Sometimes...

I really do wish that people could see how they treat others. I wonder what our lives would be like if we were all given a constant mirror of ourselves. Would knowing how our actions affect others cause us to change (even only superficially) how we interact with each other?

I guess the point of this vague inquiry is to see whether or not I’m alone in this world. Am I the only one who thinks this way? I’d like to believe that not all people quickly jump to internally postulated conclusions without looking at the picture in its entirety. Maybe people are just socialized into different mentalities, and in this socializing, gravitate toward a method of addressing individuals that assumes an identical view of the world. I don’t know if I’m rambling or if I’ve stumbled upon a legitimate connection here. Let’s just see where this ride takes me…

I think that there is a direct correlation between the field of study in which a person chooses to specialize and the way in which they communicate with others. This may be inaccurate in some specific circumstances (as all generalizations eventually are), but I feel that people in the sciences (read: “hard” sciences/math/engineering) and people in the humanities tend to look/address/deal with things much differently. I guess I’ll try to break this down as I attempt to synthesize a written representation of what I’m thinking for both types of people.

For the Sciences: Numbers, formulae and graphical information seem to translate into clear cut pictures of many things in the real world. The universality of concepts and the provable nature of the problems with which these individuals have to deal seem to tint the lens through which they view things in ways that only allow minimal shades of grey. The “if a then b” mentality that they, through their work, are accustomed to translates into a constant state of bewilderment when they are faced with issues that don’t necessarily fall directly into the set of experiences that are not definitively answerable. These people may include (but are not limited to) those who are highly frustrated with (and are usually intensely condescending/critical to) deviant problems (or people), those who assume that individuals are cognizant of a universal (also known as their) approach to specific occurrences, and those who, generally, look at one facet of something and assume all of the other facets based on the section of that something that they observed (which is transferred from their ability to do so in other (field related) problems). These individuals have a heightened sense of the possibility for complete "right" and "wrong" and may exhibit this in conversation and social interaction.

This is something that (almost) connects the science focused individuals with those who specialize in the humanities.

For the Humanities: Objectivity, interpretation and intellectual conjecture/hypothesization seem to make everything fluid and (if especially undefined) ultimately transitory. This often translates into a world view that is so highly intellectualized that it ceases to be practical. Whereas the science focused are hindered by categorization and formulaic approach in social situations, the humanities focused (can) lack the grounding in a shared reality that allows the social communication to be fruitful. They see the aforementioned shades of grey in such vivid detail that the definitive black and white becomes lost. These people may be those who throw around idealistic ideas without taking into account the practical impossibility of them, those who shun individuals who attempt to nail down concepts into universal understanding (even if only to make them at least generally perceptible) to more than one individual (or a select group of individuals) at a time, and those who have (mentioned earlier as the, almost, shared attribute) a hard time accepting things as "relevant" intellectual knowledge without an equally "relevant" intellectual backing (essentially a "world" of ideas contingent upon the separate/internal world in which these ideas originate/operate) .

All this to say, I can't get down with the extremes. Even if it makes me an, ultimately, contradictory person (as if we all aren't, in some ways, contradictory), I wish that people would try to play both ends of the field or at least visit the center a little more often. These mindsets are complimentary in their contradictions. "Why can't we all just get along" without constructing mutually exclusive barriers of socialization? Though the universe may be bigger than our minds could ever imagine, it still (in some way, shape, or form) resides within it. Why can't perceptions of other people's realities do so as well?