TOGGLING PERSPECTIVE

September 22nd, 2020

In a lot of video games we have the capability to change the point of view.  If it’s a role playing game, you can often see straight out of your character’s own eyes, but you can also toggle the view to watch your character from behind and above, watching the entire body of this character open doors, climb trees and jump across voids.  In some video games you even have the ability to spin the view around the character so you can simultaneously see the face of your character and everything behind your character.  

This change in view proves to be incredibly useful.  Zoomed out, it’s much easier to see an enemy or threat approaching from behind and take action before it’s too late.  But such a point of view becomes very unhelpful when you prompt your character to pull out a sling shot and aim at something.  For that it’s much more useful to see right out of the character’s eyes.

Now let’s toggle the perspective back to real life.  Imagine if you could have that bird’s eye view of yourself as you go about life.  Now imagine watching yourself from this perspective as you get angry at someone, perhaps a fight with a spouse or lover, or an extended moment of frustration after getting bad news at work.  How would you feel watching yourself have that little temper tantrum?

It’s not uncommon to see a child losing their cool in public, and regardless of how enlightened the perspective, no one sees that sort of behaviour as impressive or something to aspire to.  But do we as individuals truly integrate that opinion and change our own behaviour?  Or are we too wrapped up within the intoxication of emotion to occupy the right perspective and defuse our role in such situations?

Looking at our situation through our own eyes and trying to imaginatively see that same situation and our own self from another perspective adds an extra layer of perception to the world we see.

The more points of perception we can occupy, the more stable our understanding becomes, and with this stability arises the ability to see the clearest and most effective action that can be taken.