With that title, what could this essay be about?  This is being published just before Thanksgiving, so maybe it’s about spending time with family.  It could be another essay on Perspective (you can read a previous treatment here).  Maybe it’s about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity?  I do like throwing in a little science here and there.

Let’s start with Einstein.  No, I’m not going to teach you about the General and Special Theories of Relativity.  First, I don’t understand them at all, much less have enough knowledge to teach others.  Second, it’s not really the theories I’m interested in, but how Einstein first got his inspiration that led to them.  What I find very cool and very inspiring about Einstein is how he used curious observation about the world around him to develop a deep understanding of said world.  In one of his “thought experiments,” he puzzled about trains.  Let’s say you are riding in a train and you’ve got a baseball in your hand.  You are tossing that baseball up and down, just playing with it.  To you, that baseball is simply moving up and down in a straight vertical.  But to someone outside the train, watching the train go by, that ball is also moving forward at the speed of the train.  We’re not talking about two separate balls, here.  It’s the same ball being tossed around by the same person in the same train.  But the perceived movement of the ball—either straight up and down, or translating forward as it’s moving up and down—depends upon the observer.  An observer in the train sees the simple vertical movement.  An observer outside of the train sees the parabolic movement.  This concept forms the basis of our thesis today:  what you see in the world depends upon you, the observer.  Two people can look at the same thing, like the characters in the cartoon accompanying this essay, yet see something very different based on their position as the observer.  Just as important, they may each think they are right and the other person is wrong, but they are both right.  It’s all relative.

I got to thinking about this while on a little getaway last weekend.  This getaway involved several hours driving on highways with lots of other cars—something I haven’t done a lot of these last couple of years.  I am always struck by the fact that when we are driving along, we are mostly only aware of our speed relative to the speeds of the cars around us.  Some are going a couple miles an hour slower, some a few miles an hour faster, but we’re all moving somewhere around 70-75 mph.  As the observer inside the car, you usually forget about that absolute very fast speed.  If you are standing by the side of the road and someone goes ripping by you at 75 mph, you have a true (and scary) sense of exactly how fast that is!  However, inside the car, you are really only aware of the difference in your speeds, which makes you feel like you are moving much slower.  In my opinion, that makes people drive much less safely.  They follow more closely, they cut over more quickly.  They are responding to that small relative difference in speed instead of the absolute speed at which everyone is tearing along.  And now you all can be as petrified as I am on crowded highways!  (This is why Trish does most of the driving.)

This impact of the observer also comes into play in how we perceive our own politics.  It highly amuses me to know that almost everyone considers themselves a “centrist”.  Why?  Well, first, your own opinions seem eminently reasonable to you so therefore you believe they should be eminently reasonable to everyone else.  And since you believe all reasonable people should agree with you then you must be centrist.  Additionally, you can ALWAYS find someone more to the right of you and someone more to the left of you.  Therefore, once again, you MUST be centrist.  Some of us admit to being center-left or center-right, but the “center” dominates.  (If someone can’t find others more extreme to them on the right or the left then they probably don’t care to be labeled centrist anyway.)  That’s a big part of the reason that Congress always has such a low approval rating.  Everyone has their own idea of what is reasonable and productive legislation.  Unless Congress produces exactly that, you will promptly label them idiots.  So no matter what they pass, a good chunk of the electorate will think they are wasteful and incompetent. (I still don’t understand why anyone would go into politics.)

There is another part to our views on public policy, too.  The priorities that you’d like to see Government act upon are absolutely aligned with what YOU consider important.  And what any individual considers important will depend highly upon their individual situation.  A business owner wants to see low taxes on their profit, minimal regulation to restrict how they do business, and sufficient infrastructure and services (police, fire) to enable them to conduct business.  A local resident might look at that same business and want to see limitations on how much of their waste stream gets dumped into the local environment because the discharges stink and make it hard to breathe at times or their water bill keeps going up because of increased treatment costs.  Someone else might want to see that business go away entirely because of the traffic snarling their neighborhood due to an abundance of truck traffic.  And someone else might want to see the business expand because they need a job.  Everyone wants to see their tax dollars spent on things they see as important and not spent on things they don’t see as important.  But here’s the thing:  everything is important to someone!  Your idea of “waste” is someone else’s lifeline!  And the job of the government is to support the needs of the whole populace, even when those needs conflict.  At least, that’s the theory if not the practice.

So why am I rambling on about all of this?  It’s because I try to stay aware of this “impact of the observer”.  Like Atticus Finch, I try to walk a metaphorical mile in other people’s shoes.  Many times, people focus on a different aspect of an issue because they are simply making different choices on what they consider most important.  The business owner prioritizes profits over environmental impact.  The land owner the reverse.  It doesn’t mean the business owner doesn’t care at all about the environment (hopefully) nor that the land owner doesn’t recognize the importance of profit.  It’s a matter of what they consider MORE important.  They both can be right.  The challenge is balancing both priorities.  No one gets everything they want. 

This pattern of thinking and discussion can make people think I am wishy-washy because I often challenge anyone who offers only an authoritative viewpoint.  I’m not wishy-washy, though.  I have my opinions but I stay open to new information.  As a scientist, I’ve been trained to almost never speak in absolutes.  I am constantly looking for new data to challenge my hypotheses.  Newtonian physics explained the whole world until it didn’t.   The rise of Quantum Mechanics did not invalidate Newtonian physics.  It just put boundaries on the conditions in which it is valid.  There is no such thing as a theorem that is proven true—you can only say that all current data are consistent with the theory.  So, as you sit around the Thanksgiving table with family this year (see what I did there?  Wove it all together!), remember that you may see things differently, but it doesn’t mean someone is wrong and someone is right.  You just have different priorities and different perspectives.  Your job is to work to see things from that other perspective.  It’s all relative.

[DISCLAIMER: Before you start commenting up a storm, I’m not talking about people who have fallen prey to conspiracy theories and misinformation.  There’s just nothing you can do about that.  Smile and change the subject to football.]