You probably see things differently than the writer.
Each of us have different experiences. Different backgrounds.
For instance, throughout the Book of Mormon we see the people of Christ – whether they be Nephite or Lamanite – defend themselves with the sword from their enemies. Prophets like Alma, Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni defended their rights, their lives, in battle.
But Alma tells us the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi had a different perspective:
And the great God has had mercy on us, and made these things known unto us that we might not perish; yea, and he has made these things known unto us beforehand, because he loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children; therefore, in his mercy he doeth visit us by his angels, that the plan of salvation might be made known unto us as well as unto future generations.
Oh, how merciful is our God! And now behold, since it has been as much as we could do to get our stains taken away from us, and our swords are made bright, let us hide them away that they may be kept bright, as a testimony to our God at the last day, or at the day that we shall be brought to stand before him to be judged, that we have not stained our swords in the blood of our brethren since he imparted his word unto us and has made us clean thereby.
(Alma 24:14-15)
Both the Anti-Nephi-Lehies and the Nephites who welcomed them and protected them believed in the same God, in the same salvation. But they saw war and bloodshed from different perspectives.
To understand why we see things differently than others, that is learning.
We learn from Alma that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies wanted to show gratitude for the Atonement and their forgiveness by forsaking the sword (see verses 11 and 12 in the same chapter). Yet we may have difficulties fathoming their conviction, not having experienced the same things as they.
Another example:
“When Galileo looked at the Moon through his new telescope in early 1610, he immediately grasped that the shifting patterns of light and dark were caused by the changing angle of the Sun’s rays on a rough surface. He described mountain ranges ‘ablaze with the splendour of his beams,’ and deep craters in shadow as ‘the hollows of the Earth’; he also rendered these observations in a series of masterful drawings. Six months before, the English astronomer Thomas Harriot had also turned the viewfinder of his telescope towards the Moon. But where Galileo saw a new world to explore, Harriot’s sketch from July 1609 suggests that he saw a dimpled cow pie. Why was Galileo’s mind so receptive to what lay before his eyes, while Harriot’s vision deserves its mere footnote in history?”
Gene Tracy, founding director of the Center for the Liberal Arts at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, suggests the difference between what Galileo saw and what Harriot saw was that Galileo was surrounded by artists and may have also studied the Italian art of chiaroscuro – the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.
“When Galileo looked at the face of the Moon,” Tracy writes, “he had no trouble understanding that lunar mountaintops first catch fire with the rising Sun while their lower slopes remain in darkness, just like they do on Earth. Galileo therefore had a theory for what he was seeing when those pinpricks of light winked into existence along the terminator line of day and night; he even used the effect to measure the heights of those mountains, finding them higher than the Alps. Harriot, a brilliant polymath yet possibly blind to this geometry, looked at the same scenes half a year before Galileo, but didn’t understand.”
Both learned men looked at the same object – the Moon – using variations of the newly-invented telescope. But because one had a different background in art, he was able to better understand what he was seeing.
My point to this? Fourfold:
1. As writers, we have a duty to try to explain to the best of our ability what we mean. If, in peer review, we discover our readers don’t quite understand what we mean, we need to take them seriously. We need to ask questions to discover what it is they do not understand, and make efforts – often multiple efforts – to better explain ourselves.
2. As readers, we have a duty to not only point out when we do understand, but to indicate in detail when we do not understand. If we do not share praise and criticism, the writer whose prose we are reading will not learn to be better communicators. Merely saying “This is good,” or “I don’t understand this,” is not good enough. Strive to include as much detail in your review as possible.
3. As readers, we may have knowledge or a different approach on the writer’s subject that we can share with them to help them better explain themselves. We have to share that.
4. As children of God, we have a duty to continue learning, even in areas that lie outside our principal interests, because we never know what learning in one field will help us understand concepts in another.
GALILEO'S MOON
HARRIOT'S MOON
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