By Sig Shonholtz

I have been trying to bridge a gap of understanding, which seems to define many relationships. For lack of a better phrase (I welcome any better phrase) I am calling it a philosophical anomaly.

I will explain it best in an experience I had with an old girlfriend. I was driving the car and she was my passenger. I was driving in a sort of jerky fashion and she said to “can you drive a little nicer”, which I did.. A week later she was driving and I had to make the same request of her, “can you drive a little nicer, please (hers was a demand, mine a request)?” But instead of changing her driving she argued that I made the request because she had said it to me the week before. I argued (pointed out) that last week I was the driver and this week I am a passenger and my perspective was completely different.

This got me wondering about how many possible perspectives a person could have during any 24 hour period. These perspectives are not points of view, because as many people as there are on earth is as many points of view there are.

After a few months of day dreaming about it I settled on 6 possibilities (permutations). Since driving was the inspiration for the theme I kept it as my model. But we could just as easily use an example of dining in a restaurant.

The First Perspective is driving a car by ourselves. It does not matter so much how we drive (unless we are being unsafe to others). We are alone with our thoughts and awarenesses. Like eating alone and sitting at a table.

The Second Perspective is driving the car with a passenger in the front seat, we need to be more aware and thoughtful of that person sitting next to us. Our driving style and our conversation impacts them. Like eating with a friend and “driving” the conversation, or just doing the talking at that moment.

The Third Perspective is from the passenger in the front seats point of view. The passenger is now sitting at the table. Each time the conversation shifts back and forth one person is either in the second or third perspective.

The Fourth Perspective is that of a passenger in the back seat. They may be participating or not but they are observers. This would, for example be someone in an audience, an observer on an event. Or perhaps a person at a dinner table not really being addressed but watching. Theirs is actually  privileged because they may notice things in the dynamics that others do not see.

The Fifth Perspective is the time we spend sleeping. Since these Six Perspectives take up 24 hours of each day time we spend sleeping must be included. We are not so aware during that time though.

The Sixth Perspective is not really a perspective it is imaginative but it might be most important one although it is very hard to achieve. I am calling it the ultimate perspective. In order to try and have the ultimate Perspective we must try and exit our humanity. We must pretend or imagine that we have not interest in human affairs. So, when I want this insight I imagine I am a science officer on an interstellar space craft. I do not really care about human affairs. I am not myself, an American Jewish man that is 55 years old and from California that likes watches. When I take this Perspective I am free to decide right and wrong good or bad and up and down. Things are much more clear from this position. In fact morality is just a changing concept.

In my case the Second and Third Perspectives are the ones between my former girlfriend and I, and myself and my former girlfriend. I am continuously to exhaustion either the passenger or the driver and cannot seem to explain that our differences are more to do with this simple idea than anything else.

I have noticed this dynamic in another area which I will try and explain. It is something like this. As a child we argue when someone older then us tells us not to do something. We will argue with them that, because they do it, we can do it. It goes something like this, we have all been in this moment. You tell a child not to eat with their mouthful, but inevitably we do the same thing so they argue and say “you do the same thing”. In my case, with my young daughter we sometimes say yah instead of yes. She does not use the word yah and is always correcting us, (this example is almost the opposite of what I am trying to say).

As adults we have the same problem but this time when we say, “you do the same thing” we mean something else. We are accusing the person of not being aware that when they are in the Second Perspective they cannot imagine themselves in the Third and vice versa. This is the problem I have, trying to convey this very simple idea of trying to see oneself as we might be seen.

I do not know if I am clear on the one above. It has been very difficult for me it articulate it. I actually was trying to find a philosophical numeric system or a way to quantify this last one. It is so common between people that it is almost a normal way we react to things.

(the-vu Editor’s note) there has been considerable study of perspective in the field of psychology, but when someone acquires a need to consider perspective due to real and personal circumstances, it brings the concept to practical life.