We see things as we are

The great Mauryan emperor Ashoka started his journey of a monarch as a ruthless emperor. He was merciless and saw war as the ultimate religion of a great king, until the war of Kalinga took place — the one that changed the course of his life and transformed him into “Devanampiya Piyadassi Ashoka” — beloved of the gods, who looks with kindness. Ashoka chose non-violence as the path of life; he chose the path of Buddhism after being dazzled by the war of Kalinga. All this happened due to the very natural human phenomenon which can be termed as “a shift in perspective.”

The great emperor Ashoka serves as a testimony for our essay: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” In simple words, it’s all about perspectives and indeed, it always has been and will always be about perspectives — how one sees or observes things, the outcomes received, and how each person has a different view than the other. In this essay, we shall explore the art of having different approaches and how they affect the life we live.

In the very first part of the essay, we came across how a person themselves can have different perspectives. So indeed, there isn’t any doubt that two people can have even more or less contrasting cognitive observations.

The artist of the time — Vincent Van Gogh — painted from his heart. His paintings were his frame of reference, how he saw the world, but to Paul Gauguin, it was very congested. He criticised how Vincent used too much paint and the paintings did not look like a paintings at all. This shows that not only the art of war but also the art of painting and so many other curricula can have various standpoints.

What one sees as mystical, another sees as mysterious.

On a longer note, the way we see things defines who we are. It defines how our perspective is variable in nature and how our approach is different towards various aspects of life — and how we would want to pursue this existence. That is how everyone, though the same, becomes different.

For instance, the phenomenon of synchronicity states that two events that might not be connected at all may be meaningfully related. It can be termed as the synchronisation of events in the inner world and the world outside the human — in a rational way — though they seem not to be directly connected. Now, some folks might just brush it off as a coincidence, a random traffic of events, but some might see it as something beyond human consciousness — something that may not hold empirical evidence. Yet again, it all comes back to “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“Duality is the law of nature” — nothing can escape the bond of duality. If there is light, there exists darkness. If there is happiness, there exists grief. If one does not have a personality they want, they can opt for the act of masquerade. And similarly, there can be positives standing on the opposite side of negatives. This will lead us to the next part of our essay that will explore the duality of perspective. Either one can have a positive approach or a negative one — again, it all depends.

Firstly, checking on the positive approach towards every single aspect of life and existence. We can name a number of figures. For instance, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was a revolutionary social reformer, an educated writer who, in his times — when women were humiliated, lived lives of sorrow, grief, and dependency — campaigned for the rights of Hindu women to remarry, which resulted in the Hindu Remarriage Act of 1856 that legally allowed women to live a life of dignity and have a second chance at life with a new perspective. Similarly, the people’s Mahatma, father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi stood for the rights of untouchables — the ones who were being discriminated in society. He called them Harijans and asked societies to do their own chores — the ones Harijans were meant to do — in order to let them live a life of dignity and freedom. These prominent figures should serve as living examples of a positive and progressive view of life.

On the contrary, we must learn about Aristotle and his great contribution to Western philosophy, but little does one know that he saw women as a “defected man” or an “incomplete man” and suggested women to live a life at home, doing household chores — because men were the chosen ones as they were suitable for the highest jobs in society. This behaviour of Aristotle reflected the patriarchal set of views of his time. Apart from that, the German leader Adolf Hitler massacred the Jews of his country in the name of ethical cleansing, describing Aryan superiority, even though it is scientifically proven that the concept of race is man-made for the justification of dominance — and that 99.9% of human dna is identical.

Here, we can see the contrast between Ishwar and Aristotle, Gandhi and Hitler — and how the different perspectives of these figures affected the course of life of the people of their times and proved that duality is indeed the law of nature.

Reflecting upon the recent 21st century, human civilisation has made significant progress. We have high technological advances, including machine learning,deep learning and an AI revolution. But in this era of revolutionary findings, we also have the aspect of cyber crimes affecting society at a very high level of hazard and security. This depicts that no matter in which timeline one lives, no two will be able to become part of the same think tank and there will always be variation in aspects. Though we are in a progressive world, we still need to find a better way to study ourselves and to detect the righteous way of life, since how we live a moment will affect its outcome. To live in a moment as “The Moment”, we shall have the perspective for that and not get confused by the chaos of the world. We shall always examine ourselves on an individual basis and not as part of an echo chamber or a dystopian novel.

One can always take a look at the life story of Gautam Buddha, who, despite all his luxuries, formed a perspective and followed his heart — which ultimately led him to attain nirvana. Presently, buddhism is a global religion, with India having 9 million followers. Ashoka, the great buddhist king, played a huge role in bringing buddhism to a global level. A slight change in Ashoka’s thought process changed the course of the religious history of Buddhism and the lives of those who chose it.