ThE WoRLd wE SeE

The problem is that seeing is never plain. The woman who has just found a new lover gazes out her kitchen window at the overgrown lawn and sees there luxuriance, a wild and delicious excess. The man who has just lost his job looks out the same window at the same lawn and sees there more evidence of his decline. There is always something that is behind our seeing, something prior to it. Even the so-called objective standpoint of the scientist, however valuable and important, is not an absolute frame of reference but rather grows out of a particular set of interests and concerns. Thus the question arises: If we must see the world clearly in order to choose it, what world must we see?

(from Learning To Fall by Philip Simmons)