Interpretation

Recently I came across an analogy called "The beetle in the box". For those of you who aren't familiar with this it goes a little something like this:

Suppose everyone had a box with something in it and what was in that box we called a 'beetle'. No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says that they know what a beetle is only by looking at their own beetle. In this situation it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in their box.

It got me thinking about how we interpret other peoples opinions. I have arguments with my roommate all the time, and we always cast aside each others views on something without taking into consideration that we're both from different cultures and countries. For example we were recently arguing about the pronunciation of the company name "Braun". In England Braun is pronounced phonetically as "Brawn" where as in the US and Azerbaijan it's pronounced phonetically as "Brown". We were arguing over this for the best part of an hour. This disregard for each others cultural differences can be seen all over the world. We all forget that we have all been brought up in different ways and the way we interpret the world won't always be the same. What one may consider socially acceptable, another may consider socially unacceptable.

Keep this analogy in mind next time you're arguing over something, there is always two sides to a story, and neither side has to be wrong.