Does your background, life experience, and current position in life shape how you might see and describe something differently from the way another person would?
Can descriptions of an ordinary lightbulb help us reflect on how the diversity of worldviews causes people to think of and talk about the same things in very different ways?
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| Graphic used with permission of Sodexho Marriott Services (who do, by the way, run the food services at Southern Nazarene University). |
This graphic came from a Sodexho Marriott Services advertisement in a magazine. It appeared as a full-page ad in Hemispheres, the inflight or onboard magazine of United Airlines.
The advertisement noted the ways three people with different job responsibilities might describe a lightbulb:
The ad's punch-line was "To us, it's the importance of seeing things differently."
Describe this object in two or more different ways without using the word "lightbulb." Tell what kind of person would be most likely to use each of your descriptions.
When you have finished writing your descriptions, check out below how a VP of Finance, a Risk Manager, and a Director of Engineering might each have described a common lightbulb
To illustrate and reinforce how the categories and models we formulate from our experiences then influence how we continue to see and describe the "real world." This exercise can, in a very small way, aid in understanding the idea that we see things through a cultural lens. That lens shapes our "worldview."
To a V.P. of Finance, it's an energy conservation opportunity.
To a Risk Manager, it's a critical safety device.
To a Director of Engineering, it's code LB36-85/N7 in the electrical monitoring software.
-- Howard Culbertson,
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