TWO EYES

June 23rd, 2018

Watching a 3D movie is interesting for about 7 minutes. After that, it’s easy to forget you’re watching a 3D movie. Perhaps that’s because we are so used to 3D . . . i.e. normal life away from a screen.

Close one eye and try and go about your day though, and quickly it’s apparent that something important is missing. You can make sense of everything alright, but it’s flat as hell and distances feel less intuitive.

Any given subject, no matter how we are looking at it, always benefits from a shift in perspective. Like flipping a card to see who won the poker round. It can seem like the card has changed, but of course it hasn’t. Our perspective of that card has changed. It no longer holds possible promise or defeat, it reveals certainty. Or rather, our perspective reveals that defeat or victory. Our understanding of the card has deepened because of the shift in perspective.

Think of a child with a new toy, turning it over and over, inspecting every facet of it. learning. This is the joy of the 3D world, experiencing in such a visceral way that everything has many sides to it depending on how we look at it.

Our language hijacks the visual experience as a metaphor. Do you ‘see’ a solution? Can you ‘see’ the point she’s trying to make? For good reason too. The more sides of a given topic that someone can ‘see’ the greater variety of useful and possible interpretations are available…

Looking at a coffee mug with one eye is only one interpretation of that coffee mug, like a face-down card. Open the other eye and it pops. Suddenly you have a lot more information.

We need multiple perspectives on the same thing to understand it. And the more perspectives we do the hard work to ‘see’, to learn and understand, the more well-rounded we may be said to be.

Perhaps this is why life has evolved just about all seeing-creatures with two or more eyes.

From birth we learn constantly through two simultaneous perspectives.

How might we take a cue from evolutionary biology?

Who is better suited? The stubborn one banging against the wall? Or the determined one who looks at the whole wall and notices a door in it? Both are trying to achieve the same thing: getting to the other side. But only one is willing to entertain multiple perspectives of the problem.

Of course it’s no surprise that one-eyed monsters are considered so… one-track-minded….and, well. dumb.

Maybe a good question to ask is:

Are their any topics that you’re being a real dick about?

(P.S. There is a one-eyed animal, it’s called a copepod. It’s really really small, too small to notice. Which is… perhaps appropriate)