a very high-level, preliminary, or cursory perspective on a particular situation, one that intentionally glosses over details to first consider the broader metaphorical landscape and develop a holistic understanding; derives from common flight levels for commercial travel, where most airliners fly somewhere above 30,000 feet; despite the unit of measure being uncommon outside the United States or the world of civil aviation, converting this to the view from 10,000 meters would be a bewildering faux pas, and similarly no one never speaks of the view from five or six feet, which might be more appropriate given the average height of a human being; there are multiple altitude variations of this jargon in use depending on intended nuance, and truly adventurous types may speak of the view from 50,000 feet