Multiple Perspectives
I am autistic: I have difficulty recognizing other's perspectives. It is hard for me to understand why they don't see things the same way I do; after all, it's obvious to me. When I stop and reflect, however, I realize that I, myself, have used multiple perspectives over my lifetime to understand myself and the world around me. (a description of that might make for an interesting post, but not this one.) If one person can have multiple perspectives over time, doesn't it stand to reason that different people can have multiple perspectives at the same time?
The metaphors I have used for self-understanding have changed drastically over my lifetime as I have grown, learned more about myself and explored different interests that resonated with me. When I look at the deeper meaning of each metaphor, I realize they are describing the same thing over and over. Different perspectives are like different metaphors: you have to look to the meaning to find where they are different and where they are the same. The language itself will not tell you.
It all comes back to language. I don't use it the same way as a neurotypical would. Autism is, in large part, a difference in communication, and I'm not as good at translating as one would expect from someone who's lived most of her life pretending to be neurotypical. I never paid enough attention to others' perspectives to bother to learn. Seeing a different perspective, for me, requires a translation: a reapplication of metaphors. I can't easily see how the metaphors line up, so I take them at face value and only see the difference.
Instead of putting myself in someone else's shoes, I need to put myself in their language. I need to apply their metaphors to my understanding to really know where they line up and where they diverge. Then, the challenging part, I need to explain it to them using their language, their metaphors, so they can understand me. Translation itself won't bridge the communication gap. The gap of values is so much more than a metaphor translation. The only way to do that is through education: education presented in language the student can understand. They only way I can teach people to see and value my perspective is by understanding and explaining it using theirs.