A person who programs in a low level computer assembly language might reasonably say to a person who uses a high level programming language: “It must be very difficult for you to use such a restrictive tool. There are so many things you can’t do!”
Interestingly, a person who programs in a high level programming language might also reasonably say to a person who programs in assembly language: “It must be very difficult for you to use such a restrictive tool. There are so many things you can’t do!”
Both statements are true, and there many analogous situations. The person who walks to work can see and do things that the person who drives cannot, and vice versa. The person of faith can be motivated in ways that the atheist cannot, and vice versa.
There is a tendency to see those with different world views as living in a more restricted version of our own world view. To a Christian, Jews might be defined by their lack of belief in Christ. To a straight person, gay people may be defined by their lack of heterosexual desire.
By thinking this way, we tend to miss the richness of the lives of others. If the meat eater sees a vegan as living in a restricted world, she will never realize the vast universe of taste experiences that the vegan takes for granted, of which the meat eater has no knowledge.
I wonder whether this awareness should be made a part of our education in childhood: The ability to understand that those other ways of looking at the world, different from our ours, are not merely nested boxes within our own world view.
They are other rooms, as large as our own, within the same spacious house.