How Powerful Is Changing Your Perspective in Altering Your Feelings About a Situation?

Understanding perspectives is the key to understanding everything.

There are no absolute truths, only perspectives. True or false?

I’ve been spending a lot of time meditating, that is to say, thinking deeply about perspectives, and I’ve found it has opened my eyes to some of my greatest mental fallacies. Most people don’t like to think that their perspective, “their truth,” might not be the only one. The ultimate truth, the absolute truth. That their worldview might have some blind spots, that not everyone sees things the way they do.

These are scary concepts for most. But for me, they are exactly where the hidden treasures of understanding, knowledge, and growth usually reside. On the other side of comfort and fear lie the diamonds you seek or something similar.

I like to torture my girlfriend with these concepts, and I almost enjoy her inability even to think in these terms, much less show any desire for it. She usually looks at me as if I’m from another planet for thinking about such impractical things. “We’ll have to agree to disagree there,” honey. I believe that challenging our worldview and our deepest beliefs is of utmost importance. How else are we to get any closer to some semblance of the truth, and how are we to grow if we are not willing to widen our mental horizon with some unpleasant topics?

Why unpleasant? Well, you’ll see. I will attempt to challenge your thinking, as I regularly do mine, with some slightly harder-to-digest ideas, by challenging you to change your perspective around a myriad of issues. If only for a moment or two. One could call them mental experiments. I like to call them “meditations.” 

My purpose isn’t to convince you or change your mind about anything. I have no horse in the game, as it were. Rather, that’s sort of the point. To meditate on the possibilities that we all have widely different perspectives and that “my “truth” isn’t necessarily “your truth.” Nor am I saying that these ideas are the right ideas or that the words written henceforth are in any way, shape or form, “the truth.”

“The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.” Socrates

We all know that we have different perspectives.

But do you know what that really means? Let’s find out, shall we?

I will write a series of posts concentrating on perspectives and how our understanding and perception of the world around us change as we shift them. Before we get into it, I must insist that you deliberately suspend your beliefs for these mental meditations. All your ideas about right and wrong, good and bad, even evil and just: they will only get in the way. Just set them mentally aside. They’ll safely wait for you to pick them back up at the end. In the meantime, you’re permitting yourself to play with some nontraditional ideas without being judged for it. Deal? 

Good, let’s begin. Today we will start with some simple ideas and slowly transition into more complex stuff in some later articles. Let’s ease into playing with different perspectives in a very simple story that is the basis of all life on this planet.

What is a good day for a spider, is a tragedy for a fly.

We have all learned that nature is this wonderful ecosystem of perfect balance and harmony. Everything is proportional; everything is connected. We are in awe of how perfectly it all runs. Yes, indeed, the Earth and its ecosystem is a work of art. It all works so beautifully in its benevolent way. But what happens if we zoom in?

Let’s picture a lovely baby antelope jumping around in the savanna.

It’s playing with her siblings, affectionately rubbing against her mother’s head, feeling loved and safe. Look, there’s more of them. They’re all such lovely innocent creatures who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She mulches on grass and simply minds her own business when a lioness jumps from behind the bush and grabs the baby antelope by the throat! But it doesn’t die immediately. You can see that it’s in a lot of pain, struggling to get away. The lioness stands there waiting for the antelope to exhale its last breath, patiently, without a worry on its mind. The antelope’s mother is powerless to save her baby as she helplessly watches it dangling from the lioness’s mouth and all it can do is run away and hopefully take a few of the little ones with her to safety.

A horrible scene, I know. Blood is dripping everywhere, baby antelope is kicking her last kicks as life is being squeezed out of its tiny body. Let’s stay with this picture for a little longer. Now we see the lioness strolling back toward her pack, where it is met with her little cubs. Three of them, furry little kittens, with their little growls. She releases the baby antelope’s body on the ground and hints at the cubs to grab a bite.

At first, they don’t know how to go about it, so she helps them by taking a few chunks of the baby antelope herself and giving them a taste of what will be just a typical meal for them throughout their lives. They soon learn to put their paws on the corpse and tear the flesh of the baby antelope with their sharp little teeth until their little bellies are full. After watching this scene for a while, you’ve now gotten to know the little lion cubs. Perhaps you even gave them cute little names. You cheer for them and want them to live long healthy lives. You don’t even mind the blood smeared all over their adorable little mouths, do you? 

After a while, almost nothing remains of our little friend, the baby antelope, mostly just bones. The lion cubs were thorough. As they now lie in the shade of the nearby tree, one of the little cubs, one you perhaps named Simba for his big ears, notices a strange sound nearby. Curious to see what’s causing it, he jumps up and runs into the bush. While sniffing around, just curiously wandering around the grass, he somehow steps on a snake, and it turns around in shock and bites the little Simba in his leg! As soon as Simba feels the pain, he runs back to his mother, frightened to his core and in a lot of pain.

The snake also slides away as fast as it can, terrified for its life, feeling lucky to have survived the encounter. The snake was venomous. There is no helping little Simba, his mother knows. She can smell the venom in Simba’s little leg. It’s now only a matter of time before he succumbs to the poison and dies in pure agony. There is nothing she can do to save her little cub. Simba will never grow up to be the king of the savanna she was hoping he would become. As little Simba dies, she moves her pack to a different location, for she cannot bear the pain of looking at her lost baby.

As soon as the lions have gone far away, the scavengers come out to take a bite. First on the scene is a vulture scouting the lions from above. It knows that something is always left when the lions are done feeding. As it munches on the corpse of our little Simba, tearing it apart, peace by peace, a nearby hyena catches the smell of death. It’s been days since it last ate. Long, painful days with hunger as its best friend. It chases the bird away and devours the dead little Simba until nothing is left of his little body.

A few hours later, the hyena defecates on the ground and leaves the area searching for the next meal. As soon as it’s gone, all the little bugs come out and start consuming its feces like there was no tomorrow. Soon there is nothing left of what was once our beloved Simba, the would-be king. As the little bugs die in their own due time, which usually doesn’t last all that long, their little bodies get consumed by other, smaller bugs, and so on. Ultimately, whatever is left, is always absorbed by the soil and used as natural fertilizer, growing new grass and new bushes until a hungry antelope comes by and eats them. Thus completing this little circle of life.

All right, I know this story was a little long. Let’s unpack.

In the first scene, we might quickly find ourselves rooting for the antelopes and feel anger toward the lioness for killing the baby antelope.

All perfectly natural, all perfectly irrelevant. From the point of the antelope, the lioness was evil personified—the stuff of nightmares. Baby killer! Murderer! And understandably so. The lioness did indeed kill an innocent little antelope and ended its life, taking the baby from its mother. And here we, as observers, might find ourselves thinking the same thing, right? 

Lioness bad, antelope good. Tragedy. A life taken unjustly. And from the perspective of the antelope, the mother, and her baby in this particular scene, we would be right. The baby antelope did nothing to deserve such a tragic death, nor did its mother. The lioness is a murderous predator in this story, it didn’t have to take the tiny, innocent life, but it chose to do so. So, the lioness is evil, right?

• Does it matter to the antelope that the lioness had hungry cubs of her own? No. 

• Does it matter to the antelope that if there were no predators in this ecosystem to manage the numbers of the herbivores, they would multiply and devour all the plants until there was nothing left, only a desert devoid of all life? No.

• Does it matter to the antelope that by her baby eating that particular bush, some other creature will be left hungry, might even die, if the resources are limited enough? No.

From its perspective, things are clear. Its only priority is taking care of itself and its herd, its family. Nothing else really matters to the all-so-benevolent antelope. Not even if that means the death of other beings, perhaps even of the whole ecosystem. It doesn’t even notice all the little creatures it’s devouring as it consumes plants, does she? How many bugs did it kill during this day alone? Hundreds, thousands? Don’t their lives matter? Why not?

The antelope doesn’t care one bit! The thought doesn’t even cross its mind. And that is an important fact to keep in mind. Does that make it bad? Does it make it evil? What do you think?

How about the lionesses perspective?

In this same scene, she is a mother searching for food for her hungry cubs. Nothing more, nothing less. She just happens to be a carnivore. The grass simply will not do. Her cubs need meat and lots of it, or they will die. So her only mission is to find food, kill it and feed her babies.

Does that really make her the bad guy here? She’s only taking care of her cubs, her family. The most natural thing to do. Would she be a good mother if she chose not to kill and let her cubs starve? Take a moment and think about this.

Would you perceive that first scene differently, if you had been focused on following the lion cubs through their life?

Let’s say you were watching a documentary about lions and had gotten attached to them a little bit. If you had indeed given them names?

The lions would then be the protagonists of this movie, wouldn’t they? 

I’m reasonably certain you wouldn’t want to see them suffer and die of hunger, the little rascals, would you? Would you root for them to live? Are you aware that you are now rooting for the innocent baby antelope to die a horrible death by doing that? 

Does that change your perspective?

Does rooting for the lion’s survival make you a bad person, an evil person? Remember, you’re now rooting for a killer who will murder countless innocent animals throughout their life. It will cause much suffering. Does that matter to you?

How about if you and your friend are watching this scene, and he is rooting for the antelope, and you are rooting for the lion? And maybe there is little Timmy with you, who is so mesmerized by the little bugs, he even collects his own, that he is now rooting for all the little critters that live on the plans. Maybe he was watching a documentary about the lives of bugs.

Which one of you is “in the right”? You can't all be, can you?

In this scene, you are now on opposite sides. There is no room for compromise. For one to live and prosper, the other must die. What is good for one is bad for the other. There is no way around this.

Who is good, who is bad? What is the right perspective? What is "the absolute truth"?

In the classical way of looking at the world, there must be good and bad guys, right? So, what is the truth? What is the right perspective, and why is this perspective right and others are not?

Is it just and righteous that the antelope’s babies live, and the baby lions die? What did they do to anybody? They were just born as lions. Or vice versa? Why? Who makes the rules? Who decides what is right and what is wrong here? Who is this judge of all things?

If you had the power to decide the faiths of these little animals, what would you decide?

Who would you kill? Who would you let live? Why?

No mumble about the fourth option, where a decision doesn’t have to be made. You know, teaching the lions to eat trees or other nonsense. Suck it up. Kill the loser in this war of perspectives! Make the decision, and then meditate on your decision! Own it, and then try to understand why you chose the way you did.

Let’s examine the second scene. The cubs have now eaten the baby antelope. They will live; it did not. Does this eating of the dead antelope make these little lions bad, evil even? Should they have sacrificed themselves so that the antelope had lived? Why? Who gets to decide this?

Perhaps you’re now in the camp that sees this as a natural instinct at play. That the killing is justified because the lions will now eat their prey. It’s only natural, survival of the fittest and whatnot.

If the lioness had just killed the baby antelope out of pleasure, even though it had no intention to eat it... would that make a difference to you?

Would that make her evil? You do know that cats do this all the time, right? Hunt, mutilate, and murder little critters for fun. Are they the evil spawns from hell?

What if there were no cubs in this story, and the lioness would devour the antelope to satisfy her hunger? Does that influence how you feel about it?

And then there’s the snake. It killed the little lion cub we so lovingly named Simba. And it had no need, desire, or capability to eat it. It killed because it was scared. It snapped only to get away. But the little Simba is dead nonetheless. The cute little cub is no more. And it’s all because of that nasty filthy snake, right? How do you feel about this scene?

Is the snake “in the right”? After all, it was only defending itself. Is it just a random tragedy? Should all snakes now be killed to prevent this eventuality from ever happening again? It’s what we humans tend to do around our homes and societies. We proactively eliminate all the predators and dangers so that “accidents” “are much less likely. Genocide for the sake of convenience and “what if’s.”

Would you feel better if Simba had noticed the snake in time and bit off her head, saving his own life?

The lion cub lives, and the snake dies? Would you like that story better? Why?

The snake was minding its own business, chilling, had no ill intentions, and would never intentionally attack a lion cub. Alas, it is a predator itself, no innocent little Bambi. Does that make a difference to you? Perhaps it doesn’t work with snakes because of how we feel about them.

Don't snake lives matter as well? What makes them more or less valuable than a lion's life?

Their looks? Their perceived sliminess? How’s that fair to the snakes? They didn’t choose to be what they are.

Is it perhaps simply the fact that you like little lion cubs more than you like snakes?

And finally let's take a look at the scavengers.

They perform a crucial role in the ecosystem. Without them, there would be no life. And yet, we do not like them very much. Do we? Not hyenas, not vultures, not little bugs that feed on excrement and corpses. In all likelihood, we couldn’t care less about what happens to them. Right? Even though we know that they are essential. They usually don’t even kill other animals; they just clean up. They are doing what can only be described as good, beneficial, honest work, cleaning up the land, and re-purposing the dead animals, plants, and people, so that each death has some meaning for the rest of the ecosystem. And yet, we do not like them.

Why is that? Because they’re not cute? Because they disgust us? After all, we eat corpses, too; we just cook them before consuming them. We also, in a way, consume feces, albeit in the form of compost or natural fertilizer with which we grow our gardens. Not a pretty picture to think of it this way, is it? Just a slightly different perspective, I guess.

Zooming out again, we see this perfect balance that is the natural world, where everything and everyone has its place, where every death is some other creature’s life. Where there are no sides, no good and bad guys, no right and wrong, only change and transmutation. Only the truth that encompasses all the different perspectives and stories into one giant organism that is our beloved planet Earth.

Notice how these little differences in the story and their characters influence your perspectives. How quickly you shift from one extreme (life and death) to another. How strong you feel about certain aspects of the story and its characters, and how quickly our perspectives can be changed.

• What does that say about you?

• What does it say about your perspective?

• What makes you think that you genuinely understand the scene you are observing?

• Do you think a change of perspective might be beneficial occasionally?

• Can you now see that there is a real possibility that there is more than just one “truth”?

Think on this, and I mean really think on this; it all has relevance to our further delving into the world of perspectives. And we will be going a lot deeper indeed. I will attempt to challenge your worldview by placing you into a mindset that explores different perspectives than you do. I might even go a lot further and challenge the ideas of good and evil by looking at examples that we believe are extremely clear to all. We will be playing with your emotions a bit and see if we can change how we feel about certain situations by adding new information about the situation or simply changing our perspectives.

What do you think will happen, once we take this game into the world of the human animal? Let’s find out together. Subscribe so you don’t miss any future posts.

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