Note: I first wrote this back in September 2021 on medium but decided to bring it over here as my first article on mirror.

As you navigate life thinking about things you initially tend to only see the world in one dimension. Your internal dialogue is “Everything is the way I see it and everyone experiences the world the way I do”.

🖼 👀

Then you experience something that conflicts with your current thinking. The cognitive dissonance this creates forces you to create an explanation. This explanation falls into one of two categories either others are dumb or there is a second perspective.

🖼👀 + 🖼👀

Accepting the existence of a second perspective leads to the acceptance of paradigms or mental models. A different way of seeing the world. You sort of form a circle where everyone is looking at the same world but forming different perspectives based on where they are and what lens they are looking at things from. This is best explained by the classic elephant metaphor of different blind people feeling the same animal and coming to different conclusions about what it is. Tusk = spear, tail = snake, feet = tree, etc. 🐘

(🖼 👀+🖼👀) * 🏟

As you explore different mental models and paradigms around this circle you’ll find ones that directly oppose your current mental model but still make sense. This leads you to accept that for every perspective there is an equal and opposite, opposing perspective that also still makes sense. Sort of like two sides to the same coin.

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This leads to the idea of principles. Things that are true throughout the circle, and remain true no matter which lens you look through. These principles tie all of these perspectives together and help them make sense as a coherent discipline.

🏟+🪢

From there you either double down on your discipline or move to other adjacent or seemingly opposing disciplines and explore their principles.

(➗🔬🎨 ⛹🏾‍♀️🎺🧘🏾‍♂️💻) * 🏟+🪢

Exploring the principles in these disciples gives you a better understanding of principles in your original discipline and you start to form principles around principles. This is my current level of thinking and I like to think of it as pattern recognition. I’m looking forward to exploring this thought more and hopefully arriving at some insightful conclusions.

🪢 * 🪢 = 🧵 or 🧶 …TBD