Last week we reflected on how each story and perspective is a filter over perception, and like a colored filter on a lens, each filter reveals certain things and obscures certain things about what is. So to gain more depth of perspective, one needs to hold and perceive through multiple filters.

This evokes the classic 3-D glasses with a red lens and a blue lens. When you watched an older 3-D movie without the screen, it looked a little blurred and you could see the different layers of color over each other in a flat, distracting way. With the glasses on, with one eye seeing more blue and the other more red, the perception of depth and three-dimensionality emerged. That is the benefit of having two eyes that face forward, to have depth perception.

Every source of news, every call to action, every opinion editorial is a particular filter with its own agenda and position in the world. We might look at certain sources of news as propaganda for a particular state and be interested in foreign news sources, but they too may well be propaganda for their own states. That does not make any of these sources useless; it just requires a remembering that these are filters. A news source with allegiance to one state is going to soften the actions of its own state and highlight the failings and atrocities of adversarial states. Proceed with understanding.

It feels important to take in at least a few different sources of information with different perspectives, to orient yourself in these times.