Perspective.
I guess a more appropriate title for this would be “Splatter Painting,“ as it will tend to go all over the place, but I hope that it eventually wraps up in some meaningful direction.
When we approach perspective lessons in the Art I class, we usually begin with one point perspective, as it tends to be easier to comprehend and imitate. Most of the compositions studied converge their structural shapes into a single point of origin. From there we may move to two point and multi-point perspective. You are probably familiar with the cliché cityscape where the walls of buildings diverge in opposite directions. As we walk down the city street, we will be presented with a multitude of combinations and variations of perspectives, but when we return from our stroll to tell others about our journey we will share it from our singular point of view.
Right now I have quite a view, as I’m sitting on a big pile of dirt that rises from the top of a hill that is overlooking the Nashville Basin. I can see for miles on this clear December day. I can make out Mufreesboro for sure, Smyrna in the distance, and then if I pretend just a little bit, I think I can see the Batman building. That may be more of a belief than a fact, because I can’t really see it, but I know it’s there. At least it was there the last time I was in Nashville.
This is a special pile of dirt though. I call it the Mound of Knowledge. I like to think it began as a conceptual earth work similar to the likes of Smithson, but that’s just a lot of hubris. It actually started with a student, Tianlang (Ron) Gao. He graduated in 2015. I think any faculty member who remembers Ron will recall him as a model of the accurate scholar that we aspire to create and celebrate at The Webb School.
At the time of his graduation Ron asked if I would “do something with” his class notes. He said he had worked hard on them and couldn’t bear to just throw them in the trash. I said, “Sure! I can burn them in a pyre! I like to burn stuff up!” “Oh no!” he said. Ron didn’t like the thought of them being destroyed, and so I told him that I could bury them. I could put them in the earthwork that I was thinking about building, and thus combine those two ideas.
Ron came to my house with boxes of meticulously organized notes. The instructor’s words in each class had been carefully written, kept in chronological order, placed into crisp envelopes and sealed with a wrap of string. Each folder was carefully labeled with the name of the respective course. If one wished, she could start at the beginning of the first folder, study Ron’s notes until they understood it all, and walk away from that pile of information with the equivalent of a summa cum laude diploma!
So I took Ron’s notes and laid them by a tree, preserving them as best I could, and covered them with dirt. Over the years that dirt pile has grown. I add to it from time to time, and as it grows I can see further and further from the top of it.
This leads me back to perspective, and the knowledge that we gain from the information that we embrace, the understanding that it can provide, and how it may affect our point of view. Mr. LR Smith often reads a passage from the Bible (or The Message) that has to do with understanding. I don’t think it is Proverbs 3:5, but that verse is potent, and although it is somewhat polar to my own viewpoint, I respect its intent to instill respect and humble ourselves. I tend toward Proverbs 4:6-7 myself. But I may be taking these scriptures out of their original context. Such context is sometimes hard to ascertain.
We hear the Christian viewpoint nearly every day in Chapel. Students often mention their desire to hear the views of other religions and philosophies. When they say this I encourage them to “take a hand in that game”, and offer to make a short presentation or daily reading themselves, and thankfully, some of them do! Sometimes I wonder if we would be reading from the Torah if Old Sawney happened to be Jewish, the Quran if he was Muslim, the Vedas if he was Hindu, the Book of Mormon if he was Mormon, the Sutras if he was Buddhist, or read from any of the other sacred texts if he happened to follow that particular faith.
But, Sawney held Christian Chapels, and we continue to emphasize that point of view today. The other day a Christian group came to Chapel to distribute New Testaments. They represented an organization called the Gideons. During their introduction, the speaker made reference to Gideon and his devotion to God, and how Gideon was taking care of the task at hand as led by his God. But the speaker didn’t mention exactly what the task at hand was, and so I looked it up. God was tasking Gideon to kill all of the Midianites. And this troubled me. I thought of the conflicts, past and present, that have arisen due to the differences in our religious perspectives.
And that reminded me of the program I had heard a few days before called the Hidden Brain. The name of the episode was “Creating God”:
“For most of human history, we lived in small groups of about 50 people. Everyone knew everybody. If you told a lie, stole someone's dinner, or failed to defend the group against its enemies, there was no way to disappear into the crowd. Everyone knew you, and you would get punished.
But in the last 12,000 years or so, human groups began to expand. It became more difficult to identify and punish the cheaters and free riders. So we needed something big — really big. An epic force that could see what everyone was doing, and enforce the rules. That force, according to social psychologist Azim Shariff, was the popular idea of a "supernatural punisher" – also known as God.”
This idea springs from a study that found that:
“Fear of supernatural punishment may serve as a deterrent to counternormative behavior, even in anonymous situations free from human social monitoring. The authors conducted two studies to test this hypothesis, examining the relationship between cheating behavior in an anonymous setting and views of God as loving and compassionate, or as an angry and punishing agent. Overall levels of religious devotion or belief in God did not directly predict cheating. However, viewing God as a more punishing, less loving figure was reliably associated with lower levels of cheating. This relationship remained after controlling for relevant personality dimensions, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and gender.”
The results of this scientific study disturbed me the most. Does it really take the threat of punishment to force us to be better humans? The study concludes:
“…that the connection between religion, measured as an individual difference variable, and counternormative behavior is more complex than simply finding relationships with trait religiosity. The current research is consistent with the prior findings that overall religiosity is unrelated to cheating but supports the hypothesis that belief in fearsome punishing supernatural agents—mean gods—does predict more honest behavior in anonymous situations.”
We’re all free to look at science and choose to accept it and try to understand it as we wish, or not. I guess you could say the same thing about religion, but the scientist constantly tries to interpret the evidence in front of her and explain it in an understandable manner. I appreciate this attempt at objectively seeking Truth.
But getting back to perspective, and the point I should be making, because writings like this must have a point, right?
My current perspective is based on my view as I sit upon this big absurd pile of dirt. I scan the horizon for the points of origin, and all I can I see is haze, but it’s a haze that unifies earth and sky.
And somehow that makes me wonder if all of the religions in the world could ever converge into such a glorious haze, one that unites our multitude of individual, linear perspectives into one horizon of common Goodness. Until that time, I hope we shall attempt to perceive each other’s perspectives, and do so with respect and genuine effort toward understanding.
Proverbs 4:23-27
“Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.”
18 December, 2018
(References are included in the hyperlinked text.)
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