The Need for Perspective.

10.1.2020

I first encountered this word during an art class, where I was being lectured on the single dimension-ness of my drawing. My interpretation of that word was that it was a pain because try as I might, I simply could not master perspective.

I did not go so far as to wonder whether that word held any meaning outside of paper.

Then, a few years later, I watched a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called The Danger of a Single Story. I was struck. Adichie talked about what happens when a complex event or a person is reduced to a single narrative. She urges her audience to listen to other ‘stories’ or perspectives about the same event or person; and says that if that does not happen, we risk a critical misunderstanding. She used the example of the assumption uninformed people make about citizens of Africa: that they are all poor starving people, who live in either abject poverty or wild country.

Adichie talked about having multiple perspectives as studying overlapping stories to understand an event, person or country. Just as narratives, perspectives too have power. This power is the ability not only to tell a story, but also to make that story the definitive story of that person or thing.

This really put things in perspective for me. I then read Harry Potter where Professor Trelawney spends a few minutes of every class shouting, “Broaden your minds!” and then I subsequently ended up doing a subject called Global Perspectives in my A Levels.

Before Global Perspectives, I took newspaper articles at their word. After my first few classes, I extended my questioning nature not just to opinion, but also to fact or what could be perceived to be or was presented as fact.

I tried to read the news keeping Adichie’s advice in mind.

Recently, I came across a book called Factfulness by Hans Rosling, where he also addresses what he calls “the single perspective instinct.” He says that having a single perspective about something can limit your imagination (as someone who sometimes depends solely on imagination to get through a day, I was terrified) and that to find practical solutions one must look at problems from many angles.

But it only made sense to me on every level when I realized that this is why people say, “I want to hear both sides of the story first,” when they try to solve problems between children or adults.

It all fell into place then. My much-abused painting, that I had struggled with for hours, told only one story: mine, and it was a story that had only one perspective that was again only mine. Therefore, even with the imagination that I have in abundance, I failed to bring my art to life and had instead limited it to a single dimensioned story.

Today, perspective means several things to me. It is no longer a pain, but a mantra of sorts, that I keep hiding just behind the door of my mind so that when I do encounter people or events, it can proceed to pounce on them and root out all the overlapping stories and perspectives about them.

Only then will I make an informed opinion.

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This reflection I think, is timely considering all that is happening in our world today. As people debate about topics they are not fully informed about or create mini wars by posting things of which they know nothing on social media, while others refuse to educate themselves on current happenings, I see it as crucial for us young people to take steps to ensure that we have only informed opinions.