Ways of Seeing

Tough problems often feel insurmountable without more information and better models — more data and thinking. An alternative approach is to be able to see the problem, and the whole world, in a new way. By looking through different eyes, different aspects of the world get highlighted and new actions become visible. An entrepreneur sees the world differently. They notice opportunities for improvement and innovation where someone else only sees stress and pain. Similarly, while a typical person enters a living room and sees the couches and artwork on the walls, a parent of a young child perceives a menagerie of death traps. We are doing this in our own ways all of the time and this defines our experience — our reality.

Several ways of seeing come pre-installed for us — drives to obtain food, sex, safety, and socialization — as a result of our mind rewarding itself for continued survival and gene propagation. These powerful recurring waves of hallucination affect us to the core: how we see and how we experience. The world takes on a different character when we are hungry in contrast to when we are cold and wet. We develop new ways of seeing as we are exposed to more complex patterns: being unemployed or playing a game of chess. At times, we glimpse perspectives of overwhelming curiosity and open-mindedness — fertile soil for our capacity for reason. Unfortunately, we often overestimate this capacity, causing us to fool ourselves and others, and get stuck in the same old ways of thinking and perceiving.

The way we experience and how we look are two sides of the same coin. A way of seeing guides our attention in the service of some purpose, which highlights some parts of experience at the expense of others. The purpose is perhaps not a cause but rather a justification: a way that we understand, or talk about, the behaviors we undertake. One can imagine that if the earth was a conscious thing, it may understand one of its purposes — one of its ways of seeing — as life creation. The way we see also seems to define which actions appear available to us — which levers are pullable. When we feel stuck, it is useful to explore alternative ways of seeing. The way you perceive the world may be limiting your ability to find a solution, so try other ways of looking. Certain questions can act as attentional portals into ways of seeing which immediately reveal insight and new potential actions. Similarly, approaching the particular and peculiar with curiosity has a tendency of generating new thoughts.

Do we really have multiple ways of seeing and in what sense can we more fully inhabit ones beyond the primordial set? Which interesting ways of seeing have we forgotten?