Written by Nathan Vanderpool
Wisdom: A process of deepening alignment among 👁️ View, ❤️ Care, and 🤲 Action.
<aside> 👁️ View: How do I see myself, others, and the world? (A process of framing)
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At some point, you may have recognized that you look at things differently than you did before. Your self-image and worldview might have even shifted a number of times. From early childhood on, you create a model yourself, others, and the world. This process is what we’ll call the development of 👁️ View. Your mind and body store memories of “the way things are”, allowing you to perform basic tasks, solve complex problems, and plan for the future. But what if there is more to reality than your models can ever include? Two features of View help outline the existence of this “always-more-ness”: Attention and Insight.
👩🦱 Sofia is sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee, and talking to her mother on the phone. She notices the sound of her mother’s voice. She notices the taste of her coffee as she takes a sip. She notices that she is a bit cold, and wonders if she should put on a sweater. In each moment, Sofia’s Attention narrows in on some aspect of her experience—the conversation, the coffee, the chill in the kitchen. Her attention picks out what is most salient.
Something even more interesting is happening in Sofia’s kitchen. The number of chairs, the color of her shoes, the itchy feeling in her left pinky finger—her attention could focus on a nearly infinite number of things. With all of the possibilities in herself, other people, and her environment, Sofia’s attention picks out a few relevant features.
View is the process in which you create a model yourself, others, and the world. It generates a sense of “what it’s like to be me”, “what’s going on for other people”, and “what is happening in the world” moment to moment. Attention uses these models to select details from an overwhelmingly vast amount of possible information.
Sofia leaves her kitchen, and makes her way to the university. In her cognitive science course, the professor has drawn a picture with nine dots on the whiteboard. A challenge is written underneath:
Connect these nine dots, using only four straight lines.
Sofia’s attention focuses in on the dots, and tries to connect them. She can do it with five lines, but every four-line attempt misses one dot. Then suddenly, her View shifts. By paying attention to something else, Sofia realizes that the answer is actually quite simple. Can you find the solution to the problem above?
Attention allows you to solve problems by foregrounding relevant information. An Insight occurs when you realize that you’ve been focusing on the wrong things. By paying attention to different information, insights allow you to solve problems that might otherwise seem impossible.
Again, we’re using the word View to refer to the process in which you model yourself, others, and the world. Attention uses those models to select details from an overwhelmingly vast amount of possible information. An Insight allowed Sofia to shift her view, and pay attention to the right kind of information to solve the nine-dot problem.
Well-functioning view, however, does not necessarily mean wise view. An insight could help Sophia specify why she is so incompetent, and give up on pursuing her dreams. That kind of view is not wise. When 👁️ View learns to support the flourishing of yourself, others, and the world over time, it becomes more profound—aligning mature care and skillful action.