Notes

How do you see the world or what about the world are you particularly attuned to? What experiences and beliefs have shaped how you see the world? What is harder for you to understand because of where you’re coming from? What do you understand that others don’t because of where you’re coming from? What is harder for you to acknowledge about the world? Or what do you tend to not see and why? In thinking about examining complex issues from multiple perspectives, which ones do you think will challenge you the most and why?

You don’t have to answer all of these questions, but use them as an opportunity to reflect on your own perspective in an organized 300-600 word essay.

---(THIS IS WHERE THE """"ESSAY"""" STARTS)
I went to Detroit the summer after freshman year with a slightly hippie youth media organization to learn about what was going on there. “Be a thoughtful, aware, open-minded traveller” was their elevator spiel. Incidentally, we arrived a day before a major protest about the water shutoffs that were almost an epidemic at the time, so we decided to check it out. They were handing out the typical demonstration paraphernalia to us, signs on a stick, pins, you name it. But one girl in our group declined them, saying that she’d rather remain a neutral observer. In response and in the most incredulous tone I’ve heard to date, the woman passing out the signs said “How can you be neutral when people are being denied basic human rights?” It turned out that that one sentence stuck with me for longer than I expected. I’d tried to value ‘The Big Picture’ as the primary reliable source- would this period of distress eventually benefit everyone in the long run?- but this was before the sign lady.
I think I grew up with a bit of a ‘you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet’ mindset, but Sign Lady completely destroyed the foundation of that philosophy. She said one sentence and I hated those metaphorical omelets and everything they stood for. I didn’t come to the protest endorsing any ideas like “Oh, well, the people who didn’t pay their water bill deserve to get their water shut off because debts have to be paid,” but until that protest, I don’t think I questioned the essence of debts in general, and that line of questioning led to (and still leads to) really confusing conversations with myself about economics. These are the sort of thing I started to extrapolate from Sign Lady’s attempt to get a teenage kid to take a sign. Sign Lady didn’t say anything elaborate about the dynamics of oppression, she actually pretty much restated that quote by Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” So I digressed a lot. But the point is, that’s kind of when I started thinking about objectivity in those situations, and the flaws in trying to be objective in sensitive situations all the time.
On the flip side, if someone were to come up to me today and try to sell the ‘debts have to be paid’ idea, I’d probably dive into that argument without having done sufficient research and without a thorough attempt to see things from their perspective. That’s not good. I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction lately to things that include phrases like ‘because that’s just the way it is’ and ‘yeah, but in the long run…’ and, as a result, I close myself off to that perspective, and it becomes very pick and choose-y. It’s like typing a question into Google and only using the answer that’s convenient to you.
I’m assuming that my views will change multiple times throughout my life. Hopefully, rather than turning complete one-eighties, my outlook will , and I’ll be more thoughtful, aware, and open-minded.