The Truth of Perspectives

(SPOILER ALERT for Ender's Game)

In perspective we are all heroes and yet we are all villains too. Really, if we look to the truth to show us what we are, we aren't heroes or villains because defining us in such ways isn't about the truth, it's about perspectives. People are complex, we aren't all of one thing and none of another, we are mixtures; of love, of hate, of sadness, of joy, of good, and of bad. However, we try to define people so easily as heroes and villains, never thinking that maybe they are both, maybe they are neither, but according to this perspective they are good and according to this perspective they are bad. We try to define them as simply just one.

There is a saying that, "there are three sides to every story, yours mine and the truth." In your story you can chose to think you are the hero for killing that spider, but in the spider's story you are the villain. The truth says that you killed the spider; the truth isn't biased, it's factual. Where we find our role is how we decide to perceive the facts and determine opinions: Is killing wrong? Is it justifiable?

I have recently finished the confusing yet marvelous story THE YOUNG ELITES by Marie Lu a story that follows the life of the villain. Funny, though, that when I read THE YOUNG ELITES that I didn't seem to think of Adelina as the villain. I was reading her story; her story which made her seem more as a heroine than a villain. The facts cannot tell me whether a person is good or bad I have to take this decision into my own hands with the information I have.

Where we stand according to perspectives has the ability to change our moral compass if our views are stronger than our sense of right and wrong. An example can be the Heaven's Gate Cult in which people's views led them to take their own lives which was heroic in their perspective, but to the greater public their actions were a horror.

The term "greater public" shouldn't lead people to believe that right and wrong can be determined by the majority, either. The majority has been oppressive in many cases, too, which we now look back on and view as wrong. There are many examples of this in history, a few are: Nazi Germany's treatment of the minority groups, and the United State's own Jim Crow Laws that oppressed the minority. These groups would have argued that they were merely protecting themselves and their way of life in which they disputed that the minority groups were complicating.

Wherever a person stands gives them a unique way to view a situation. As I watched the movie ENDER'S GAME (I know I really should have read the book first) I was stricken by this thought of how heroic Ender was for killing of an entire alien species, until I took on an entirely different perspective. While Ender thought he was playing a game he later found out he had actually carried out the mission. This spectator perspective led me to see he had been pushed into the role of villain right before my eyes.

It is so easy to illude a person's moral ideas based on their perspective. Most people would agree that killing is morally unjust however we will crush the lives of harmless insects. We are more than willing to tell white lies to children, all while we tell them not to lie. It is our perspective that tells us that it is okay, that we are the heroes for telling children about their pet bunnies running away, rather than telling them the truth, that the bunny died.

Good and bad is all about perspective and where we find ourselves standing. It is important to realize that our enemies are heroes in their own stories, that we are villains in theirs. Perspective is a powerful tool, and if people were more gracious in using it as a tool for empathy rather than misunderstandings, I believe, we could have much kinder actions in this world.