Obscured Perspectives: Looking through the Eyeglass in Reverse

 

One of the principles of philosophical hermeneutics is that human understanding is perspectival. That simply means that we experience the world from where we are. After all, you cannot be anywhere other than where you are, right? Perspectival understanding does not mean that knowledge is merely subjective while objective truth, if it exists, eludes us. It just means that every new thing you learn is learned through things that you know up to that point. As a child, I understood things a certain way, but as I gained more experience and knowledge, I learned to see things differently. And that does not mean that my perspective as a child was wrong necessarily, it can simply mean that my perspective became broader. What is important is that we remain open to other perspectives and gain new ones for ourselves (always learning). By doing so, we can experience the world from multiple perspectives, which leads to greater knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

Perspective is inescapable and not, in itself, a bad thing. But one of the reasons we must remain open and willing to change is because there are times when our perspectives are flawed and obscure our understanding of new knowledge or experiences. It is true that things can have multiple levels and possibilities of meaning, but that doesn’t mean something can mean anything. In interpreting Rush in this post, I will explore this idea of obscured perspectives by turning to the 1985 Power Windows album and look at a few lines from the song Territories.

“The whole wide world
An endless universe
Yet we keep looking through
The eyeglass in reverse
Don’t feed the people
But we feed the machines
Can’t really feel
What international means”

I love the metaphor of looking through the eyeglass backwards. We have such a big world. You could spend lifetimes learning and experiencing it and still never exhaust all the possibilities. I think here of the sentiment expressed by Neil Peart in his book Traveling Music: “How could anyone ever be bored in this world, when there was so much to be interested in, to learn, to contemplate?”

Indeed, the whole wide world is an endless universe. But what do we so often do? We look through the eyeglass in reverse. We take something that is big and full of wonder and reduce it down to something small and familiar. We obscure it. We obscure the full potential and possibilities of meaning. We take the “so much” and turn it in to “so little.” I expect that is because we are comfortable with the so little and the so much is too much of a challenge and makes us uncomfortable.

One result is that we value the wrong things and set poor priorities. We could feed the people, but we are too busy feeding machines. I would propose here, as well, that the lie continues to be repeated that feeding the machines is the best possible way of feeding the people, even if we can’t feed them all. We can live with people not being fed because, after all, we have done the best we can. Nope. We need more imagination. We can do better.

What does it mean to say we “can’t really feel what international means”? One reason is that we are very territorial. National pride and love of country, for example, are good things. But when that pride and love are so parochial that we must look at others that are not us as people who should be put down or just go away (for no real reason besides they are “other” than us), that is a cancerous form of national pride and love of country. Yes, I am a citizen of a particular country and I love the good in my country and the good things that make it unique. But besides being an American I am also, more generally, a human. I share humanity with all the other humans! I am a citizen of earth as well as a citizen of the United States. These do not exclude one another, but rather enrich one another. As Territories later says, “Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world; than the pride that divides when a colourful rag is unfurled.” If your pride divides and needs others put down so you can feel superior, you are doing patriotism wrong.

So, turn the eyeglass back around. Make your world a bigger world, an endless universe. Broaden your perspective, don’t limit it. As the great hermeneutic philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote in his book, Philosophical Hermeneutics: “The principle of hermeneutics simply means that we should try to understand everything that can be understood.” Who wants to look through the eyeglass in reverse and obscure the other territories when we could turn it around because, about those territories, there is “so much to be interested in, to learn, to contemplate?”

Note of shameless self-promotion: I’ll be hosting an upcoming episode of Rush Roundtable over at RushFans discussing the entire song Territories with a group of other Rush nerds. Check out the YouTube channel for that and other great Rush-related content.