Pathways #5: The Path of Perspective
Definition: Perspective can be understood as the equivalence in perception between one’s position or place in the world, whether apprehended subjectively or objectively, and the totality of meaning making up that place or position in time and space, sometimes in terms of a greater reality outside or beyond oneself.
From The Heart Path:
Shaping perspective:
Purview→Vantage→Perception
→(Subjective-Personal Quotient or Product)←
/ \
**(Situation, circumstance, contexts/knowledges)**
\ /
Perception→Observation→“Seeing”
←(A text, a “heuristic,” an insight, an inference, a judgment/the subjective-personal)→
Analogue of the two complementary and interdependent aesthetic correlatives for perspective, in perspective of one another: Perspective in painting (visual/spatial): The revelation of perspective in painting in the 15th Century made it possible to represent and apprehend humans in terms of spatial relations like what is ordinarily seen in the everyday world, in terms of relative distance and depth. In modern visual art, perspective can be subjected to the use of other spatial elements so that mimesis serves other modes of representation.
Perspective in music (sense/temporal): Tonality made simulation of the “interior qualities” such as balance, equivalence, harmony, and unity possible so that the experience and sense of time could become reflexively expressed in music. Tonality gave way to the possibility of atonalism so that the existence of multiple, co-equivalent temporal orders and the reversal of any temporal order were made possible for reflexive expression, interior mimesis, and sense experience.
An illustration of perspective by way of the analysis of a literary work whose own correlative object is the apprehension and simulation of perspective:
The story: Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths” concerns a highly erudite and well-educated Japanese man, named Dr. Yu Tsun, who has been forced to spy for the Germans during World War I. At the beginning of his story, he has just discovered that he is about to be captured by the British. However, his capture is happening just after he has learned of the location of a large artillery park belonging to the Allied forces, which he had promised to find out of hopes of earning the respect of a German man high up in the chain-of-command who views himself and his people as superior over Dr. Tsun and his people due to their difference in race. About to be captured, he comes up with a plan which we only learn as we observe it unfold. He gets on a train, narrowly avoiding being captured by the British man who is pursuing him and, upon arriving at the station he seeks, there are two boys present who seem to know where he is headed: “Are you going to Dr. Stephen Albert’s house?” they ask. He says he is. “The house is a far way,” the boys say, “but you’ll not get lost if you follow that road there to the left, and turn left at every crossing.” The narrator states that these directions, all left turns, correspond to the way to the center of some mazes, so the man is essentially in a labyrinth at this point in the story. After a long journey, he arrives at Dr. Stephen Albert’s house, whereupon that man greets him. “Have you come to see the garden?” Dr. Albert asks. “The garden of forking paths?” Dr. Stephen Albert and Dr. Tsun appear to know each other. Dr. Tsun’s grandfather, Ts’ui Pen, had been an important, powerful, and wealthy governor in Dr. Tsun’s country, but, being something of a mystic, that venerable man gave up his seat in government to create a sprawling novel and a labyrinth “in which all men will lose their way.” Ts’ui Pen died before he could finish the novel, of which no one was able to make any sense, and the labyrinth never appeared. Dr. Stephen Albert happens to be in possession of the novel, titled “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and he offers to show what exists of it to Dr. Tsun. But it turns out, Dr. Stephen Albert then tells an astonished Dr. Tsun, that the novel and the labyrinth were intended to be one and the same work. The novel itself was the labyrinth. And it was a labyrinth, not of space, but of time. “I know that of all problems, none disturbed him, none gnawed at him, like the unfathomable problem of time. How strange, then, that that problem should be the only one that does not figure in the pages of his [novel]. How do you explain that wilful omission?” It turns out that the explanation is that the entire novel, the entire labyrinth, is about time, for which its writings are a kind of symbol, and the entire thing, as “a garden of forking paths,” the very image of time’s manifold. According to Dr. Albert, Dr. Tsun’s grandfather attempted to represent a philosophy of time that could do time itself justice: “The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as conceived by Ts’ui Pen. Unlike Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform and absolute time; he believed in an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. The fabric of times that approach one another, fork, are snipped off, or are simply unknown for centuries, contains all possibilities. In most of those times, we do not exist; in some you exist but I do not; in others I do and you do not; in others still, we both do.” With the solution to the labyrinth having been revealed, that the reality of time itself is the reality being represented by the writings making up the novel, Dr. Tsun then carries out his plan. He shoots Dr. Stephen Albert, killing him, just before his pursuer from the British forces arrives to arrest him. The newspaper carries the story of Dr. Tsun’s arrest and the murder of Dr. Stephen Albert. But it turns out there is another story shared with the public in that edition, relating to the bombing and annihilation of an artillery park in the city of Albert. Dr. Tsun’s murder of Dr. Stephen Albert was meant to communicate the location of the artillery park to his superior in the German army, with his victim’s name, “Albert,” being the same as that of the city where the artillery park was being kept. His mission was then completed—but what do we make of his story within the greater narrative involving the relation between his way through his labyrinth and that of his discovery of the great labyrinth of his grandfather?
The Story Within a Narrative as an Image/Figure Within a Perspective: Dr. Tsun’s story itself can be seen as an image distinct from the symbolism that is conveyed by the narrative through Ts’ui Pen’s novel, The Garden of Forking Paths. As a “strand of time” within the greater labyrinth leading to the final stroke of a decisive and conclusive moment, the murder of Dr. Stephen Albert and the completion of his mission, Dr. Tsun’s own “labyrinth within a labyrinth” is, as a story within a narrative, a figure or image upon a ground that will situate it, shape, change, and mark it, and relate it to itself and a greater reality. Figure and ground together are what become a perspective, the story of the figure or image in relation to a greater narrative. Of a labyrinthine and infinite manifold consisting of “all times,” (and all possible stories), the narrator writes: “I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars.” And yet, this man’s story cannot, in and of itself, justly be said to be clearly or convincingly of this oceanic “labyrinth of labyrinths.” His story hardly seems comparable or relatable to that. That greater, “sublime” aspect of stories that this narrative poses possesses a different meaning and gravity than Dr. Tsun’s own story—the narrative sharing what is a philosophy of time in its own right as well as a philosophical perspective on “all possible stories.” Dr. Tsun’s story is rather the story of one man who was forced to serve Germany in the Great War—and in fact, it would be even more insignificant than that, for being, in truth, the story of that man’s own vanity and the shameful end to his unfortunate mission and life. However, told in view of the greater narrative, it now grants the vantage of a philosophical perspective upon itself and perhaps other stories also. So stories and narrative together offer perspective upon what would otherwise be impossible to perceive, and this includes the possible ground, perhaps labyrinthine and infinite, through which our own reality comes to be and to shape human existence and life beyond our own. But as our own story, this can be understood only through aspects and meanings within it and us that relate it to those greater narratives, to those perspectives, that involve us or others in other important meanings and in other possible ways.
This is probably one of the more important pathways, as perspective is certainly one of the more important concepts of the pathways that we have shown. This pathway was developed by one of our own staff writers to further the Heart Pathway and probably all the other pathways also. As he himself has said, “I saw it as “required,” as something that was needed “by-design.”” This staff writer goes on to say: “I really saw the value in the Shaping Perspective part of the Heart Path. That is a very powerful tool. Really, I understand what perspective can do. You can take a step back, no matter where you are, no matter what situation you’re in–you really should actually–and form something of a better understanding and perhaps even your approach by doing that. If you’re angry, confused, doubtful, whatever. You can step back and work on something that will always further your perception and your understanding. And it goes toward your future perspectives also. You perceive, form perspective, and then see. An exquisite diagram, really. So I took that and went with it, built on it.” “Why did you use aesthetics?” “Because that is the most concrete medium in which experience can be developed and related to as quintessentially, even powerfully, human. Maybe even “beyond human,” as aesthetics can take us somewhere that is enriched with meaning and significance to make our lives better. Plus, it’s just rewarding for its own sake. People like going to the library or the art gallery and just looking at different “objects” there, hoping to find something to take with them from what they read or see. Maybe just taking out several books and reading through them. Even if just to get a feel for the writing. Well, who knew you could work on perspective simply by doing that? Almost just by seeing through a different window from what you ordinarily look through. It can even just be a nice way to spend some of your time. But it has real benefits. For the whole person and the people connected to them in their life. I linked perspective to music, art, and literature—I built perspective as a concept from them, from all three— because all three offer ways of seeing the world. We see perspective through them and they grant us perspective. And that’s what you need for perspective, a world, perhaps even a “special world” that has been passed down through the ages or developed by either a master or someone who is learning reality through a special medium for it. But that’s not all. You need the ordinary world too as the Shaping Perspective diagram shows. You can’t just see the world through art always. Still, I thought that it would be a nice way for people to more fully embrace developing their own perspective, through the world as seen through art.” “Could you please explain how you think people should use that diagram in terms of what you’ve shared about perspective through Classical and Modern music, Traditional and Modern Art, and, of course, Literature? Can you link the two for us, the diagram and those media? The “ordinary world” as you call it and the world as seen through art.” “Sure. What might confuse people about the diagram in relation to the way of seeing through aesthetics is the “middle component” of that diagram, “situation and circumstance and other contexts, with knowledges as the denominator.” Where do we find that in art and literature? We can provide all of those aspects of the content of our perception to the work of art and further our understanding through those that the work depicts, as it depicts them, or even just further our experience of our own. So I’m not necessarily talking about just our own context or situation of seeing, but also everything that has gone into shaping the world of the work and even the work itself (if you want to or can go there). That was why I so admired this diagram, because it is not necessarily just related to the ordinary world of our own everyday perception and experience, it can further your imagination to link your perception or that experience, or even the experience of “somewhere else” or “some other time,” to what is also being depicted or represented in a work of art or a work of literature. There’s a great deal of potential here with that tool.” “And, of course, it is about developing a perspective through the experience of shaping a perspective.” “Yes, that is so important to understand. You develop a perspective through the experience of shaping perspective, your own perspective. And that’s in your own everyday life and in your encounter with works of art, music, and literature.” “Thank you very much! And great job!”