Here in the south east of England, we are bracing ourselves for the arrival of a snowstorm. The met office has issued a ‘yellow alert’ and preparations are being made to protect people, animals, and property from the onslaught.
The extreme and diverse reactions of people, as they prepare for this storm, provides the perfect example of how different individual perspectives can be.
Some are expressing significant fear for their personal safety whilst others are jubilant and excited at the prospect of a white landscape.
Still others are paying the weather warnings no heed, whilst their neighbors are busy changing prearranged plans.
Similarly, the current global pandemic has exposed the immensity of how perspectives can vary from person to person and the extent to which those perspective sculpt our world.
At the same time as COVID 19 horrors are being promoted across the media, glimpses of loving kindness and compassion - that have been the consequences of this global crisis - have emerged, bringing hope to the very soul of humanity.
When it comes to how any of us are psychologically and emotionally affected by the pandemic, it depends upon the ways in which we perceive it.
As adults, the lens through which we evaluate life is sculpted by our pre-established views of the world (mostly formed in childhood).
These core perspectives, entangled with our intellectual beliefs, become the central matrix of our character. The judgments made by this central matrix represent a default view that we will always tend to gravitate towards.
Upon this central disposition, in ever expanding concentric layers, our on-going education and experiences further add their influences.
Depending upon the knowledge we ecru and the experiences that we accumulate, these influences can further reinforce any negative and non-serving views we harbor or be positively transformative in bringing about superior ways of seeing the world.
It is for this reason that erudite selectiveness is vital when seeking for information on the seemingly infinitely extensive, and ineffably conflicting, worldwide web of authentic and inauthentic education.
Never, since the launching of generalized computer use, has the need for selective internet use been so important.
The insinuous subtlety with which we are being lured into an isolated two dimensional existence is so discrete that mostly we don’t know it is happening.
It began in our language when concepts such as educational courses boasted of ‘suits’ and it developed until a few sheets of paper pinned together were referred to as ‘packs’.
It has now extended to websites having ‘lounges’ and far more. This was brought home to me the other day when asked to attend a dentist’s appointment on zoom and, on ‘arrival’ I was ‘ushered’ into the ‘waiting room’!
The darkest danger of such distortions of reality is that people, animals and our Earth will evolve in the minds of the people to be as two dimensional and devoid of feelings as the screens upon which we blindly stare.
Unless we nurture our perspectives by being highly selective in our interpretations of the internet, we will inevitably fall pray to a potentially irreversible disassociation with the sentience, beauty, majesty, spirit and magic or real life here on earth.
Worst of all, compassion will die.
Let us within our community be vigilant and do all we can to remain connected to our emotions, the feelings and emotions of all sentient life on Earth and Earth herself
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