Though I have never been skilled at drafting or mechanical drawing for a variety of reasons, my studies have not entirely been without useful result. Among the earliest lesson someone learns in drafting or mechanical drawing is that one perspective is not enough to provide a complete picture. Whatever one’s perspective, there are parts of the picture one does not see. It is by combining perspectives together that one gets the whole picture. Any view alone will see a couple of dimensions and not able able to see others.

This is not just true in visuals, but also in narratives. It is lamentable that second-rate sequels are so common in our world. Sequels are easy to do (and lazy) because they simply continue along the same path toward some end, or in showing the aftermath of what was previously thought to be a “happily ever after.” Since most narratives are not planned with a large scope, simply adding a sequel generally results in a lack of quality. On the other hand, audiences tire of watching films that deliberately setup a sequel, especially if they fail to provide some sense of closure. Avoiding the two pitfalls of either sabotaging a sequel in advance or too obviously setting one up is a delicate balance.

I am surprised that the requel option is so little chosen by those wishing to provide greater depth to a story. Some stories very successfully use multiple perspectives to realistically and compellingly tell a complicated story, like Rashomon, Vantage Point, and Hoodwinked. Here we see that each perspective adds depth and details to the story, leading to a surprising conclusion that requires all of the perspectives put together. This is a lesson for all of us that our simple-minded narratives often fail to account for.

What a requel does that is compelling is that by telling a familiar story from a different perspective we get a vastly different story. Let us take the novel Pride & Prejudice, which is told from the witty perspective of one Elizabeth Bennet. As written, the story is told from the perspective of a marriageable young lady from a crazy family and focuses on her relationships within and without her family. However, imagine the story instead written from the enigmatic Darcy. We would see stories of a doting older brother, frustrations at having to deal with an overbearing aunt, scenes of persuading a man against a marriage while he himself is attracted to the same family, the bribery and hard work of finding Wickham and Lydia, as well as lots of scenes of hunting around fawning and flattering women like Caroline Bingley, with Darcy being bored of the obsequious flirtation and longing for a genuinely strong-minded woman. The novel would look quite different from that perspective, even if it was about the same story.

And that is a good lesson we can learn in general. All of our lives have narratives, and we see things based on those narratives. The same events from different people fit into different narratives and so they are seen differently. Events and interpretations of the actions of others that reinforce the way we already think tend to be made as part of a larger story, a narrative. If others have different narratives, the scenes look different based on the context. Each of our contexts is worthwhile, but what we see is often closely related to our own context, and our disinterest in the context of others unless it reinforces our own perspective often leaves us willfully blind of the world, especially as we tend to use our contextual background as evidence that limits the possible explanations of the behavior of others.

Recognizing the need for perspective does not mean that we uncritically accept the biased views of others, but it does mean that we fit in the worldviews of others (especially when they are mistaken, as they often are) into a larger context in order to see how people often provoke what they fear the most. Let us return to Pride & Prejudice. Mrs. Bennet is relentless at seeking to get her daughters married off–despite her own lack of success and respect in the marital state, and as a result she gets stuck with her two least wanted daughters and more time with her cruel husband–but at least her other three daughters are married off successfully. Parents in particular are skilled at provoking suboptimal outcomes in the quest for long-term goals, seeking to increase burdens on unwanted dependents without recognizing the harm this does to long-term respect and good relations, when it would be far more ultimately successful to seek successful opportunities for them to ensure a mutual win-win solution.

Part of the problem of our perspective is that we too easily assume that we are in competition with others, and thus we fail to look for mutually beneficial outcomes. Worse, having such a mistaken perspective makes it difficult if not impossible for others to seek mutually beneficial outcomes with us. As a result, if we act on the assumption of hostility from others, we will often get exactly the hostility we assume. We often create our own misery. But there are always plenty of other people to blame when things go wrong. If at least made no assumption on the friendliness or unfriendliness of others, but simply acted friendly ourselves and were looking for evidence with others, we would be much better off, neither as crushed by hostility nor as likely to foolishly provoke it. But it is much easier to give such advice than to follow it.

There are many values to perspective, but most of them depend on a few qualities. For one, we must be genuinely interested in others and see their perspectives as valid (when they are valid, and not simply raving lunacy, that is). Even where we think the perspectives of others are raving lunacy (as seems increasingly the case), we need to understand it to recognize the dangers that lead to that sort of warped worldview, which often includes a mindless and automatic hostility to accepted truths rather than a principled weighing of matters on a case by case basis. We also need to examine ourselves to recognize our own biases and seek to counteract them so that we can see the world as it is rather than according to deluded hopes or paranoid fears. We also need to approach the world with a strong empirical mindset, not only looking for facts that confirm our notions but seeking facts in general, sometimes leaving explanation for later. We will gain much from paying attention to the value of perspective, but it requires much work for those of us that wish to profit from it. But such work is richly rewarded.