How Your Perspective Influences Your Worldview — The Power of Perspectives

If I told you that “good and bad” are just different perspectives, would that anger you? Are you brave enough to play with some alternating perspectives?

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I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking deeply about perspectives, and it has opened my eyes to some of my most prominent mental fallacies. Every couple of years, I stumble upon a revelation reaffirming one of the few things I consider an absolute truth in this life.

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

Most people don’t like to think that their perspective, “their truth,” might not be the only one - the ultimate, absolute truth.

That their worldview might have some blind spots and that not everyone sees things the way they do. These are scary concepts, essentially an attack on our identity.

If I still agreed with everything I believed decades ago, I would worry that I had done no meaningful growth. But no worries, I know that I was a comical idiot! I wonder what the future me will think of this version. Fingers crossed that I’ll feel genuinely ashamed of my current level of understanding.

Challenging our worldview and our deepest beliefs is crucial to our growth. Especially on topics we are most resistant to changing our minds on. Trying on different perspectives and seeing the world from new angles is one of the best ways of recognizing the errors in our thinking and perception. It’s not a pleasant experience, though, especially when it hits a nerve. Perhaps we should start with the easy topics. Shall we?

How does our understanding of the world change as we shift different perspectives?

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. But what happens if we zoom in?

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

It’s a beautiful day, and the tinny baby antelope is playing with her siblings while occasionally affectionately rubbing against her mother. She feels loved and safe. Look, there’s more of them! They’re all such lovely innocent creatures who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Don’t you just want to pet them?

She is mulching on grass when a lioness suddenly jumps from behind the bush and grabs the baby antelope by the throat!

But it doesn’t die immediately. Oh, no! You can see it’s in a lot of pain, struggling to escape. 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 as she watches her baby dangling from the lioness’s mouth. All she can do is run away and hopefully take a few little ones to safety.

A horrible scene, I know. Blood is dripping everywhere, and baby antelope is kicking her last kicks as life is squeezed out of its tiny body.

Now we see the lioness strolling back toward her pack, where she meets her little cubs.

Three of them, furry little kittens with their cute growls. She releases the baby antelope’s body to 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 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 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 snouts, 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, who you named Simba for his big ears, notices a strange sound nearby. Curious about what’s causing it, he runs into the bush.

While sniffing around, curiously wandering through the grass, he somehow steps on a snake, which turns around in shock and bites the little Simba!

Simba runs back to his mother, frightened to his core, crying from all the 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 moved away, the scavengers come out.

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. Later in the day, the hyena defecates on the ground and leaves the area searching for the next meal.

A few moments later, dozens of little bugs come out and start consuming its feces like there is 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 the circle of life.

All right, 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 was 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.

Its only priority is taking care of itself and 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 hardly notices all the little creatures it’s devouring as it consumes plants. How many bugs did it kill during this day alone? Hundreds, thousands?

• Don’t their lives matter?
• Why not? What’s your reasoning?

The antelope doesn’t care one bit! The thought doesn’t even cross its mind. Thousands of dead bugs and hungry smaller herbivores so she and her babies can survive.

• Does that make her evil?
• Don’t they count? Why?

How about the lioness’s perspective?

In this same scene, she is a mother searching for food for her hungry cubs.

Nothing more, nothing less. She 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. She is a killer by default, a murderer, a predator, the stuff of nightmares.

• Does that really make her evil?
• Would she be a good mother if she chose not to kill her prey and let her cubs starve?

She’s only caring for her cubs, her family — the most natural thing to do.

Now let’s shift our perspective.

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

Let’s say you were watching a documentary about lions and had gotten attached to them. You’re a few episodes in, and you have even given them names.

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

I’m reasonably sure 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.

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 that he is now rooting for all the little critters that live on the plants. 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.

In the classical way of looking at the world, there must be good and bad guys.

• Who is good, and who is bad?
• What is the right perspective?
• What is “the absolute truth”?

Is it right 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 choose?

• 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- 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 believes the killing is justified because the lions will eat their prey. It’s only natural, survival of the fittest and whatnot.

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

You do know that cats do this all the time, right? Hunt, mutilate, and murder little critters for fun.

Are cats evil spawns from hell?

And then there’s the snake.

Is the snake “in the right”?

After all, it was only defending itself. 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.

• How do you feel about this scene?
• Is it just a random tragedy?

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?
• Their cold blood?
• 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. 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 very much. Do we? Not hyenas, vultures, or little bugs that feed on excrement and corpses.

We couldn’t care less about what happens to the skavangers.

• 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. In a way, we also consume feces, albeit in the form of compost or natural fertilizer with which we grow our food. Not a pretty picture to think of it this way, is it? Just a slightly different perspective.

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.
• There is only the truth containing all the different perspectives and stories into one giant organism, 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 strongly you feel about certain aspects of the story and its characters, and how quickly our perspectives can change, causing us to see the same scene from a completely different point of view.

• What does that tell you?
• What does it say about the power of perspectives?
• How do you know that your perspective is the right one?

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

What do you think will happen once we take this game into the world of the human animal?

Take a moment to reflect on how you respond when evaluating situations. Analyze your reactions and try to identify the underlying reasons for your viewpoints, particularly on controversial subjects.

• When it comes to war or politics, why do you favor one side over the other?
• Have you considered that those on the opposing side may have equally valid and justifiable viewpoints?
• If you were born into a different family or country, would your outlook on the world be the same as it is now?
• Furthermore, do you think your beliefs and perspectives would remain unchanged if you were born in a different era?

These critical questions lead to some fascinating insights we desperately need as humanity.

When we learn to put ourselves into other people's shoes, especially those we strongly disagree with, a whole new universe of understanding, empathy, and compassion is achieved.

Do you want to know how to spot your worst blind spots, opinions, and perspectives furthest from objectivity and truth?

Look no further than toward your emotions. Understanding breeds peace. Ignorance evokes emotions. Emotions cloud our judgment and fortify our beliefs.

Whatever ignites your emotions the strongest, enrages, or enamors you — this is where you are least objective, and odds are, you don’t understand the situation at all.

So the next time you feel your emotions firing up on some subject, observe yourself and know you have entered a state of irrationality. You no longer see the world as it is and cannot objectively observe, much less judge it anymore.

There is only one way to break this fog of illusion.

By shifting perspectives, trying on different points of view with an open mind, and refraining from forming rash judgments while trying to understand the situation better.

If we did that more often, there would be fewer misunderstandings, violence, and suffering in this world.

Be well, my friends, and try on some new perspectives occasionally. You never know what you might discover.