Just imagine for a moment.
Imagine a culture, a civilization of people who have never known the sense of sight. They've never seen anything. They have eyes, the organs are there, but they have never worked and their function is unknown, and never considered in any major way. They've built a whole culture around tasting, touching, hearing, smelling. They've never known of any other way of coming into contact with reality.
Then, in this culture, there are a few `different' individuals. Ones who are wired up a bit differently. These few hundred across the globe have eyes that work. They can see.
Like the rest of their civilization, they have felt the roundness of an apple before, they have smelled it and tasted it, but never before had it been seen. Now they see a shape without having the word `round' to describe it, or even any visual concept, like `shape'. Or the word `red' to describe it, or even the world `color' to give red a category. What others can only taste, smell and hear (if bitten into, for instance) those with eyes can see. And see from a distance much farther than the apple could be heard, smelled, tasted.
They could see an apple swaying in the wind on the branch of a tree and know just before it was to fall that it was likely to do so.
So they have an extension to the reality the majority already knows. But they can also see the sun and the clouds, and when it goes down, the moon and the stars.
The blind majority, they might feel the heat, but they know of no sun from which it comes, and they know of no nessesity for it. Void of sight, what reason would they ever have to assume its existence? They knew of cycles of hot and cold, and cycles within which those cycles cycled, but it was just a self-evident thing. It just was. They experienced the sun's effects, the heat, without knowing it even had such a sourse.
And they know nothing of the clouds. Of the color of the sky. Of the moon that reflects the sun in predictable degrees throughout predictable phases when the sun goes away or the stars that fill the sky in which the moon seemingly floats amidst that sea of black.
So those who see know of things, and connections between things, that the blind would not even imagine. Perhaps could not even imagine.
Even amongst those who see, though, they have differing interpretations as to what is seen. And those looking in different directions may see things that do not seem to match up with each other.
Those who can see might even see an asteriod on its way, and they may have even made the appropriate connections to know its on a collision course with their land. An asteroid that the blind would never know of until its too late, and they would never, ever know what had hit them. But even those who see could not stop it, and if they didn't look closely, they might not even see it until it was on top of them.
They have a mode of experience that allows them to expand upon what the majority experiences, and experience things that go beyond the other four senses and are not directly, or even indirectly indicated by those senses, and so totally incomprehensible to the majority. Its hard to communicate with the blind. To get them to listen and take seriously what those who see have to say. And it doesn't help that the authorities of mind label those with the functioning eyes as insane.
Those who see aren't better, they aren't worse -- they're just different. But so many arrogantly equate difference with dysfunction, when in fact it can be a vital resourse if a place is made for the different to thrive.
How can one prove anything about what is seen, even that there is anything to see or see with, to those who are blind? How can those who see prove to the blind that the world they see is real when the science of the people who demand the proof of the world of vision cannot themselves see, and have created a science based only on data aquired through the four `known' senses?
A futile pursuit.
Yet here is some confusion: a hundred years ago in the culture of the blind, one man's eye jerked and suddenly functioned and, seeing his reflection in a pond, he believed that he had seen a god. Soon thereafter, he had gone blind yet again, and spoke to his fellow blindmen about his experience. He gave speculations. And throughout the centuries, his tales and thoughts are twisted into a dogmatic religion. Generations and generations took this forever-mutating, ever-evolving tale on faith and faith alone.
Back in the present time, those who see live in this world of vision -- the world that was the inspiration for this man's religion so long ago -- quite frequently, for longer periods. And some of them, they have slowly began to see a correlation between this sensation of twitching (that both they and the blind majority knows well) and this reflection `blinking' back at them in the pond.
And they think, hey, maybe what we're really `seeing' is at least in part just reflections of ourselves. Not that sun up there, not those clouds, but this image here in the water's skin, correlating to our twitches.
But in the eyes of the blind majority, those who see, they're nuts, even though they've been to the land of sight. Meanwhile, the majority of the blind who follow the religion loosely based on one man's sudden and brief sight so long ago -- the religion they believe without question; the religion based on a mode of experience they've never had -- they are judged to be sane and admirable, however.
Blind faith is considered sane and admirable.
What a crazy fucking world that would be.
Imagine a culture, a civilization of people who have never known the sense of sight. They've never seen anything. They have eyes, the organs are there, but they have never worked and their function is unknown, and never considered in any major way. They've built a whole culture around tasting, touching, hearing, smelling. They've never known of any other way of coming into contact with reality.
Then, in this culture, there are a few `different' individuals. Ones who are wired up a bit differently. These few hundred across the globe have eyes that work. They can see.
Like the rest of their civilization, they have felt the roundness of an apple before, they have smelled it and tasted it, but never before had it been seen. Now they see a shape without having the word `round' to describe it, or even any visual concept, like `shape'. Or the word `red' to describe it, or even the world `color' to give red a category. What others can only taste, smell and hear (if bitten into, for instance) those with eyes can see. And see from a distance much farther than the apple could be heard, smelled, tasted.
They could see an apple swaying in the wind on the branch of a tree and know just before it was to fall that it was likely to do so.
So they have an extension to the reality the majority already knows. But they can also see the sun and the clouds, and when it goes down, the moon and the stars.
The blind majority, they might feel the heat, but they know of no sun from which it comes, and they know of no nessesity for it. Void of sight, what reason would they ever have to assume its existence? They knew of cycles of hot and cold, and cycles within which those cycles cycled, but it was just a self-evident thing. It just was. They experienced the sun's effects, the heat, without knowing it even had such a sourse.
And they know nothing of the clouds. Of the color of the sky. Of the moon that reflects the sun in predictable degrees throughout predictable phases when the sun goes away or the stars that fill the sky in which the moon seemingly floats amidst that sea of black.
So those who see know of things, and connections between things, that the blind would not even imagine. Perhaps could not even imagine.
Even amongst those who see, though, they have differing interpretations as to what is seen. And those looking in different directions may see things that do not seem to match up with each other.
Those who can see might even see an asteriod on its way, and they may have even made the appropriate connections to know its on a collision course with their land. An asteroid that the blind would never know of until its too late, and they would never, ever know what had hit them. But even those who see could not stop it, and if they didn't look closely, they might not even see it until it was on top of them.
They have a mode of experience that allows them to expand upon what the majority experiences, and experience things that go beyond the other four senses and are not directly, or even indirectly indicated by those senses, and so totally incomprehensible to the majority. Its hard to communicate with the blind. To get them to listen and take seriously what those who see have to say. And it doesn't help that the authorities of mind label those with the functioning eyes as insane.
Those who see aren't better, they aren't worse -- they're just different. But so many arrogantly equate difference with dysfunction, when in fact it can be a vital resourse if a place is made for the different to thrive.
How can one prove anything about what is seen, even that there is anything to see or see with, to those who are blind? How can those who see prove to the blind that the world they see is real when the science of the people who demand the proof of the world of vision cannot themselves see, and have created a science based only on data aquired through the four `known' senses?
A futile pursuit.
Yet here is some confusion: a hundred years ago in the culture of the blind, one man's eye jerked and suddenly functioned and, seeing his reflection in a pond, he believed that he had seen a god. Soon thereafter, he had gone blind yet again, and spoke to his fellow blindmen about his experience. He gave speculations. And throughout the centuries, his tales and thoughts are twisted into a dogmatic religion. Generations and generations took this forever-mutating, ever-evolving tale on faith and faith alone.
Back in the present time, those who see live in this world of vision -- the world that was the inspiration for this man's religion so long ago -- quite frequently, for longer periods. And some of them, they have slowly began to see a correlation between this sensation of twitching (that both they and the blind majority knows well) and this reflection `blinking' back at them in the pond.
And they think, hey, maybe what we're really `seeing' is at least in part just reflections of ourselves. Not that sun up there, not those clouds, but this image here in the water's skin, correlating to our twitches.
But in the eyes of the blind majority, those who see, they're nuts, even though they've been to the land of sight. Meanwhile, the majority of the blind who follow the religion loosely based on one man's sudden and brief sight so long ago -- the religion they believe without question; the religion based on a mode of experience they've never had -- they are judged to be sane and admirable, however.
Blind faith is considered sane and admirable.
What a crazy fucking world that would be.
