Truth is, both our left and right eyes see things differently. For this, a little experiment might be in order. With perhaps a vase on a table as a good enough subject, cover your left eye with one hand and then with your right, focus on the object for five seconds. Next, cover your right eye, still imagining the image in your mind for another five and alternately open your left eye. Even as it may appear that the object may have moved, it really has not. We’ve just actually viewed it at a slightly different angle.
A kid’s little game perhaps, but the closest example of perspective. Even as I played it during some alone-moments as a child, I later included it as an exercise on how we see things differently in art, during a children’s theater workshop long ago in Tagum.
Nowadays, if one thinks about it, it’s perhaps these differences in perspective that’s one of the reasons for things wrong with the world. While we might say we know this already, not agreeing on a desirable outcome is its deadly second.
Consider tourists/visitors entering a resort or community. Here, two perspectives are about to clash head-on. For the vacationers, their purpose might be to get away from their busy world and indulge in rest and recreation. For the resort employ or community residents, it’s the matter of accepting the presence of these newcomers into their present reality. For communities especially, whatever realities they face at the moment, be it farm life or ordinary day-to-day, they will have to contend with outside presence or interference even for a while.
During the early 80s, a friend was telling me about countless visits and research studies on indigenous peoples in the hinterlands. He observed that, while some may have been unaware of it, there surely was a lasting effect on these lumads. Just imagine the sudden presence of outsiders with their modern tech cameras and tape recorders, suddenly inquiring about their culture and everyday existence.
In all, this insensitivity (whether intended or not) is often laced with a collective apathy going around. One only has to look at how people so casually color their threads in social media with both insensitive and I-don’t-care declarations, just as long as their agenda put across.
Finally, while for most, it’s like a no-harm-intended, just-for-fun-of-it poking at other people’s faults, the reality is, our perspectives have a way at ultimately melding into attitude before finally settling into the deep-seated set of beliefs we term as our culture.
