If the universe were a doughnut-shaped entity, light would circle. If you could wait long enough, you would see the back of your head. Of course, you couldn’t wait long enough because the universe appears to be 13.8 billion years old, so the next go-round of light would take at the very minimum that times pi; plus, the universe is expanding, so the doughnut is getting bigger—just as bagels and doughnuts have gotten bigger over the past few decades to satisfy our ever-growing gourmand appetites. Anyway, even if my math is all wrong, you still couldn’t live long enough to see the back of your head. For that, you need the more immediate presence of two mirrors that cut down light’s journey. And the problem with two mirrors is that your head gets in its own way. Guess we’re just stuck with a photo or a video taken by another to get that back view.
But if you could see an image light carries after a go-round of the universe, would you be startled to see yourself from that perspective? We are, with respect to ourselves, isolated in our point of view. We look out. And our perspectives just don’t come back so we can have an uninterrupted perspective on our perspectives. It’s only with the help of another—or of others—that we see all there is to see from a different perspective on our perspectives.
Much of what we know about ourselves is from our reflection off others. Much of what we understand objectively about our perspectives derives from a toroidal universe of ideas. Sometimes what we send out returns to hit us in the back of the head as an image we can’t quite fully see. But make no mistake; whatever leaves our forward direction is destined in some fashion and in some warped universe to return. And then we get to see—if only partially—what we are as the rest of the world sees us.
Want an example? Of course, you do. Otherwise, you would simply dismiss this as esoteric sophistry.
I don’t want to pin this on anyone, so, to make it as neutral as I can, I’ll make it a hypothetical. Here’s the story. A famous person, say an actor, makes a degrading tweet about another person, say a political figure. Reactions against the tweet come in the form of other tweets, both condemnatory and supportive.
Perspectives return. We don’t know what our perspectives look like until they take that toroidal trip around the social universe. And then, when the journey around the doughnut of a social universe runs full circle, we see ourselves from a different angle. We see “parts” of ourselves that are hidden by our having eyes face only forward.
Think before you tweet from a particular perspective. You will eventually have a perspective on your perspective because, as the saying goes, “what goes around, comes around.”
But if you could see an image light carries after a go-round of the universe, would you be startled to see yourself from that perspective? We are, with respect to ourselves, isolated in our point of view. We look out. And our perspectives just don’t come back so we can have an uninterrupted perspective on our perspectives. It’s only with the help of another—or of others—that we see all there is to see from a different perspective on our perspectives.
Much of what we know about ourselves is from our reflection off others. Much of what we understand objectively about our perspectives derives from a toroidal universe of ideas. Sometimes what we send out returns to hit us in the back of the head as an image we can’t quite fully see. But make no mistake; whatever leaves our forward direction is destined in some fashion and in some warped universe to return. And then we get to see—if only partially—what we are as the rest of the world sees us.
Want an example? Of course, you do. Otherwise, you would simply dismiss this as esoteric sophistry.
I don’t want to pin this on anyone, so, to make it as neutral as I can, I’ll make it a hypothetical. Here’s the story. A famous person, say an actor, makes a degrading tweet about another person, say a political figure. Reactions against the tweet come in the form of other tweets, both condemnatory and supportive.
Perspectives return. We don’t know what our perspectives look like until they take that toroidal trip around the social universe. And then, when the journey around the doughnut of a social universe runs full circle, we see ourselves from a different angle. We see “parts” of ourselves that are hidden by our having eyes face only forward.
Think before you tweet from a particular perspective. You will eventually have a perspective on your perspective because, as the saying goes, “what goes around, comes around.”
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