Macro philosophy or micro philosophy?

as I have mentioned before, I work retail, in a grocery store
and I run the self-checkout… today, it was busy, and I was
trying to the line organized, when I saw a young girl on her
cell phone and not paying any attention to an opening
in self checkout… after a couple of tries, I finally got
her attention and got her moving… a very long line
behind her… an elderly couple, was right before her…
the man, in his 70’s, maybe even 80’s, started to yell
at me…he thought that because I was on the young girl’s
case, that it was his wife I was yelling at…I wasn’t…
and he was yelling something about his wife being partly
deaf… and I shouldn’t be yelling at deaf people…
he was saying I ‘‘embarrassed’’ his wife for being deaf…
my only response was… "I am legally deaf… I am quite
aware of hearing impaired difficulties’'… and he started to
argue with me… I simply walked away, and he got even louder
yelling at me… this guy was so locked into his belief that
it never occurred to him that I didn’t even noticed his wife…
I didn’t commented to, or about her…

but his thinking was what I call "Micro’’ thinking…
thinking about the small moment, instead of the bigger moment…
and for most people, that is where they are… in thinking about
the small moments instead of the larger moments… think of
ants on the ground… all they can see is a very small space of land
right before them…that is where their focus is, on that very small
bit of land before them…

but what people really need is ‘‘Macro’’ thinking, which
is exactly what philosophy does… trying to gain a
bird’s eye view, not an ant viewpoint…
and therein lies the problem for most people…
they are unable or unwilling to expand their viewpoint
to a ‘‘bird’s eye’’ viewpoint…to gain a much wider
viewpoint of reality, which is the bread and butter
of philosophy… to see the bigger picture of what
it means to be human… not get bogged down in
the ‘‘Micro’’ small details that fill our lives, too much
of our lives is engaged in this "Micro’’ viewpoint…
and in doing so, we miss the much bigger picture of
existence…

I have railed against the ‘‘trinkets of existence’’ often enough
that you should know them… the pursuit of wealth, power,
fame, titles and material possessions… are very ‘‘Micro’’
pursuits… that lead us nowhere… that have no meaning
beyond themselves… all money can do for you is make
more money and all fame can do is more or less fame
and the same goes for power and titles and material
possessions… there is no future outside of the given goal
of wealth or fame or titles… those pursuits don’t lead
anywhere else but in themselves… fame leading to fame
and nowhere else…

We want to pursue goals and values that have some point
outside of and beyond the goal/values themselves…
for all the pursuit of wealth can give you is wealth, nothing
more… and the real pursuit should be of something
outside of, beyond the given goal… say we pursue love
or justice… we just don’t get love or justice in that
pursuit, we get something more… pursuing justice leads
us to a bigger prize than just justice itself… but that again,
takes us to having a ‘‘Macro’’ viewpoint of existence to
notice that…

by taking philosophy seriously, we begin to expand our
viewpoint, to take a bird’s eye viewpoint of existence…
and that helps us see reality as it is, not as we wish it to
be… for me anyway, much of the struggle of existence
lies in our viewpoints… if we see life as a struggle for
existence, that is how we will go about life, making it
a struggle for existence… but if your viewpoint is different,
taking life as a pursuit of justice or love, it becomes something
different… our viewpoints change how we perceive reality…
and by taking a ‘‘bird’s eye’’ viewpoint, we change how
we see and react to reality… or by remaining in an ‘‘ant’s
viewpoint’’… that will be how we see reality… a very small
narrow viewpoint… so, how shall we view reality…
the ‘‘Macro’’ view or the ‘‘Micro’’ view?

Kropotkin

An elderly man made a mistake and misinterpreted a situation. Macro-thinking would not focus on the micro-thinking example of an elderly person, perhaps with some bad experiences around how he and especially his wife are treated, who makes a mistake and lets off some probably built-up anger. The macro-thinking would focus on the mistakes of those with power. Which of course you do and even did here. After your microthinking you did some macro-thinking. Perhaps he did also, later. We could think about the possible macro causes of his rage. It sucks that you got dumped on. You probably got the dump that should have been aimed at insurance companies and perhaps doctors and hospitals possibly some government agencies or other bureaucracies who’ve mistreated them. Who knows what other organizations may have made him feel that in their late retirement people treat them like shit. Or he might have been an asshole. But that wasn’t microthinking on his part. Someone treats my wife like shit I may well yell. The problem in that situation was mainly that you didn’t do what he thought you did. We can have bird’s eye views and microviews. We’re not disembodied eyes: we’re embodied individuals who are on the ground fending. We can have both microviews and responses and macroviews and responses. They are not mutually exclusive. You see some teacher call your kid an idiot, you might well hurl some choice words. Later you might also consider teacher salaries and stresses and …so on.

We have to think about the small moments. We sometimes have to react, even strongly in the small moments. This doesn’t prevent macrothinking.

And again, that situation sucked. You were pretty much the opposite of what he thought. Someone who probably is empathetic in relation to the elderly with understanding of the precise thing he thought you wouldn’t understand. But if we read your post it is as if the general category of reacting in the way he did is wrong AND somehow precludes macro-thinking. Sometimes people need a talking to. Sometimes unpleasant behavior needs to be called out. The specific behavior. The specific person. Focus on here and now. This can have positive effects for the protected family member, for future people who encounter the employee or bureaucrat. The implied general rule does not hold. Nor does micro exclude macro.