Naïve Perspective

Call it what you may, the perspective of the immature or childish if you like.  Irrespective of how you refer to it, it is important to note that your view of people is dominated by this perspective; the Naïve Perspective. And until you come to such a realisation, it’ll be close to impossible to acquire social intelligence. Social intelligence is nothing more than the process of discarding the Naïve Perspective and approaching something more realistic. It involves focusing our attention outward instead of inward, honing the observational and empathic skills that we naturally possess. It means moving past our tendency to idealize and demonize people, and seeing and accepting them as they are. It is a way of thinking that must be cultivated as early as possible in this phase of our lives. But before we can begin to acquire this intelligence, we must first come to grips with the Naïve Perspective itself.
Compared to other animals, we humans enter the world remarkably weak and helpless. We remain relatively weak for many years before we can truly operate on our own. This extended period of immaturity, lasting some twelve to eighteen years, serves a valuable function: it gives us the chance to focus on developing our brain – by far the most important weapon in the human arsenal. But this prolonged childhood comes with a price. During this time of weakness and dependency, we experience the need to idealise our parents. Our survival depends on their strength and reliability. To think of them as having their own frailties would fill us with unbearable anxiety. And so we inevitably see them as stronger, more capable, and more selfless than they are in reality. We come to view their actions through the lens of our needs, and so they become extensions of ourselves.

During these long period of immaturity, we often transfer these idealizations and distortions to teachers and friends, projecting onto them what we want and need to see. Our view of people become saturated with various emotions - worship, admiration, love, need, anger. Then inevitably, often in adolescence, we start to glimpse a less-than-noble side to many people, including our parents, and we cannot help but feel upset at the disparity between what we imagined and the reality. In our disappointments, we tend to exaggerate their negative qualities, much as we once exaggerated their positive ones.

Although it is natural to have the Naïve Perspective because of the unique character of our childhood, it is also dangerous because it envelops us in a childish illusions about people, distorting our view of them. We carry this perspective with us into the adult world. In the work environment, the stakes are suddenly raised. People are no longer struggling for good grades or social approval, but for survival. Under such pressure they reveal qualities of their characters that they normally try to conceal. They manipulate, compete and think of themselves first. We are blindsided by this behaviour and our emotions are churned up even more than before, locking us into the naive perspective. If we have been forced earlier on in life to make it on our own, practical needs would have come to dominate          our thinking and we would have become more detached and realistic. But as it is, the many years of viewing people through the lens of or emotional needs turns into a habit that we can hardly control.

The Naïve perspective makes us feel sensitive and vulnerable. Looking inwards as to how words and actions of others implicate us in some way, we continually misread their intentions. We project our own feelings onto them. We have no real sense of what their thinking or what motivates them. With colleagues in our work environment, we fail to see the source of their envy or the reason for their manipulation; our attempts at influencing them are based on the assumptions that they want the same things as ourselves. With mentors and bosses we project onto them our childhood fantasies, becoming unnecessarily adoring or fearful of authority figures and creating stormy or brittle relationships in the process. We think we understand people, but we are viewing them through a distorted lens. In this state, all our empathic powers are rendered useless

With the inevitable mistakes that we make, we become entangled in dramas that consume our minds and distract us from learning. Our sense of priorities becomes warped - we end up giving too much importance to social and political issues because we are not handling them well. If we are not careful we carry these patterns to the next phase of our lives in which we are in a more public position. At this level, being socially inept can prove particularly embarrassing even fatal to our careers. People who retain their childish attitudes will rarely be able to hold on to the success they may achieve through their talent.

How do you come to such a realisation?

You reach this awareness by reviewing your past, paying particular attention to any battles, mistakes, tensions or disappointments on the social front. If you look at these events through the lens of the Naïve Perspective, you will focus only on what other people have done to you – the mistreatments you endured from them, the slights or injuries you felt. Instead, you must turn this around and begin with yourself – how you saw in others qualities they did not possess, or how you ignored signs of a dark side to their nature. In doing this, you will be able to see clearly the discrepancies between your illusions about who they are and the reality and the role you played in creating this discrepancy. If you look closely enough, you can often perceive your relationship with bosses and superiors re-enactments of the childhood family dynamic- the idealizing or demonizing that has become habitual.

By making yourself aware of the distorting process of the Naïve Perspective you will naturally grow less comfortable with it. You will realise that you are operating in the dark, blind to people’s motivations and intentions, vulnerable to the same mistakes and patterns that occurred in the past. You will feel your lack of real connection to other people. The desire will naturally arise from within to change this dynamic –to start looking outward instead of focusing only on your own feelings, to observe before you react.

This new clarity about your perspective should be accompanied by an adjustment of your attitude. You must avoid the temptation to become cynical in your approach as an overreaction to your prior naïveté. The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny any existence of them. Often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behaviour when necessary.

With this new awareness and attitude in place, you can begin to advance in acquiring social intelligence and to see people as they truly are; having a dark side that is obscure when viewing them through the lens of naïveté.

-           Robert Greene

Reproduced by: Atsu Dogbey