Ironic Perspective Explained

“Irony, at its heart, is the perspective that an expanded consciousness has over an unexpanded consciousness. One way to understand this definition is to imagine that everything you know is a circle. When you learn something new, the circle expands. And when your consciousness has expanded, you can then look back at your previous, smaller circle of knowledge as though you are standing outside or above it. That perspective in which you understand something from above, or from an expanded domain of consciousness, is an ironic perspective.”

“Let’s consider an example. Imagine that you have never heard of Australia. Then, one day, someone holds up a map and points out the continent for you. You now have a larger, expanded understanding of the world, and, as a result, you can now look back at your previous understanding of the world from an ironic perspective. You have come to see your previous vision of the globe as an unexpanded consciousness.”

— English 211: Prose Forms, Athabasca University