Once upon a time, round about noon-ish, on a caravan far, far away, a young man who we will call Vhe Tessel found himself separated from his caravanin' comrades and engulfed in the worst sandstorm that people in The Desert had ever seen. It was, in fact, so bad that on televisions across The Desert a CNN correspondent could be seen interviewing a tall thin heavily bearded Osama Bin Laden looking man, beneath a bright red banner reading "Sandstorm 2007; The Worst Ever Seen?" and above a scroll reading "Britney shaves eyebrows then enters anti-follicular re-hab", who stated that it was indeed the worst sandstorm he had ever seen, regardless of what he may have said during the interview he had given during Fox's coverage of "Sandstorm 2006; Operation Gritty". Anyway, as far as Vhe Tessel was concerned (which is really what this story should be focusing on, voice in my head) it sucked.

Vhe Tessel, being the caravan efficianado he did be, knew that if he was going to survive the storm he would need to find the others in his caravan so that they could group together, behind their combined camels, for protection from the tiny elements, or he could perhaps shelter in a diner or motel or strip club if he happened to find one of those first. Several time units of undecided length later, unable to find the caravan and beginning to realize that all the strip clubs he saw were mirages, and that he now had a willie full of cactus needles and was fourty dollars poorer (due to having purchased two lap dances), Vhe Tessel came to realize that he was going to die. With a sigh of resignation Vhe Tessel dismounted his camel, thanked it for its loyal service, resisting the urge to add, under his breath, "Even though this is kind of your fault", lay down on The Desert floor and closed his eyes to await sweet sweet death.

After spending a brief moment staring in disbelief and shaking his head, as he so often did, at the man who he had just witnessed ordering a drink from a coyote, the camel (or Jimmy as he was known to his camel friends), positioned himself between his apparently mentally challenged cargo and the wind driven onslaught of minuscule projectiles, shrugged his hump, and lay down, sheltering Vhe Tessel from the storm. The sudden lack of stingingness startled Vhe Tessel who opened his eyes to find himself staring directly into the tightly puckered business end of his dromedary compadre, safe from the sandy siege. Realizing that he was going to live to see another day, and possibly have a chance to find that cactus again, Vhe Tessel gazed at his savior's sphincter and thought to himself, "I've never seen anything so beautiful".

The end?

(As it turns out, Jimmy later filed a restraining order and had a humpectomy in an attempt to disguise himself as an gigantic and unusually homely llama for the purpose of escaping Vhe Tesel's new found admiration for his most private of orifices, but that was probably further than this story needed to go. Anyway...)

The moral of this poorly constructed and vastly confusing tale is, of course, "Any sphincter is good sphincter"... No, wait, that's "Any love is good love" which is a similar sentiment but neither really pertains to this story.

Okay, I remember where I was going with this now. The moral of this beautifully crafted soon to be classic tale is, of course, "Its all about perspective, homeboy". Well, maybe that is a stretch, but that was the intended moral. Maybe I should just get to the point of the post.

Perspectivism




The character in the story you just read came to see camel sphincters, or at the least one camel's sphincter, as beautiful because of viewing it from a new perspective. Truth, that camel sphincters are ugly, was altered by the perspective from which it was viewed. The beauty or ugliness of a camel's sphincter is, of course, wholly (holey?) subjective so the example does not really fit (I should ,uh, quit... writing these silly stories), all that well as an illustration of perspectivism, but it was entertaining. Anyway...

Before I continue I would like to state that I rarely read philosophy as it seems to me a better way of determining truth is to come to a philosophical understanding on one's own. After all, the tools of philosophical discovery are as readily available to each of us as they are to those who write on the subject. This is not to say that philosophy as a course of study is unimportant in understanding philosophical concepts, just that I find reading other's philosophical views, before giving serious thought to the subject on one's own, is likely to poison the well. Because of this what I refer to as perspectivism below may not exactly coincide with what, I have come to learn, Nietzsche termed perspectivism. I arrived at perspectivism, as I use the term, without knowing of Nietzsche's philosophy so any similarities, of which, after a little reading on the matter I have come to think there might be many, are strictly coincidental.

Perspectivism is actually a philosophy which basically states that truth is perspective reliant. This is to say that truth, whether or not it might exist in some realm as absolute, can only ever be known as it is known from the perspective from which it is viewed, and thus whether or not there is a non-perspective reliant absolute truth is unknowable and thus irrelevant.

The reason I thought I'd take a post to give a definition of perspectivism and discuss it a bit is because I use the term perspective in this blog quite often and will most likely continue to do so. I think it is very important to try and attempt to understand things from other perspectives in order to test the reliability of our knowledge of what is true. Of course, any attempt at viewing other perspectives is completely reliant on the perspective through which it is viewed (in our case the unique data processor that is the human mind, and a step further, each individual's mind), but this type of thought process where we attempt to don another's perspective can still be beneficial. Though we may have no reason to think it a completely accurate view of another's perspective, we can see how our understanding of what that perspective might be coincides with our understanding from our own perspective. There does exist, after all, the perspectives of other existences, some of to which we belong (the human race, lifeforms, earth inhabitants, universe inhabitants) that afford us the ability to have an understanding of how our unique perspective and other perspectives might be similar. So, though we must view other perspectives through our individual perspective, this does not leave us without any ability to understand or contemplate other perspectives.

Now, the perspective experiments we have done so far only superficially draw from this philosophy. They were more about viewing what we as humans would consider rational or reasonable in given situations. We can also use perspective experiments to view what we as humans consider objective reality or objective truths from a non-human perspective to try and see how they conform to what we experience. This is going to come up in future posts dealing with subjects like morality and causality and I thought now would be as good a time as any to explain the foundation from which I address these subjects.

Anyway, I'm out of time for today. I hope you have a better understanding of the philosophical perspective (that word is everywhere, if I don't watch out I'll end up discussing perspective reliant perspectives of perspective) from which I operate and that you enjoyed what I have just decided to call "The Ballad of Vhe Tessel and Jimmy" as well. Thanks for stopping by again and when you have the opportunity, leave me a comment to tell me how vehemently you disagree with me and what a dolt I am (from you perspective) or how much you agree with my every word (if your rubber room has internet access).

And, to Jimmy, I'm sorry, I will never do that again. Please come home.