beholders.org

We don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.

So many arguments, fights and even wars have been caused by single minded interpretations of what people consider to be a truth. Be it political, religious, scientific or moral, the erroneous idea that someone has the full answer, the absolute truth and knowledge, and that anyone who challenges it is a threat and must be punished is one of the main reasons for violence in humanity. There is also a strange concept that people or things must be one sided. Either good or bad, either yin or yang, either black or white. 

Science has pointed out that most things in the universe are anything but singularly one way. Water is responsible for life on earth, but also responsible for Tsunamis, hurricanes, electric storms and drownings. Oxygen keeps us alive, but it is oxygen allowed to move freely that creates free radicals in our cells. In other words, we age and die because of oxygen.

While the vast majority of the world has found itself somewhere in between the two ends of a spectrum, it's the extreme points, on either end, that get most press. That is because they call our attention to the dangers of imbalance.  

Religious fanatics use teachings that were mostly created for inner exploration, love and tolerance, and manipulate them to justify hatred, war, terrorism, discrimination.

Manipulative politicians use love for your community and pride of your land to justify hurting, attacking and discriminating those who happen to belong to a different geographic location, by no other fault of their own than the fact that they came out of their mothers elsewhere. In their eyes,  that makes them less human and less worthy than those who were delivered by their mothers in the same general location as those they manipulate.

Racists use the fact that there is a natural, evolutionary reason why some people have more melatonin on their skins than others, turning their skin darker, to create false assumptions about their value, based on nothing, but how many milligrams of this hormone is present on someone's skin. They conveniently forget all the scientific studies that show that we have all come from a single African Tribe that managed to cross from the Horn of Africa and into Arabia over 80,000 years ago.

Looking at the whole, and not a single part, understanding different views, even if you disagree with them, is an art that is difficult to master. 

Bellow is a fun example of the power of interpretation, and taking a single point of reference, using the famous Stanley Kubrick horror movie "The Shining", with Jack Nickolson to show the two sides of a story (literally). Two interpretations, the original trailer for the horror movie and a re-edited version, making it a heart warming family story.

Enjoy... 

The original scary trailer:

 by Taty Sena