My perspective on perspective.

Through­out my life I have seen how a dif­fer­ence in a person’s point of view can alter the sit­u­a­tion. What I have real­ized recently is that chang­ing how you look at the world is as good as chang­ing the world itself.

Per­spec­tive may not be all that mat­ters, but it does mat­ter. A lot.

For me, a person’s per­spec­tive is what defines him/her(/it). As evi­dent from my blog’s title, I con­sider myself a cynic. Or rather, per­haps a cynik — most of you would not con­sider it much of a dif­fer­ence, but I do not fol­low the orig­i­nal Greek cyn­ics exactly. The mod­ern notion of cyn­i­cism is a bit closer to home, but still, I inter­pret it in my own way.

Those old, hor­ren­dous cliches ‘there’s a sil­ver lin­ing in every dark cloud’, ’ ’tis an ill wind that blows none good’ merely address this. Look­ing at an event/object/person with a dif­fer­ent view changes the person.

Chang­ing how you look at the world changes you.

Let me see look at it in another way. Imag­ine being stuck in traf­fic in a bus, or as a pas­sen­ger. Either you could grum­ble about the con­di­tions, or do what I do — go to sleep and use this time to relax.

My com­puter was recently for­mat­ted — for no appar­ent rea­son — but while I re-install all the soft­ware it had I have the time to write a lengthy post. Per­haps this was a bad exam­ple, as many read­ers would see it as two evils.

When there is a ter­ror­ist attack, the per­spec­tive of vic­tims, the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, the police/government — and those watch­ing yet another spec­ta­cle unfold on tele­vi­sion is com­pletely different.

Watch­ing and play­ing sports are two com­pletely dif­fer­ent ball games.

I will never say that one per­spec­tive is right and one is wrong. There are never any absolutes. Look­ing at ter­ror­ists from one point of view may show them as evil incar­nate; seen from the other side you have noble revolutionaries.

Every per­son has his/her own per­spec­tive; based on expe­ri­ence, prej­u­dice, life. Chang­ing these changes the per­son — but we must never lose the abil­ity to look at the world through some­one else’s eyes.

Empa­thy is one of our great­est pow­ers. To under­stand a per­son com­pletely, ana­lyze the world in the way s/he does. To come to an under­stand­ing, to solve a dis­pute — all fac­tions involved must be ready to see things from the opponent’s point of view — and accept or reject them.

Of course, see­ing the world through the eyes of the mur­derer who just butchered you — or the maniac whose blog entry drove you crazy — is com­pletely dif­fer­ent and unnec­es­sary. It is a case of a ran­dom, abstract thought being applied to the real world. What else do you sup­pose could hap­pen when a prod­uct of cool cal­cu­la­tion & obser­va­tion is applied to the illog­i­cal, warped world?

Note to self: I must resist from end­ing all posts with ques­tion marks. ?