How do we view the world?

How do we view the world? How do changes in our perception occur? How do those changes affect us? These are all questions that I’ve thought about recently, in various ways. When I think about the ways that we view the world around us, I always return to a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature where he talks about the ways that “a small alteration” in our perspective changes the ways that we view the world. Standing on the sea shore provides a distinctly different perspective than bobbing up and down in the water while in a boat anchored in the water off the shore. Viewing one’s neighborhood while walking is different than viewing it from the inside of a vehicle. Looking between your legs turns the world upside down, the sky becomes the ground and the ground becomes the sky. As Emerson writes, “The least change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pictorial air.”

Think about flying. When you’re up in the air, your perspective changes. You see the layout of the ground from a different position, seeing the ways houses, roads, and other structures are laid out. You see the vastness of forests. You see the vastness of the oceans or lakes. Imagine multiplying that perspective and seeing the same thing from space. In Terraform: Building a Better World, Propaganda writes about the “overview effect,” the awe that one experiences seeing the planet from space. They see clouds, the movement of…