I was really impressed with C. S. Lewis's "Meditations in a Toolshed". His point in this writting was to illustrate that almost anything, including physical objects, ideas, emotions, actions, etc. has different appearences depending on the perspective from which you see it. Lewis brought out especially two ways of percieving things which he categorised as looking "at" and looking "along". Looking at reffers to an objective or and outsider's view. Looking along is personal experiance, the view of and insider. Lewis made the point that these very different views are both important, and cannot truly be separated from eachother.
We spent some time discussing in class how our perspective shifts throughout our lifetime. As children, we have little personal experiance, and so most of our understanding is simply based on observation. As we grow, we gain experiances that allow us to see things from the "along" perspective as well. As we were discussing, I realized that parents understand this and use it all the time. What is the best way to keep kids away from smoking, drinking, drugs? Start early. Talk to them before they have any experiance of their own. I remember that my brothers and I used to get frustrated with our mom because of how often she gave us the "don't drink and drive" lecture. This started long before any of us had even begun driver's training and continued to be brought up frequently throughout junior high and high school. At the time, it seemed so obvious- driving drunk is dangerous and illegal, so why would you do it? It was the only perspective we knew. What we didn't realize is that this objective black and white perspective learned in childhood can be a strong safegaurd. Of course things are going to look totally different in the moment. There isn't black and white anymore. Are you really gonna call your parents to come pick you up? It was only a little bit...really not a big deal. That's when you are forced to compare the your "at" and your "along" perspective. Parents know that this day will come, and that is why they warn their children again and again, so that the "at" perspective will stand strong even when the "along" perspective is so tempting.
I think my last paragraph sounds pretty strongly in favor of looking at things as an outsider,but that was not my purpose.I think their are definitly situations where one view or the other is more valid, but for the most part, they need to work together, and perspective based on experiance is definitly valuable in my oppinion.
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Paula, I really liked how you incorporated this piece of writing into a real life situation. It's very important for parents to teach their children what is right and wrong at a young age because it will then stick with them better throughout their life. In the case of drinking and smoking it is hard for young children to look at these actions with the "along" perspective. Children need to learn to look "at" certain actions because it will broaden their view on the action when they are tempted to look "along" by participating in these things. Nice work on your post.
ReplyDeleteI would also say that i liked the discussion about how our perspectives change as we grow older and experience life. I think that may be the best example one can give for Lewis' ideas, and I know each and every one of us can refute that his ideas are true by looking at our own lives like this. This is no doubt a very dangerous way to go through life once you have moved past being an incompetant and ignorant child. Before you can look along something you must have first looked at it.
ReplyDeletehey Paula! I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your blog! I really enjoyed the part about changing perspective in as we grow older. As a child it is so hard to see the whole picture because we are "in the moment" and cannot think objectively. Once we move past that time in our lives however, we are able to piece together both looking "at" and "along" providing us with a greater picture of what we were seeing.
ReplyDeleteI liked your blog too. One thing I found interesting was the idea that teaching your children to "look at" things early on will serve as a safeguard. I think that this is very true because even though our perspectives change during the course of our life, we shape many of our values as children and remember many things we were taught for the rest of our lives.
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