All In Perspective

I have come to the conclusion that people, in general, love black and white. They love to categorize things, as if it helps facilitate an understanding of them. Perhaps, in some cases, it does. But it has been my observation that this practice mostly serves to divide people.

Take politics for example. You can't talk about politics these days without falling into one of two camps, either "liberal" or "conservative". And God (if there is one) forbid you get labelled as one or the other, for then you can no longer express (or be seen to express) anything to the contrary. And be taken seriously, anyway.

Over the years I have learned much about myself. But, mainly, I have learned that I am many things...depending on who is observing me. Some people think I am a genius, and others think I am an idiot. And there's a whole slew of opinions in there in between. And the interesting thing to me is, they're all right. Or, they're valid, anyway. It all depends on the context within which I am being observed.

As for the liberal vs. conservative categorization, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon, at least in regards to myself. I have had friends and other people comment about how conservative I am. I have also had friends and other people comment about how liberal I am. And the more liberal they are, the more conservative I appear to be. And visa versa.

Funny, but I thought I was just being me. I never labelled myself one way or the other. I don't like labels. And it seems, from my perspective, that people are hard-pressed to change their opinions once they are established. I think the people who think I am a conservative still think I am a conservative, and I think the people who think I am a liberal still think I am a liberal. And I don't know that there is anything I can do or say to change those opinions - primarily, because they are not mine. I can only change in the eyes of someone else when their perception of me changes.

It seems this can be extrapolated to a larger scale. People form opinions of things, events, issues, other people, etc., and then that's it. As soon as something happens where we have that moment of, "that makes sense" or "that seems right," suddenly it's golden, and for many people, it becomes an unshakable truth and they will seek - knowingly or unconsciously - for everything that supports that idea.

What gets me the most is that people these days seem to feel that there is nothing in between. No gray area. No variance. You either fit into one category, or you fit into another. There is no fluidity - you are either round or you are square, and there is no adapting you to any other shape. But the reality is, I think, that everything is a spectrum, and real problems begin the moment you try to quantify things. And, in the end, so much complexity emerges in the process of trying to define what is observed that we forget what we're looking at and simultaneously proclaim that we know and understand it. Meanwhile, whatever "it" is simply continues to be, and simply is, and in the end, perhaps, suffers (or benefits) from the effects of what others THINK it is.

I think there is an innate need within most people to hang on to something. To have some foundation to stand on, something absolute and unshakable. And when it comes to perspective and perception, people REALLY don't like it when they feel a personal belief (or something they proclaim to "know" or "understand") is somehow threatened in some way.

I have had my world rocked a few times, having moments of revelation in my life where I realized things were not as I believed. As a result, I have become malleable. I do not hold so strongly to the understandings that I have of things, since I know they can change as I learn more about them. I do not purport to know anything with absolute certainty, except for such tenants as "nothing in life is certain."

All that we know about life, the universe, and everything, is perceived. We develop familiarity with our surroundings in an ever-widenening scope as we grow older, and -at least this is true for me - the more we learn, the more we realize how much we do not yet know. And, as a friend of mine once said, "you'll never know how stupid you are." His point being that, as soon as you learn what you did not know, you're not so stupid anymore. :)

I grew up an optimist, and have grown pessimistic and cynical in my later years, but am finding myself wanting to be hopeful. I typically feel that hope is a four-letter word that leaves you stuck in a mindset, perhaps living in the past, but one thing about hope is that is can motivate. And I want to be motivated. I want to believe that this world, and the people in it, can change for the good - can learn and grow and become malleable. I want to believe that this is not an idealistic hope. Unfortunately, my observations tell me that people are stubborn, and I see this perpetuating and expanding trend of people grabbing on to ideas about how things are, believing that this and that work a certain way without exception, or think that certain things are true just because so many people say so, and I struggle to believe that there is hope to be found and wonder if I am simply wasting my time with such notions.

People have not really changed at all in the course of thousands of years, and overall, unless something fundamentally changes in our intrinsic and/or genetic nature that allows us to advance to a "better" stage on the evolutionary scale, we probably never will. People will continue to rigidly believe what they believe, people of different beliefs will continue to wage war against each other, and so few standing back to observe and ask, "why are they doing that to each other?" and even fewer, perhaps, taking a step back to ask, "why are we doing this?"

And how few take the time to question their own beliefs, knowledge, understanding, or whatever it is they proclaim to comprehend? Does change start, first, with a moment of questioning, or does it begin with a willingness to question?

Who knows? But one thing that seems to ring true for me, is that, in the end, there is no such thing as right or wrong; only thinking makes it so.