It seems obvious to state that no man sees a painting mounted in the Louvre in the exact same way. While I may be lured into the detailed depictions of opulent luxury in David's The Coronation of Napoleon and Joséphine, you may immediately appreciate David's skillful use of lighting to play up the piece's notable characters. And the man standing behind us at the exhibit, having just finished a draft of a new building he's designing, may make particular note of the piece's architectural qualities. And further down the line, a woman dressed in mink and donned with jewels is appraising the painting's value. In all these instances (and in infinitely more possible perspectives), David's painting is valued for something different with each scrutiny it bears. Accordingly, we each impress our individual judgments on the world around us as per to our own individual circumstances. No two people are alike. A child born into the same household, who is forced to abide by the same rules and restrictions as his siblings, who attends the same school and eats the same diet will ultimately mature in a different way than his brothers and sisters. Based solely on biology, perhaps his brain simply functions differently than his sister's. A chemical imbalance may keep his focus at bay. His mother may have stepped into a smoky public facility when she was pregnant with him and thus changed the entire course of his development. In any case, due to way too many variables to even begin to try and list, Johnny is not the same person as Suzy, and so does not see the world the same way she does. Maybe he's even colorblind and can't pick Napoleon out of the ornate background of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in David's painting. Johny's circumstances are different than Suzy's, and so he interprets his world in highly different ways.
It's important to realize that not everyone understands your argument the same way you do. Obviously! Why else would we have debate teams and political elections and marketing schemes and boxing matches? But a different opinion, a different viewpoint, a different perspective is not necessarily a wrong one or a bad one; it's simply different. In fact, an occurrence can simultaneously be doing the opposite thing from one vantage point than it is from another. Take a spinning bike wheel, for instance. Looking down at it from above, spin it clockwise. Without touching it, just let it spin, and move your perspective to looking up at it from below. The bike wheel is now spinning counterclockwise. It's partaking in opposite actions at the same time. This same principle can be applied to many life circumstances. Just as Flower outlines, a curfew policy could simultaneously keep one kid from being victim to a drive-by on one side of the street and prevent another kid from making an emergency run to the pharmacy for an epinephrine inhaler for his brother's asthma attack on the other side of the street. So it can simultaneously save and kill. What's important about differences in perspectives is that understanding another person's can help enrich your own. Seeing the Statue of Liberty on a one-dimensional sheet of paper does not have near the effect as seeing it at the New York Harbor. Multiple dimensions enrich experiences. This is why community literacy is not simply a colonizing activity. We do not impose our ideas onto others. We would lose out on way too much if we did this. By fusing many great ideas, incredible things can happen, and they do! It seems we make progress more rapidly when we put scientists from all over the world into one room, as has happened throughout history. Collaboration creates miracles. Think of intercultural rhetoric, a conversation between different peoples of the world, as the undoing of the Tower of Babel. For God said, "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do" (Genesis 11:6).
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