One Point Perspective

The one-point perspective is a composition technique that initially came from drawing. It demonstrates how elements seem to get smaller and smaller when positioned towards the background. In photography the main idea behind the one-point perspective is the use of parallel lines leading towards the background. It creates the effect of lines merging towards the background; they lead towards one point, referred to as the vanishing point.

I can’t help but think that this is a bit of a metaphor for the world today. Ignorance and anger are pushing science, education, and logic to the back and we are all suffering for it.

It used to be OK to falter, to make mistakes, to fail at…anything. It was seen as an opportunity to learn and grow and, hopefully, not make the same mistakes over again. Today we seem to think of the world in terms of winning and losing. Everything seems to fall into one of those two categories, even conversations. We have lost the ability to lose …at anything…

But in the past two decades we seem, as a larger society, to place more emphasis on never failing at anything. And I think we’ve lost something as a result.

If we make a mistake, we pawn it off as someone else’s responsibility. “He/she didn’t teach me well enough” “He/she didn’t tell me that”…and so on. We are so terrified of making an error that we victimize ourselves when we do. We don’t own up to anything.

If we hurt someone, we blame them for feeling hurt. We are terrified to say “I’m sorry” because it would be an admission of wrongdoing.

If we can’t get our work done, we blame someone else for giving us too many things to do. We are terrified to say “no” because it would be an admission of limits to personal abilities.

If we reach the limits of our knowledge, we dig in on our ignorance and either cling to being “right” because we are terrified of being “wrong”, or we claim that we have a right to our (uninformed) opinion; we are terrified to say “I don’t know” because it would be an admission that we don’t know everything.

Well…guess what.

Sometimes we do hurt people and we need to take responsibility for our wrongdoing if we want to regain that person’s trust.

There are limits to our personal abilities and admitting that fact opens the door for help from others. And we could all use a little help sometimes.

We simply “can’t” know everything and admitting where the limits of our understanding lie leads to identifying learning opportunities….but only if we are open to learning in the sense that it means challenging our preconceived ideas and prepared to discover that our previous notions might be misinformed. And sometimes we are simply wrong, be it from not exploring information deeply enough, or from new information becoming available while we cling to outdated information.

We all need to be willing to see that there are many perspectives, not just our own singular one. Read all sides of any topic (there are usually more than two sides) before being assured that what you think is true. Accept that what you believe could be wrong.

Instead of resorting to “We will have to agree to disagree” (which is really just a way of saying ‘you’re making a very good argument but I’m unwilling to concede that I might be wrong‘ or..the alternative….’you’re too stupid to see that I’m right and you’re wrong‘) we should be willing to explore each other’s ideas in a respectful manner and concede that maybe we don’t know everything about everything we think we know everything about…

Perhaps if we took a step backwards and looked around we’d see that the world is a lot more colourful and diverse than we are comfortable with and that, rather than rail against that fact, we could embrace it and appreciate the complexity instead of trying to make everything and everyone conform to our personal standards.

Admitting guilt is not weakness.

Admitting limitations is not weakness.

Admitting ignorance is not weakness.

Admitting mistakes is not weakness.

In fact, making any of those admissions is, in fact, demonstrating strength of emotion, strength of intellect, strength of character. It’s easy to be right, and that’s one reason we cling to it so strongly…we want to be right because being wrong about anything means that we have to invest some additional effort into understanding and learning; understanding the other person’s feelings, learning more to be able to move forward on a project, reading and learning more to be able to debate effectively, learning and understanding so as to avoid future mistakes.

We all could use a little dose of humility on occasion, and admissions of any of the above are examples of honesty (both to ourselves and to others) that are opportunities for betterment, both for ourselves and for the groups/teams/organizations that we are involved with.

I admire people with the personal strength to admit their limitations, to admit their mistakes, to admit limitations, and to apologise honestly…more so when they also use that ability for improvement.

Imagine; if we were all willing to be honest about our imperfections and accept responsibility for ourselves as well as our thoughts and our actions, and accept help for improvement, how much better, and more supportive, the world could be…. for everyone.