The Benefit of New Perspectives

I've been thinking a bit about perspectives lately, mostly because I've had a catchy song about perspectives stuck in my head. The song describes looking at a cityscape from an "ariel area rug" (i.e. magic carpet), noting that "You can't see much of the skyline; it looks like more of a grid." The song makes a point of saying that it's not arguing whether this new perspective is "better or worse" than "the world that we see from the ground;" it just argues that "it's a brand new perspective, literally," and that if we look at the world briefly from that perspective, "we'll be glad that we did."

What I like most about this song, besides its general catchiness, is that it makes a good point about perspectives. No one perspective is better than another, except, perhaps, for new ones. Looking at something from new perspective can teach us more about it, so any new perspective we gain increases our understanding, which is almost always a good thing. It's not that the new perspective is "better" than the old one was; it's just better to have looked at things from both perspectives than from only one.

I think we would do well to explore other perspectives, especially when dealing with complex problems and issues. And since each person has their own perspective, we'll never run out of new perspectives to explore. If we talk to each other and really listen to each other, and try to understand one another, we can collectively learn more about the world around us than any of us could have learned on our own, using only our own perspectives. I wouldn't say that any one person's perspective on an issue is any more or less valid than anyone else's perspective, but I would say that looking at the issue from multiple perspectives will help you learn more about it than you'd learn from using only one perspective. So let's open our minds to new perspectives, even to the perspectives of people we disagree with. We can learn a lot by looking at things from other people's points of view, and the more we learn about the problems of society, the closer we'll get to finding solutions.