What's Yours is Mine

Two-Dimensional Lenses

I watched "The Imitation Game" today and it got me thinking.

How many brilliant minds have we extinguished (or even diminished), much too soon, because of the other qualities the mind possesses? Does that make any sense?

Take Alan Turing for example. He was homosexual. He was also one of the pioneers of computer science and artificial intelligence. He was persecuted because of his homosexual activities, and we gave him hell because of it. He was subjected to chemical castration to "fix" his homosexuality.

It's never wise to inject drugs into the body, let alone drugs that are supposed to alter your mind in one manner or another. The pharmaceuticals that we use today (eg. antidepressants) may achieve a certain effect, but at what cost? There are numerous physical side effects, not to mention emotional ones as well. What did Turing feel when he was subjected to this examination? How did he feel when he was told by society that he was a monster?

There has been some debate over whether his death was due to suicide or accident. That, in my mind, is inconsequential. Either way, he died and society condemned him for his indecent behavior.

It's hard to reconcile the wonderful abilities everyone has within them to their worst, darkest secrets. It's hard to imagine an object that's both brilliantly illuminating and horrifically dark at the same time. Yet that's what we are.

Our minds may have a hard time understanding ourselves, but it doesn't stop us from being wonderfully complex beings. We are 3-dimensional beings. We see in 2 dimensions. It's hard to reconcile the 3rd dimension in a person. It's easy to for us to view a person and mistake one side of them to be the only side of them in existence.

It's instinctual; this need to categorize people by their first impression on us. It's restricting; for both the viewer and the object. For you are only looking at the object through one lens. That lens may or may not be coloured, but it distorts the true object somehow. And that in turn affects the true object. How are we supposed to be true when we can never convey ourselves properly and wholly?

How are we supposed to see a person for everything that they are when we can only see one side of them at a time? When we never put down the lenses to look?

To bring this back to the cave-how are you supposed to know that you're looking at shadows if that's all that you've ever seen in your life?

Wouldn't it be nice if we simply took our lenses off, rotated them 90 degrees, and realize with a jolt that you can't see it from that angle?