Nobody Asked Me…

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?