Perspectives can divide…

Recently I’ve been thinking about perspectives and the way that while they overlap in some places they can be so incongruent in other areas. A few months ago I was chatting to a friend and something regarding politics came up (after an earlier conversation we decided to avoid politics) and we realised that we had a very different perspective. I mentioned that I admired some aspects of what Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara stood for and fought for. My friend (from the USA) on the other hand was convinced that he had been a terrorist who didn’t care about anyone.

One reason I find this interesting is that many people in the world today Nelson Mandela is revered as a great man, a statesman, an icon. He said that Guevara was "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom", yet to this day there are those who both revere Mandela and regard Guevara as a terrorist. I guess this supports the often-quotes and occasionally-disputed aphorism that states “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”.

Recently I came across something that M. Scott Peck (he was a psychiatrist and author) once said. He suggested that we should “share our similarities, celebrate our differences” yet unfortunately I see all too often these days that we are encouraged to focus on our similarities and ignore hope that differences don’t get in the way – or something like that. Anyway… that’s all for now…