Squashing or Encompassing
What is the antidote to tunnel vision?
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Related post: Being Right - A Scenario
How easy it is, when hearing an opinion or point of view quite different from one’s own, or even one “obviously wrong,” to immediately squash it. I suppose it is, however, many times easier to see how others squash one’s own suggestions, approaches and views, than vice versa. This seems all down to the seemingly universal tendency to view things from a chink in a cavern. My chink is different to your chink, and therefore we see a different aspect. But can I use the knowledge of this difference as a means to enlarge my understanding, rather than automatically closing down other possibilities than that which I so far see? The latter, of course, only increases this tendency to tunnel vision, or, in other words, this susceptibility to a kind of hypnotism.
But what if someone else seems to squash, say, one’s sharing of an approach to a situation or problem that has been carefully considered and found to be useful? It is easy to react with something of indignation, if not externally, then internally. And that emotion can easily swamp any detached judgement on one’s own side too. “Why is it you always squash my approach to things?” might be an automatic criticism of someone else’s tendency in this way. What if, however, the whole thing is turned around, and the criticism directed inwards towards oneself? Namely, “Why do I always tend to smother another’s point of view?” Can I, in contrast, try to see and understand their position, and in so doing give myself more of a bird’s eye view?
I am responsible for trying to increase my own understanding, but I cannot compel anyone else to increase their understanding. Having said that, there is a need to communicate one’s comprehension, however, small. But how to help each other in our task in this? How to really listen, and take on board the other’s point of view, even if they seem wrong and I wish “to put them right”? That very same emotion of indignation that may be evoked in discussion and argument, may be utilised as a constructive, rather than a destructive, element, and used to help open things out and break down the walls in one’s own mind. Sometimes one just needs to turn around to see the light.