of each other as crazy… Most delusions. Although, maybe less of them than at any time in recent history. Because now more than ever people seem to be seeing the world in vastly different ways.

So what can we personally do? We need to get meta. We need to think about our thinking. We have to start from honest awareness and seek to debunk ourselves, to figure out how we are deceiving ourselves. We have to see the frame we put around things. Observe ourselves, (the observer).

This meta self reflection is most important when we talk to someone with a different perspective or world view. It’s so easy to see the bias of others, and much harder to see our own. Yet this self reflection is essential.

A wonderful example of this is looking at the growth in numbers of people who think the world is flat. It flabbergasts me to think that this number is actually getting larger. How is that possible? Flat world views. That is to say, people are asking one question, looking from one central position: ‘Show me the curve… I’m on earth and I can’t see it. You must be delusional and gullible to believe it’s round, when you can’t see it.’

Only then, and from that biased position, can someone make jumps to conclusions like NASA is trying to fool us, and the conspiracy to fool us is suddenly everywhere. Then evidence that fits this world view suddenly starts to appear. Except it doesn’t.

No, what actually happens is that these flat mindsets start to create excuses for everything that doesn’t fit this world view. Never mind that civilizations like the Mayans, 4,000 years ago, understood the movement of the stars and probably already knew the earth was round. Never mind the view of earth from the Apollo moon missions. Never mind simple science experiments that have been around for hundreds of years proving the earth is round.

All that said, the flat earthers start with an observation, or lack of observation of a curve. They are using their senses, that are basing the criteria on their view of the world… their delusion.

That’s an easy example, because there is a lot of evidence debunking a flat earth. But there are a lot of topics where one perspective isn’t so clearly wrong. There are arguments on different sides of the political spectrum, different sides of a global conflict, and different sides of hot topics where the perspective someone, the perspective you, take is not necessarily the clearest. Suddenly our delusion is potentially working against us.

If we aren’t willing to go meta and really look at where our view is coming from, we are susceptible to flat world views. We can get stuck in a single delusional frame of mind where we don’t see what’s really happening, what a better perspective might be. And so just like the flat earther, we only see the issue from a perspective that we can observe, but isn’t correct.

The irony is that the more humble you are, the more likely you are to be able to go meta and see other possible perspectives. It seems that being humble is a key ingredient, because a lot of smart people struggle with this. Religion, politics, and culture all seem to undermine intelligence, and smart people get lost in dogma. Even scientists can do this. It’s not about how smart you are, it’s about how humble you are.

Are you willing to recognize other views? Are you able to let go your ego and really observe an issue from a different perspective? Are you willing to change your mind? Ironically if the answer is yes, you probably don’t need to get meta as often as others. It’s still useful to do though, both to solidify your own view, and to change your mind.

High versus low trust societies

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I love when someone adds to my perspective on social media. That’s exactly what happened after I posted Basic assumptions a couple days ago. The post reflected that, “people no longer give each other the benefit of the doubt that intentions are good. This used to be a basic assumption we operated on, the premise that we can start with the belief that everyone is acting in good faith.”

I shared the post on Twitter and Chris Kalaboukis and I had the following conversation thread:

Chris: Reading your post: could we be transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society?

Dave: Yes, that seems like an appropriate conclusion. Is there an author that speaks of this idea?

Chris: Not that I can recall, however, if you look at the attributes of low-trust societies you see a lot of what is happening now.

Dave: So true! The circle of high trust seems to be shrinking and it really seems like a step backwards… tribalism trumps the collective of a greater community.

Chris: It is. It seems that even our institutions are driving us towards more tribalism and division.

Dave: And how do you suppose we correct this course? I honestly don’t have a clue, and see things getting worse before they get better.

Chris: I think that in reality, most people prefer to live in a high-trust society. We need leaders and media who support that vision.

Dave: I think the biggest problem right now is that most leaders do not want to step into a limelight where both social media and news outlets are only interested in focussing on the dirt. It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.

Chris: If it bleeds it leads. we’ve never been able to communicate with more people at the same time but the only communication which seems to get through is negative. It’s all about keeping your attention to sell more ads.

Dave: I sound like quite the pessimist, that’s not usually my stance on things, but I do struggle to see a way forward from here.

—–

The idea Chris shared that we could be ‘transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society’ seems insightful and really intrigues me. It isn’t happening at just one level, but many!

• Scam phone calls and emails are perfect examples. We used to operate from a position of trust, but now unknown calls and unsolicited emails are all necessarily met with skepticism.

• Sensationalized news leads with misleading headlines that are more about getting attention and clicks than about providing truthful news. And if the news slant doesn’t match your beliefs, it’s ‘fake news’.

• Sales pitches and advertising promises almost everything under the sun, you aren’t buying a product with a basic function, you are buying a product that is going to change your life or transform how you do ‘X’, or use ‘Y’… your results will surprise you and you’ll be amazed!

• If you are even slightly left wing you are ‘woke’ or ‘Antifa’ in the most derogatory way you can use these words. If you are even slightly right wing you are ‘Alt-right’ and racist. No one gets to sit on a spectrum, you are either viewed as an extreme on one or the other side. And even agreeing on one topic on the other side makes you less trustworthy on your side.

These are but a few ways we’ve become a lower-trust society. Ad hominem and straw man attacks get more attention than sound arguments. A well said lie is easily shared while complex truths are not. Saying a situation is complex and sharing nuance does not make for catchy sound bites, and aren’t going to go viral on TikTok, or Instagram Reels. No, but the snarky personal attack will, as will a one-sided, extreme view that packs a powerful punch.

What’s worse is that moderate voices get shut out. And in general many people feel silenced or would rather not share a view that is even slightly controversial. So the extreme voices get even more airtime and attention.

I feel this often. Writing every day, and sometimes picking controversial topics to discuss, I find myself tiptoeing and treading very carefully. I said in my Twitter conversation with Chris above, “It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.” I sometimes wonder what one thing I’m going to say is going to get blown out of proportion? If I write one single inappropriate or strongly biased phrase, will it define me? Will it undermine the 1,500+ posts that I’ve written, and make me out to be something or someone I’m not?

This sounds paranoid, but I wrote one post a few years ago that a friend private messaged me about, then called me and said I’d gone too far with my opinion on a specific point. I totally saw his point, went back and adjusted my post to tone it down… but I feel like that one issue, that one strong and overly biased opinion shared publicly put a rift in our friendship. And that’s someone I respect, not some stranger coming at me, not someone that doesn’t know my true character. My opinion in his eyes is now less trustworthy, and holds less value. That said, I appreciated the feedback, and respect that he took the time to share it privately. That’s rare these days.

The path forward is not easy. We aren’t just swaying slightly towards a less trustworthy society, we are on a full pendulum swing away from a more trustworthy society. Tribalism, nationalism, and extremism are pulling our world apart. Who do you trust? What institutions? Which governments? Who do you consider a neighbour? Who will you break bread with? Who do you believe?

The circles of trust are getting smaller, and the mechanisms to share bias and misinformation are growing. We are devolving into a less trusting society or rather societies, and it’s undermining our sense of community. We need messages of kindness, love, and peace to prevail. We need tolerance, acceptance, and more than anything trustworthy institutions and leaders. We need moderates and centrists to voice compromise and minimize extremist views. We need to rebuild a high trust society… together.

Blind spot

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I saw a Neil deGrasse Tyson video where he described our galaxy as thinner than a pancake. He said it is more like a crepe. Our galaxy is more than 100 times long as it is wide. One result of this is that it limits our ability to see the universe.

We can’t look beyond our galaxy along its length. There are so many stars in our own galaxy that they prevent us from seeing anything beyond it along this thin plane. Essentially our galaxy creates a blind spot for our visible universe.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to see along this axis. We can look at our closest neighbouring solar systems and explore our own galaxy, we just can’t see beyond our galaxy nearly as well and as clearly as when we view the universe from an angle other than along the plane of our flat crepe galaxy.

It’s interesting because while this flat shape creates a bit of a blind spot for us, it also makes a lot of the universe easier to see, because our galaxy does not get in the way of a lot of the sky. If our universe was more spherical, it would be a greater impairment to the universe beyond. Our blind spot creates an advantage elsewhere.

There is a metaphor there for our own personal blind spots. Blind spots might limit what we see in some areas, but how do they allow us to see more in others? We observe our world from eye level. We can learn more about our surroundings by seeing a bird’s eye view, but it wouldn’t be an advantage for us if that was the only view we had.

We all have blind spots, I just wonder what insightful perspectives they give us compared to if we didn’t have them?

It’s about the nuances

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Today I ran into a teacher that was a favourite of my two daughters. He brought up a current geopolitical issue that I won’t discuss here, because there is too much nuance and I’m not prepared to write a dissertation of my thoughts… and anything else will only cause me grief. In fact, even a dissertation would cause me grief because I’d be bound to garnish disagreement and even anger. Why? Because no matter what position I hold, no matter how nuanced or not, it will upset people.

We’ve reached an impasse in public conversation when nuance is not part of the conversation. Everything is black & white, and any shade of grey is ‘othered’ to the opposing view. This is unhealthy. Very unhealthy.

It took my conversation today, where we agreed yet were equally reserved, to realize that a more public conversation can’t happen for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough. I haven’t done the hard work to have a strong and well defended view of a sensitive issue. I ask questions that could and would piss off people on either side of the issue.

I’ve said before,

“We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.”

I don’t believe that distinction is being made right now. I don’t see an openness to nuance. I don’t see a way forward where we are moving in the right direction. An upcoming election in the US coupled with AI generated fake news, and the bi-polar positions on the left and right, are going to lead to a shitstorm. It’s going to get ugly, it might get violent, and it will not get better until it gets worse.

We need to find a way to bring back nuanced debate and conversation… where different opinions are met with interest not scorn, with acceptance not ridicule. Discourse can be had without anger, and nuanced opinions will lead to solutions where now we only find conflict.

Here comes the rain

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Living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, I miss the rainy season in Barbados. When the rainy season hits on this tropical island, it meant a morning rainstorm with water droplets the size of coins soaking you in seconds, followed by the cloud cover passing you and the rain stopping almost instantly. After that there was 20-30 minutes of uncomfortable humidity as the hot sun evaporated the rainwater. Maybe this would happen again later, but often it wasn’t until the next day.

Occasionally you’d get a cloudy, cool day that lasted the whole day with intermittent rainfall, but there might only be 5-10 days like that the whole season. Maybe I’m underplaying it, after all I was 9 when I left, but I remember a rainy season I could easily handle.

Today was a reminder that BC rain is nothing like that. I spent over an hour outside in misty rain, putting our above ground pool away. It was damp, and there was a constant drizzle or mist. It was gloomy. There was hardly a time during the day that I could tell you where the sun was due to the heavy cloud cover… And the season is just starting.

The worst two months of weather here are usually November and February. But the gloominess starts now. I’ll make the most of the grey days to come, even heading to and from work in the dark. I’ll continue to take my Vitamin D, and I’ll use my sunlight desk lamp at school. But I have to admit that I’d take the rainy season in Barbados any time over the rainy season in Vancouver.

The blame game

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It’s easier to point a finger outward than it is to point it inward.

It’s more comfortable to see the faults in others than to accept the faults of our own.

It’s less work to hold others accountable than to accept responsibility.

Accusations are not as scary as being vulnerable.

It’s simpler to rationalize than it is to be critically introspective.

Accepting responsibility rather than blaming is hard work. Owning your own shit is hard work. Making things right when things have gone wrong is hard work… especially since sometimes right just means better, and no matter what you do, you can’t get back to the way things used to be.

But when you play the blame game nothing gets better. In fact, things usually get worse. Most punishment and discipline is about blame. Being restorative means sharing the responsibility to make things better.

Accepting ownership of your own actions and consequences, that’s when personal growth happens. That’s when we get unstuck. That’s when we begin to create an empowered reality rather than a sense of victimization.

How do we make things better? That’s not always an easy question to ask, and it’s usually very hard to answer. But the answer is never blame.