Binocular view…
Saturday night I sat in on a wide ranging panel by David Weber and D.J. Butler moderated by Dr. Rob Hampson at Fanta Sci.
History, travel, the ‘lenses’ through which people view various things (movies and books for example), were among the items discussed. One of the interesting points brought up was that widely divergent people can ‘like’ the same characters in movies, based on the subconscious, but will never admit they ‘like’ the same thing as those on the other side of the spectrum.
Later Saturday night, I sat down with an Israeli man who is in the US going to school. He’s only a couple of years out of his mandatory military service, and of course the discussion turned to what is happening today in Israel. He said his parents made more than one ‘run’ to their safe room in the last couple of weeks, and he talked about friends he’d lost during his service due to attacks, and some he knew that had been injured in the last week. He’d been stationed on the Gaza border a couple of times and talked about the ‘taunting’ that goes on almost daily by the Hamas operatives, who hide in the crowds of young Palestinians. One thing he mentioned was that the Palestinians almost always had ‘media’ there covering the taunting from their side of the fence. He also noted that the US MSM’s coverage of the ongoing situation is ‘very biased against Israel’, compared to the European MSM, which surprised him. He asked how/why American politicians would be against Israel, since the US is partnered with Israel both by treaties and joint development programs (including the Covid-19 vaccines). I didn’t have a good answer.
Yesterday, on the way back to DFW, my seatmate was a FedEx pilot, deadheading. He was a retired USAF pilot who flew C-141s and C-17s all over the world. We talked about similar things and the result is this post.
What is a monocular view?
My thought is that in simplistic terms, a monocular view is one that has a single point of access, e.g. ONLY influenced by a person’s opinions, direct influences (friends/family/peers), their ‘lifestyle’, and carefully chosen shallow data inputs, determined by the individual or those around him. The view is ‘compounded’ by the fact that the person is one who has seldom traveled or experienced anything outside America.
What is a binocular view?
This one has to, in my opinion, be split a couple of different ways…
One is the view of a person who is widely read, has actually studied/read history, and has traveled outside the US for short periods of time (vacations, tourism, etc.). I believe they ‘merge’ that learning, so to speak, with the view influenced by their opinions, influences and broad based inputs. They see the world through a broader view, or what I would call the binocular view.
Another is the view of a military person who has traveled/served/worked overseas and witnessed man’s inhumanity to man up close and personal. They may or may not have been in combat, but they spent more than a few days to week, often months or years at overseas stations. Many of them are also widely read, and have been ‘immersed’ in local cultures if they lived off base or interacted with the local populations during various operations. They’ve seen the places NOT on the tourists maps, and have seen diverse media coverage of various things around the world, not just the MSM coverage back home. These ‘views’ are then merged with their view influenced by their opinions, influences and broad based inputs.
The binocular views can also be widely divergent, especially where the ‘travel’ parameters can be so radically different. I know this for a fact, based on discussions with folks who have ONLY gone on vacations/traveled to the tourist destinations.
The views could yet again be split by male and female views, but I’m not about to go down that rathole!!! 🙂
As an author, things like this can bring ‘depth’ to the characters we write, and can/do inform character’s actions in a lot of circumstances.
Am I off base with this? What do you think?
I would agree. While I was never in the military, I did spend a little bit of time in Germany with my Uncle, who was in the Army at the time. His family lived off-base renting from an older German lady. I was there for about 6 weeks, and hung out with a gal a year older while I was there. My aunt and uncle took me on camping trips all around Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. Yes, we did the “tourist” stops of an old Abby, a concentration camp, an American cemetery,but we camped in campgrounds, went shopping in local shops, and ate German food.
The end result was I saw a LOT of things that I have never forgotten. And I realized, at the tender age of 14, that not everyone does things the way I was raised. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I have also had many friends who have served oversees. One, the youngest son of a very dear friend, who I have known literally since he was born, was in the Army, and was sent to Afghanistan several times. I have seen the changes that he has gone through, how his viewpoint has changed over time. Some good, some not so much, but really the best one was the fact that folks “over there” are folks too…good, bad, indifferent, just like here at home. How would we feel if other countries came and attacked us, and how would we respond. How would we feel about people from other places telling us how to run our country, treat the women, educate the children, what crops we could grow,etc.
We have had some interesting conversations. Which is something ya don’t hear at all in the MSM propaganda fire hose flow.
Interesting perspective. I’ve never really considered that before as a lense.
Fundamentally I’d agree. I would say there is another category, that itself can divide: those who are non-military who have lived (i.e. on resident visas) in other countries. This will usually divide into people deeply connected with academia in that country and people connected with job sectors. Which does Not necessarily correlate to American Right/Left thinking.
Those people have yet another experience, they can be even more closely connected with the tune of the country in question than the military personnel; because they do not have that identity or weight associated with them.
Absolutely correct — and in my humble opinion, the prevalence of monocular views is one the root causes of much strife.
I wasn’t in the military, I was in the oil business, mostly in the US. I worked for a couple of years in London, filled two passports with extended trips to Malaysia, Nigeria, the Netherlands, numerous other countries, and when I retired lived for 7 years on Bonaire (Dutch possession) in the Caribbean before returning to the US.
If you haven’t lived in multiple foreign cultures up to your neck, for an extended time, I feel you’ve really missed out on seeing how big the picture can be. I’ve seen true, state sponsored, systemic racism. I’ve seen incredible, Mad Max level poverty on a widespread scale. I’ve seen socialism and cultural norms confine European’s perspectives just as badly as American’s. Even though those people tend to be well traveled, they are heavily brainwashed. The whole BLM/CRT perception of America was already well in place in Europe 20 years ago. Their sense of cultural superiority was in no way understated, and only directed at the US. Other countries got a pass.
So just because their binoculars have two tubes, doesn’t mean they can see clearly out of both of them. They see what they want to see, how they want to see it.
“Binocular” and “monocular” define it about as well as anything.
The farther apart the eyepieces are (to stretch the analogy), the better your picture will be. With literal binoculars, that’s limited by how far apart your eyes are set in your head. I don’t know what the limits are with viewing the world through multiple points of access, but I would GUESS that the more far removed the new perspective is from the one you start with, the more radical your view transforms.
I’m a Redneck Biker veteran with three degrees, and twenty years ago, I joined a high-commitment multi-cultural church. Yes, some different perspectives; it was good. But ten years ago, I married my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, and I’m STILL trying to get some focus on the new world I see.
It’s really not easy to communicate the changes.
We as Americans are spoiled. We have so much that has been earned by earlier generations that the current generation cannot value what they themselves have not earned. Our disposable society has made “Us”, disposable…
I think you are not off base. However consider that one’s view is so broad that they may have difficulty in making decisions. I do not mean that one’s mind is so open that their brains fall out.
Consider this; many folks from various walks of life, some highly educated or with great amount of business acumen, have said they thought I would make a good attorney. Some have even asked if I was an attorney. No, I am not. But to the point, my opinion is that I because I often see the reasons from both sides, I think I would not make a good attorney. Unless, that is, I confined my practice to taxes or some backwater lawyering.
…from both sides equally well…
You are on the money with these thoughts. Here in Canada for the most part it is the leftist view that the majority follow, zero tolerance for any other point of view, want to stomp on any different point of view…. I flew for 40 years as a civilian, both fixed and rotary wing. Did some international work rotary wing. One tour for many months as a civilian contract rotary wing pilot for the UN. This country had exterminated up to 1/3 of their population into the millions and the civil war though pretty quiet was still going on. Civilian machines were getting hit from time to time. These people had been disarmed years before and walked to the site of their death unable and unwilling possibly to fight back. God help us if gun confiscations get to be the norm – and the majority of people in this country would support it depending which poll you believe. People here have no concept of the world. Once you have been to a mass killing site (5 figures allegedly) and walked through it you’ll never want to be without a way to defend yourself ever. Try and explain that to most Canadians. I think most people here die within 100 miles of where they were born.
Hey Old NFO;
Very true, to explain a different point of view to people that have never experienced anything different is problematic for they have no frame of reference to base their decisions on. I have been all over the world, seen poverty that is shocking, like literally shit in the street stuff and the wood hut and the people here complain about “Systemic Racism”…Really? they need to go to other places and see how other people live before casting stones on their own way of life for they have no frame of reference to criticize. I Lived in Europe as an Army brat, then as a GI for 5 years and dealt with the european attitude of superiority toward Americans, and it irritated me because I would say “If it wasn’t for us, you would speaking Russian or Gulag. I enjoyed my travels and experiences and other cultures because it was “neat” and to see the different points of view and their concerns that did show that other countries did have different concerns other than the Soviet/American relations and it was enlightening. I wouldn’t trade my experiences for nothing.
There is an old saying something like “The less people know about a subject, the more firmly they believe their view to be right”.
Too many people have strong views without any support or reference point.
One thing to remember is that most media sites are pushing the narrative they want you to believe and present situations that support that narrative.
The loudest people are just that – loud. Their volume does NOT indicate the size of their following.
There are a HUGE number of people in this country that do not agree with the media presented narrative and there is pushback, often successful, around the country that the media has chosen to not cover.
Do not despair when it appears everybody is against your view – because they aren’t. Over 90% of national media is based in NYC or LA, and much of the rest is in a couple of other big cities, and their views reflect the views of those areas.
All- Thank you for the comments, y’all raise some interesting points of divergence and expansion that I didn’t go into because I wanted to keep the post readable. Jeff- You raise an interesting point too. I hadn’t considered that people would consciously ‘ignore’ inputs at that level, but they can/will.
I think most americans are rather insular in their views because we have that “luxury”. We are protected by oceans and except for the southwest we dont have foreign stuff pushing at us. As for canada, we don’t even see it as foreign, it’s more like they’re your cousins on your moms side that you don’t see very often. They are family even though they talk a little funny. Even us folk who do have overseas assignments can remain insulated if we want. I’ve known folks who spend their entire tour without leaving the base and thinking back to the Philippines in the 60’s drinking in the bars and “socializing” with Philippino bar girls probably didn’t count as cultural immersion.
There’s also the sheer size of the US. There are European countries that are the size of some of our state counties. Or some of our smaller states. Each with a different ‘national’ identity, further broken out by long-standing city-states and ancient borders, so that there is oftentimes more local identity to an area the size of a US sprawl city than there is to a regional identity, which is more powerful than a national identity.
Whereas, here, in the US (and Canada, kinda US-light, kinda) we can experience pretty much everything that the rest of the world has to offer, from ultra-snobby old-rich to nouveau riche to slums and tenements and 3rd world living conditions, sometimes even in the same city (looking at you, Lost Angeles…)
It’s why, well, passenger trains and not having personal cars has failed so spectacularly in these United States (and Canada.) Because the distances are just too big. What somewhat works on the crowded Northeast coast (except for Nova Scotia) doesn’t work elsewhere.
And other people just don’t get that, well, like in Florida, if you live in Key West it’s a 12 hour trip, if you’re lucky, maybe a 10.5 hour if you have a huge gas tank and a strong bladder. And that’s just Florida. There’s always the Texas Joke about the guy travelling for hours and asks the rancher he’s riding with where they are about every 15 minutes and the answer is still “My Ranch.”
We now have, in the US (and Canada,) open tribal warfare from Africa, ramshackle communities of garbage hovels as found in every turd world nation, weather extremes from hottest to almost coldest, definitely windiest, and every other extreme you can think of.
Why, therefore, is there a need to go visit a foreign country when you can experience pretty much all the fun (and the need for some pretty exotic vaccinations – like for the bubonic plague if you’re a smart tourist visiting some Native American reservations in the South East…) right here?
I mean, there are people who have lived in the same section of New York City all of their lives, and even multi-generationally. Talk about insular.
Beans good point about relative size. I live in Michigan, Britain is about the same size. Michigan has 9 or 10 million people, Britain has 80 million. It’s 600 miles from copper harbor to detroit. It’s only 700 from London to berlin. Europeans cant comprehend how big we are and we cant comprehend how old and complex they are.
You are on the mark! While my experience outside North America is limited (one Army tour, Germany, 64-66) I’ve been in 49 States and three Canadian provinces. Different places, different ways, but a common human condition.
I had 20 years in the AF, and lived in New Mexico, Arizona Missouri, California, and Nort’ Dahkohtah. I’ve been in Mexico and Canada. Spent 17 years in the missile biz, 8 of them underground (total, though actual time underground was about a full year. (I kept count.) Never went to Europe (didn’t get into the GLCM crowd). Did get to NYC and to the east coast as a kid. Retired to the NorthWest close the the ocean. So, that makes me mostly monocular.
GLCM = Ground Launched Cruise Missile?
This brings to mind a quote from Teddy Roosevelt.
“Do the best you can, with what you have, where you are.”
I mentioned this to a leftist, with my presumed universal understanding being a inspirational “don’t give up just because what you have, and where you are are not ideal”.
She heard, “don’t try to step outside your station or improve your lot in life”.
That is when I realized the extent of the gulf- not just culture and politics, they are speaking a foreign language.
Not just a monocular, a monocular looking through a straw at the bottom of a well.
I think you are on the mark. My travels have been to the Middle East and Eastern Europe for work. We had people closely with people several Asian countries, Japan, Korea and Taiwan on infrastructure protection programs.
It does bring an appreciation of what we have and what we may lose here. I do think I have gained a small understanding of how culture either limits or allows the growth the individual.
Even in the USA, the difference between South, NorthEast and Mid-West views of the same topics tends to be enlightening. We seem to have fewer points of agreement these days. I don’t think it bodes well for us.
“Depth” when I write is dialogue one step above “Run, Spot. Run.”
All- Thanks for the comments! Sam- I would disagree, in that you served in the military so, by default, had ‘multiple’ exposures to other ideas… 😉
Posted from my iPhone.