One Thousand and One Windows to the Truth

Preface

I could not agree more with the famous proverb which says, “When you are pointing to something as a reason of your failure, also care about those other four fingers of yours which are pointing to yourself.”
At some point in our lives, all of us have had some degree of difficulty in accepting that we have played a major role in our own failures. However, those of us who do acknowledge our own faults have made considerable progress in life. From this point of view, any supposed failure is not actually a failure. Rather, the act of properly analyzing our failures or weaknesses is a form of success by itself.
Although many of us may know that we would benefit from facing our failures, we often fail to put this into practice! For many, writing failures off as pitfalls is much easier than taking responsibility and reassessing how our failures might affect or alter any future goals. For some it is even possible that failures can become obsessions, causing serious disappointment that could result in giving up any or all effort. Nevertheless, failures, weaknesses, and the occasional bump in the road should not be buried in the back of our minds without both learning from the experience and making appropriate adjustments to our behavior.
The above paragraphs illustrate how considering a failure, or any experience, from a different perspective can alter our response to a situation dramatically.
When I accepted the opportunity to write a series of articles about history and religion, I realized that these topics needed to be discussed and represented with a great deal of care and responsibility. The thought of such tremendous responsibility caused several questions to race through my mind. How I should represent the history of religion? Can it be done by just narrating the history, or should I attach my own judgment to the narration as well? Furthermore, can someone claim that he or she is able to represent history without any judgment? Is there any advantage to studying history if we have any kind of bias?
Although an individual’s bias is inevitable and cannot be totally separated from an individual’s understanding of history, through recognition of the bias we can identify the fact that we may not necessarily be correct in our beliefs and judgments. Only through this realization that other perspectives besides our own are valid, can we reexamine and determine why we believe what we do. Also, through this process we can consciously avoid that which prevents us from seeing reality from more than one perspective. This ability is not only evidence of mental maturity, but this thinking can also protect us from many forms of ignorance. “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong,” Bertrand Russell says. In other words, a mature mind always considers a margin of uncertainty for what he believes in.
At times it has been challenging for me to deal with various occurrences and issues without thinking in terms of my prejudices and/or letting my current understandings and beliefs misguide me, particularly in regards to subjects such as history and religion. One possible means of ensuring an unbiased study of an issue or event is to step back, take an outside perspective, and from that point look at the situation differently.
However, while this is a promising start, it is not totally satisfying. The flaw of this method is that although you may start to observe an issue from a new perspective, there will always be a shadowed side that cannot be seen from where you stand. Thus, at this point, it is best to begin considering the subject from all possible angles while simultaneously keeping a particular distance – remaining close enough to the matter at hand to see the details, but not so close that you become blinded by the details.
In my future articles, I will experiment and use the above described method in an attempt to cover all angles and address different perspectives.
I have decided to pick certain stories from history or controversial religious issues and reexamine them. Then, I will try to analyze my methodology of how I considered the issue to determine whether or not I have been successful in presenting a fair, three-dimensional observation.
I have called the series of articles “One Thousand and One Windows to the Truth” to illustrate that even when you have looked through one thousand windows, it is still possible that there is some perspective or detail that you may not have seen or understood.  So, as we begin our journey, keep an open mind.

Copyright Nelia Jafroodi