There are about 25000 things that cross my mind daily, some of it conflicting, plain old stupid or shear brilliance. I think, I type, it will be for me at the same time a good way to critically think, perhaps inspire, an escape route, or a way to simply get by.
There's not a better way to start than to talk about perspective. When often faced with a scenario, more often or not, we are blindsided by the situation in retrospect to our reality. I'll go as far as to say this fact governs every aspect of our lives. It's not a fault, if we are wired to trust our guts or intuition; we build our outlook through our belief system, values, past experience, and sometimes a self inflicted comfort zone. These strong convictions we develop in addition to being 'consumed' by what's before us makes it quasi impossible to step out of our "perspective" lanes.
Seeking a different perspective however is equally tricky. Even when we attempt to fit in someones shoes, we do make a lot of assumptions and the later still based on what we know or assume we know. Assumption is dangerous, it is what we make up for not knowing. Perhaps learning more allows us to better our own views equally as understanding others, but let's make no mistake, the process of learning is useless if the mission is to strengthen our own position. The true value in seeking perspective (knowledge) is to shock ourselves out of what we already believe, and find a rebuttal to our own convictions.
Fundamentally there are a set of chore beliefs we all adhere to, I'd like to naively assume there are some no one could contest. Love, family, happiness, success; but what we do lack as a society is the genuine attempt to NOT let our reality and passion consume us, but maybe try to peep through the others perspective before acting, especially in debates, and conflict. I have a theory, if we all fundamentally want the same thing mostly, perhaps then in most cases we can find a way of agreeing.
As a society, if we can use that same passion and care for a core belief, and attempt to see all sides, at least to the best of our abilities and of course doing so through listening and educating ourselves to compensate for what we lack in knowledge, I'm tempted to believe we will always be able to strike the middle and be more content because we, ultimately, would be getting somehow what we want, but also satisfy ourselves with compromise; the satisfaction of some kind of welfare. Knowing we listened and gave up some of out position, and the other party did so as well. Yet again, this might be utopia, I hear, no such thing exists?