Wet Rocks/Dry Rocks

Have you ever been walking along a stream and saw a rock in the water that looked very pretty, so you take it home and after it dries off it no longer looks as nice?  It's not the rock that has changed, it's your perspective that has changed. 

This is one of those topics that has been coming back to me in many ways over the years.  I always thought I would write a book someday and one of the chapter titles was going to be Wet Rocks/Dry Rocks.  Perspective impacts so many things such as:

·         The shapes you draw if you use perspective, either single-point or two-point.

·         What your opinion on a topic may be depending on the story that is being told.

·         What the plot of a book or movie is.

·         How to complete a task.

·         Using first-order or second-order thinking.

·         Or yes, whether a rock is pretty or not.

 Drawing Perspective

If you're not familiar with drawing perspective, to consider single-point perspective, think of a cube.  Draw the vertical lines as you normally would, but for the horizontal lines, have them meet toward an imaginary point that is in the distant background.  (Think of looking down a long set of railroad tracks where they appear to meet in the distance.)  While it is the same object, they look totally different.  Two-point perspective is slightly different where you are looking more from an edge of a cube and the lines meet at 2 different points on a distant horizon.

 

Perspective on a topic

Have you ever changed your mind about something?  For instance, whether people should be allowed to legally carry guns.  It doesn’t matter what your opinion is on the topic, it’s just a topic that illustrates a point.  If people are allowed to carry guns, what is the purpose?  To allow for their own security…for hunting…because the Constitution allows it.  Depending on your perspective, you may be in favor of people being able to legally carry guns.  But if there is a mass shooting, does that change your perspective even just a little?  And what determines your perspective?  Is it for your personal protection… is it for other people to protect themselves?  You may have different answers depending on the context.  And that is a single situation.  Think about all of the various topics that the federal government has to deal with.  Is it any wonder that things take forever to get through Congress?  You have 535 people with at least that many opinions. 

The plot of a book or movie

Are you one of those people that can figure out who the good and bad people in a book or movie are in the very first part?  How do you do it?  Is it from seeing the same plot lines over and over again?  Recognizing patterns?  Are you ever surprised by a plot twist, or if the director shows you the same situation from a different perspective, does that make you see things differently? 

How to complete a task

I was recently thinking about a team-building exercise that I always wanted to do with a group. 

1.       You give everyone a copy of the same crossword puzzle (a really difficult one).  They have 5 minutes to complete whatever they can. 

2.       After 5 minutes, they work with the person next to them and create one puzzle out of what both of them have filled in.

3.       Then they have 5 more minutes as a pair to see what else they can get. 

4.       The pair works with a pair next to them and you keep going until there is just one puzzle. 

After there is just 1 team, you look at the difference between what every single person got and what the entire group finished up with to show the value of different backgrounds and perspectives.  I believe this would be a great way of team building and showing the value of different perspectives.

Using first-order or second-order thinking

I love this one.  It has changed my entire outlook on so many things.  Consider a parade where everyone attending is on a flat sidewalk.  The kids are sitting on the curb.  The parents are sitting in chairs behind them, and people are standing behind the parents.  Other people fill in between the heads of the other people that are standing.  You know the scene.  What happens if the parents stand up?  The people behind them have to move their heads to be able to see, then the people behind those people need to move their heads and so on. 

First-order thinking would be the parents wanting to see better, so they stand up.  They aren’t considering what happens after that.  If they had considered second-order thinking, they may have stayed sitting to allow everyone to see without causing all the interruption. 

Now consider an effort to prevent discrimination against people that have a criminal record.  There is a group that wants to remove a checkbox on employment applications asking people if they have ever been convicted of a felony.  The reason being that potential employers may not want to have former felons working in their facility.  Sounds great right?  Former felons that have paid their dues to society for past crimes will be allowed to get the same chance as non-felons at getting jobs because there is nothing in the application that warns the employers against hiring them.  But is that what happened?  No, because employers only had the applications to look at without that information, instead of discriminating against former felons, they now started discriminating against all blacks and Latinos that only had high school diplomas and were between 19 and 30.  That is a second-order effect.  Something that happens that was not intended.

When you think about a stone that looks pretty in the water, think that it will be the same stone whether it is wet or not.  And whenever you can, broaden your perspective.  Take in information from people you may not agree with, listen to the other sides’ arguments, make the other sides’ arguments.  And think about those stones that are dry and just look gray or brown.  What would they look like with a little water on them?