Nearly two years ago, I posted about how the current political polarized environment seemed to derive from the comfort many feel from a sense of absolutism, where a set framework of rules and beliefs gives a solid sense of direction, and how these absolute frameworks actually tend to upset the delicate balance of nature and society. I commented on how these expressions of absolutism failed to understand the balance by not seeing the context within the interactions of others or exploring the range of perspective in which one was creating the absolute framework. However, I do realize that understanding context and perspective is not a simple concept, especially when regarding each of our positions within this universe, knowing full context and total perspective is an absolute impossibility. Yet, the better one can understand the basic sense of how context and perception plays in understanding nature and social interaction, then accepting the variations of life in finding balance might come easier.

Context is a very important part of our ability to judge the actions of others around us, the conditions that many of us face on a daily basis, and the quality of our own actions within nature and society. Regardless of how selfishly or selflessly our own personal views characterizes right and wrong, worthiness, or responsibility, judgement is the way we relate our views to the actions surrounding us. However, our ability to judge any incident or decision is dependent upon the amount of information we can see about the factors surrounding the incident or judgement, including the aspects of intent and consequences. The better we are at seeing more of these factors of context surrounding an incident, the better we can become at judging the actions and consequences of the incident. For instance, imagine a person walking down a sidewalk along a busy street, when suddenly another person comes out of nowhere and tackles the first person onto the concrete, causing bruising and a couple broken bones. Just based on this information, one may judge the second person as being guilty of a vicious assault, perhaps even demonstrating a power-hungry sense of bullying. However, if mere seconds later, an out-of-control speeding vehicle suddenly jumps the curb and crashes into a wall at a point where the first person would have been if this person had not been pushed out of the way by the second person, then judgement of the second person’s actions may be seen as a selfless attempt of protection from danger and the injuries the first person incurred may be considered more acceptable to the real possibility of death if the first person had not been shoved out of the way of the wayward vehicle. Unfortunately, for many events, these factors of context tend to be much more complex and trying to understand actions or events often require sorting out opposing contextual factors, as well as trying to uncover the more hidden factors of intent. Yet, so much context is lost when we try to reduce our judgement down to a simple right or wrong single sentence meme.

Understanding the context of the information around us depends totally on the information we receive from our senses, our ability to integrate information over a period of time, and our acceptance in the reliability of this collected information, which forms our perspective of the universe around us. The evolution of humanity led us to develop a way to exchange parts of the information each of us gathers amongst other individuals through a common spoken language, then we developed a way to spread this information to a broader society of humanity through the organized symbols of a common written language. This sharing of information broadened our perspective and understanding to eventually create through scientific technology a way to share and gather information over distances beyond our immediate sensual views. However, no matter how much language and technology expands each one of our perspectives within our life and the universe, we are all limited in the amount and breadth of information each of us can gather and maintain in our memories in order to fully see the world and universe we are in and to accurately judge absolutely what our next actions should be within this world. Therefore, we base our decisions of future actions based on a core of information we feel we understand and use faith to fill in the blanks. However, due to variations in how information comes to us, we are often confronted with contradictions in what is happening around us. In some circumstances, these contradictions are caused by inaccurate or false information presented to us, from something as simple as a mirage or a damaged sense to something more complicated like incorrect or false information shared to us by others. How should we handle these flaws in our own perspective? For some, it becomes better to firmly accept one clear framework of information and begin to reject or judge negatively any information that begins to go against this framework. This may provide clarity or comfort, but very often this will begin to clash with other absolutely created frameworks. What I have realized within my own perspective is that there is no one perfect framework of perspective. To handle the flow of contradictory information, I need to constantly compare new information with old information and see where information seems contradictory. Sometimes, I notice that a changing environment only created the sense of contradiction when there really was no conflict in information. Many times, the comparison and balancing of information helps me to determine which information is illusionary or incorrect. However, oftentimes, I can only be open to gathering information, constantly compare and contrast what is provided to me, then use a little faith to fill in the gaps and move forward. My perspective is only one of an infinite number of perspectives in this universe, and seeking a balance among what I see, hear, read, and comprehend is the closest to being a calming part of this universe.