How Well Do You See The World?

We come from a world of generalizations, born mostly from our lack of knowledge and because generalizations fit easier into our conversations. The color of the sky is blue, the color of our ocean is emerald, we live on the blue planet in our solar system. But as we learn, and experience, and visit more of the world around us, we learn that our world is not made of generalizations, its made of complexities that are often hidden from our gaze. Our sky is made of air, which is made of gases and particles. Its apparent color is determined by the darkness of space, the colors that go unfiltered from the light traveling from our sun, the colors reflected off of particles rising from our planet’s surface, and the way our eye responds to the spectral wave hitting our optic nerves, creating a perceived color in our minds. A change to any one factor can change our perception at any moment.

Although our understanding of our world matures, our conversations fail to allow us the luxury of evolving to more detailed and accurate discussions. As our world moves faster and faster we are pressured into shorter conversations that rely on generalizations more and more. Too often we allow ourselves to fall back into the assumptions and interpretations that were held by earlier generations, less knowledgeable and more driven by misunderstandings or proposed ideas masquaraded as fact. We do this simply because our time pressures make it easier to do so, or we don’t wish to loose the benefits we have gained from our adoption of these ideas, or we are simply too tired to, once again, change our understanding of what is around us.

But we can’t afford to live and behave in a generalized and inaccurate world. Art’s early masters understood this. They didn’t deny the world around them, they strived to add the pigments they saw to their palettes so they could paint and preserve the real beauty of our world. To deal with the problems we face requires us to see the world as it really is and encourage others to see the intricate details and variations around us. Only then can we come together as one extremely varied race, the human race, to save what we claim God has made.