Walk A Mile

Do you stick with your perspective on a permanent basis?

If so, and if you're incapable of being able to "walk a mile in another person's shoes," then you could be misinterpreting the behaviors and words of others.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), French sociologist and anthropologist, always maintained that people need to see the world from different perspectives before making judgments upon people and their behaviors. While fellow sociologist, the German, Max Weber was interested in the motivations of individuals and what motivates people to act, Durkheim was primarily interested 'social facts.'

Durkheim was interested in how people 'construct' the things in society that they will adhere to as 'facts.' In reality, many constructed entities and things in society are not facts at all but they exist as a powerful force in soceity even when some/many people do not like or believe in the entities that are constructed. Durkheim found that even when something is present in society that people do not like (such as racism or poverty), people will still react as if the entity in question is present - and this behavior VALIDATES the very thing that many people don't like. It exists because people behave as if it exists.

Really, racism and poverty are JUST IDEAS (complex ideas, but ideas nonetheless)...but the behaviors that people display surrounding these issues - the way they act and the way they act while not knowing that poverty and racism are, in part, ABSTRACT entities...will make the presence of racism and poverty continue to exist in society.

If we take the time and effort to walk in another person's shoes, we can find out what details another person holds on to in order to make decisions that, in turn, become actions. We can them compare the differing perspective with our own, and learn to know why we each make decisions and take actions in specific circumstances.

Sometimes, we don't have all the details that another person does when they make decisions and take action. This makes a huge difference. Perspective makes a HUGE difference in the way that people behave toward others and in the actions they will supress or display outwardly.

For instance, a firefighter, taking a walk along the street, informed by previous first-aid training, may act quickly if she sees someone having what appears to be a heart attack.

A different person - say, a lawyer, who is walking on the same street might see the same thing, but not be informed by any kind of first-aid or emergency training. Let's say the lawyer comes across the heart attack victim first but does not stop to help, but starts to look around for someone else to help, instead...

Passersby who observe both the lawyer and the firefigher will often call the lawyer a bad person for not stopping to help the heart attack victim and the firefighter, of course, will be a hero.

In reality, from both perspectives, it is totally possible that both the lawyer and the firefighter did exactly the right thing in the same circumstance. The lawyer, knowing he didn't know first-aid, immediately looked around, trying to find a person who DID know how to help the heart attack victim. The firefighter, knowing that she was trained fully in first-aid techniques, immediately began to help the heart attack victim. She may have even taken in the information that the man (lawyer) looked frantic and that she'd better hurry in case the man had been trying to find help for a while.

Passersby may have observed the lawyer searching frantically around to find someone to help but will often 'delete' this observation later on when they say that the 'lady' was an upright citizen and ran to help the victim - while the man was a 'jerk' who panicked and left the victim to suffer.

Passersby have not examined 'perspective' well enough if they assume that the act of the firefighter was greater than the act of the lawyer. Uninformed by what the lawyer and firefighter know about themselves in this situation, passersby make snap judgments that are lacking in quality because the passersby haven't used the element of 'perspective' at all in their reasoning process.