In February of 1967, The Beatles released one of my favorites, Penny Lane. The tune and harmonies were great and the lyrics were simple, but somehow poignant. But there's one line in the song that's not as simple as it sounds:
"Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes."
In '67 I just thought that meant the singer was full of the experience of everything that was happening on the street that day. What I didn't yet understand was what it meant to say "Penny Lane is IN my ears and IN my eyes"; that my ears hear and my eyes see according to the terms, categories and expectations developed as a result of having lived all my life on Penny Lane. That realization didn't hit me until years later.
Recognizing the effect that our own Penny Lane has had on each of us is an important piece of living in the modern world. When my world only extended a few blocks to either side of my own Penny Lane, I could pretty much count on everyone hearing and seeing things with the same meanings as I did. But when our world grew to include day-to-day contact with Asians, Africans and Middle Eastern Islamists, Penny Lane's meanings could no longer be assumed: these were people who clearly heard and saw things differently than I did.
One of the challenges of the modern world is to be able to recognize my own categories of meaning (the ones that kick in automatically without me even thinking about them; sometimes we might call them "prejudices," but that word is too highly charged for this context) as one possible sub-set in a larger set of possibilities. They're mine, and my identity is founded on them, but they are only one way of seeing things, not The Truth.
If I am interested in understanding other people, it's important that I understand the way their Penny Lanes have shaped the meanings they hear and see everyday. And to do that, I must remain permeable. I must allow other possible perspectives to exist and to allow myself to be influenced by those perspectives. That doesn't mean I every lose my own Penny Lane perspective; that's impossible to do even if I wanted to. But recognizing (and creatively integrating) those other perspectives seems to be one of the hallmarks of successful individuals, companies and, maybe, nations.
We can either do that, or, like the Islamists we see on the news every day, try to shut those perspectives out to "protect" the single-minded "purity" (and superiority) of our own Penny Lane.
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