I’m sure you’re right, and there’s a whole load of things that I miss. Body language, and that sort of thing. It’s quite frustrating at times but I like to think that I’m pretty good at reading people. There may even be subconscious cues including differences in smell. Do people give off different pheromones when they are hostile, or fearful? I don’t know the answer to that, but if they do, the ability to detect this is something that everyone has, but it must exist on a subliminal level. I think everyone has experienced walking into a room and feeling a nasty atmosphere, for no reason that you can explain. I know I certainly have.
I remember being astonished at how far it’s possible to see. I’m not just talking about stars and galaxies, millions of light years away, but things in the real world. If you’re at the top of a hill, you can see much further. How does that work? Surely if you’re at the top of a hill, you’re further away from the things you’re trying to look at? These, and countless similar and probably quite ridiculous questions, are exactly how I spent my time exasperating my parents and anyone else who would listen. Apparently, when I was born, and it was immediately obvious that I was blind (my eyes were atrophied and later had to be removed at risk of infection), my parents were devastated, as you would expect. But one of the nurses said to them that they were lucky, because they had just embarked on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, with highs and lows that they could never have imagined. And that’s the story that they told me over and over again, from my earliest conscious memory.
The school accomplished this by keeping us active. Not only with camping trips at weekends, but by a constant round of activities every evening, particularly team sports such as goalball, squatball, and field hockey (the ball had a buzzer in it, by the way). At the same time, we had to look after ourselves in the dorms, including cooking our own meals, right from the start. Their supreme philosophy was independence in all things.
I certainly don’t see my blindness as a punishment for anything. I do, however, sometimes wonder if I always end up being reincarnated blind (assuming, that is, that reincarnation actually happens). My evidence for this is that I have no visual memories of any past lives. On the other hand, perhaps I have no visual memories because my brain can’t process visual information. If there’s any purpose to it, rather than just blind chance, then I’m sure it’s a positive purpose, and finding out what that is might all be part of the journey. These sorts of considerations do indeed affect my actions in life, because I think they are essentially optimistic, and happy people tend to be nicer people. I would definitely describe myself as a happy person, in general, and, I hope, a nice person.
Also, because you are blind you find that, out of necessity, you have to improve on all the other ways we have to interpret the way people react to us. So, in a sense, you acquire capabilities that sighted people don’t have.
For example, as you note…
Given all of the different ways that someone comes into the world more or less afflicted with disabilities that become challenges, they have no choice but to come up with ways to make the world more intelligible. You feel comfortable and competent in judging the reactions of others to you. And that’s what counts. And you can always have friends who are able to see things that you miss visually, who are able to convey to you those things you do miss.
Yes, that is how I imagine it would be. How could you not be driven to come up with at least some understanding of a reality that others perceive but you do not. It would be the visual equivalent of being on the top of the hill as a deaf person and trying to imagine the sound of someone’s voice as they moved farther and farther down the hill. A loud voice becoming fainter and fainter.
Lucky might seem to be a strange word to describe it. But that is because it is a word that can only be understood by each of us given our spontaneous reaction to situations such as this. Your parents gained insights into this brand new relationship with their child who would not see the world as they did. So immediately they would be confronted with how they would have to make adjustments to this. And there would seem to be no getting around the highs and the lows. Just in coming up with the best of all possible worlds for you.
But, again, I am only groping to understand something that you are trying to convey to me from a world I am just beginning to understand. Having had no discussions like this with someone who was blind. So, sure, I’m going to miss your point from time to time until I get better at understanding it.
That’s bascially how I imagined it woud be. Someone is blind and there is no getting around that when confronted with accomplishing a goal or solving a problem. But there are ways to do it and it’s just a matter of setting up an environment that prompts you to dig as deep as you possibly can to find a way. While at the same time providing you with activities that are just plain fun as well as challenging.
Were most of the teachers themselves blind to some degree? What might a typical day be like? What classes were taught? Pretty much the same as in the public schools? Did they have programs for those going on to college and those trained more for particular vocations…learning job skills.
Whether blind or not few things are more mysterious to us then our fate “on the other side”. Especially if there are things that we lack here and now that we might not lack there and then. And I don’t pretend to have any better insights into that than anyone else. It’s just harder for me to feel drawn to a set of conclusions until there appears to be actual evidence able to demonstrate reasons why one frame of mind makes more sense than another. Lots of times here people can think themselves into believing what they want to be true.
But blind or not happy is always better than sad, and nice is always better than not nice.
My parents were surely the luckiest parents in the world, to have me!!! I think that nurse was probably just trying to comfort them though, to be honest, after a sudden and very nasty shock, but it’s something they never forgot.
Despite speaking the same language, and apparently having no difficulty communicating, in fact I know full well that I’ll never be able to really understand what sighted people are talking about when they talk about seeing, and I’m sure the same must be true in the opposite direction. What seems completely normal, even humdrum, for one is freakishly alien to the other, especially if they try and think about it for any length of time. It makes me wonder what else we might be missing in the universe, which no one has any senses for. But I always like exploring this sort of thing.
The school day started at 6am. If left to their own devices blind people, especially those with no light perception, will sleep and wake up at any time of the day or night, and it takes quite an effort to stick to a proper daily routine, so they drilled it into us. The morning was for things like gym or running. The afternoon was the actual school part of the day, which, confusingly, we called college, which went on till 6pm, and the evening was for games or team sports. It was different at weekends, when, typically, we would set off in one of the school minibuses either on Friday directly after college or early on Saturday morning, and not get back till late on Sunday evening.
The school followed the standard UK national curriculum, but with a lot of extra options, both academic and vocational. The majority of the teachers were sighted, but some were blind or visually impaired. Having sighted teachers present was required for health and safety reasons, I believe.
I always love a good mystery, and what happens to us on the other side of the veil is one of the biggest mysteries of all. Here I rely mostly on my intuition, that we continue on in some way. Just as spring follows winter, and morning follows night, we are reborn, in an unbroken cycle of life, death and rebirth, but at the same time evolving into something higher, as all life does.
All this would seem to be embedded in the actual reality of your birth. A reality that other parents are only more or less able to understand. Your parents being who they had become reacting to a part of you that would make being parents a new challenge for them. It’s not like there is someone who can tell parents in similar situations how they ought to react. Each family is different.
I can imagine for some who are blind a point is reached where the subject is just dropped. They cannot see, others can and however many attempts are made to bridge the gap, it never, ever will be. At least not completely. I suppose a lot depends on situations in which new experiences prompt some to come back to what it means to see or to not see something. If you are interacting with others from day to day basically doing the same things, what would be the point in bringing it up? But something very, very different? How could it not prompt that mysterious gap again.
And in grappling with the universe itself – with “all there is” – the sighted are no less lacking in whatever it takes in the way of sense perception and intelligence to grasp “what it all means”.
This in and of itself is something I would never have thought about from the perspective of the blind. For the sighted, you see all day long and then at night, you close your eyes, stop seeing, and fall asleep. But what if you never see at all? No day and night, just night.
They say that in all of us there is this biological clock that “regulates” our sleep patterns.
This thing:
“Your circadian rhythm is the 24-hour cycle that regulates the timing of processes like eating, sleeping, and temperature. … Your exposure to light, both natural sunlight and artificial indoor lights, affects your circadian rhythm. You also have something called a master clock in your brain.”
But what if there is no perceived sunlight or artificial indoor lights? So, for the blind, it must revolve around the “master clock” in the brain. Back again to all of the things in the universe that none of us really fully understand.
I suppose that is the way it is in most places. And not just for the blind. How is it decided which students are placed on the path to college and which are not? Is this something the students choose for themselves or is it based more on test scores or those who run the schools? How do the parents fit into all of it?
My own intuition is ever grappling here with what I can’t stop my mind from thinking itself into believing is most likely not to be either higher or lower. On the other hand, I also can’t stop my mind from reminding itself that, who knows, maybe someday I might come across a more uplifting perspective.
In any event, it doesn’t make it any less a mystery for me than for you. Rebirth is always possible. But then there’s still only one way to find out. And, so far, for all of us.
For sure, yes, a lot of blind people are not particularly interested in talking about this sort of thing, and just prefer to get on with it. I’ve also found, incidentally, that a lot of sighted people find it very uncomfortable too, as if they might upset me or something. Which is a pity, as the very opposite is the case.
Yes indeed, the circadian rhythm is determined primarily by light. It’s not as if I can’t tell when it’s day or night, because I can, very easily. Not just the drop in temperature, but a whole host of other cues, including the smell of the air. Out in the countryside, animals and birds are much quieter at night, and different types of animal are present. In the city it’s even more obvious, as the sounds are all different, if, in most cases, equally unpleasant and grating. Conversely, especially on sunny days, the feel of the sun on my skin is as obvious as it is welcome. But with no light input, those other cues are not sufficient to tell my body that it’s time to sleep or wake up. As for the internal body clock, I remember reading somewhere that studies have shown it to be slightly longer than 24 hours, on average. Not by much, but enough to get you out of sync pretty quickly. My own experience is that, without a rigid routine, I’ll just fall asleep when I feel like it and wake up any old time. It also makes me feel like crap, which is why for some years now I’ve forced myself into a pretty strict daily exercise regime.
It’s not like I’m living in a constant night though, which is similar to the misconception that blind people just see black all the time. This isn’t the case, especially for those born totally blind. We just don’t see anything at all.
Some of the teachers were also careers advisors, assessing each student’s aptitudes and abilities, and advising them what to specialise in. At the end of every school year there were a range of choices, which became greater each year. Parents were closely involved too, with meetings arranged every term so they could discuss these and other issues with the staff. The school had a higher than average proportion of its students going on to university, but by the time I got to the sixth form I had decided not to go down this route, and instead to train for work in the care sector, which is where I ended up. I do occasionaly regret not going to uni but there’s no reason why I still couldn’t do so, if I ever wanted to. I much prefer to be active, however, and the thought of being stuck behind a laptop all day, or in a lecture theatre, just doesn’t appeal.
I’m not certain that it’s strictly true that we can never know about the afterlife in this life. There’s no theoretical reason why we couldn’t, anyway. There are lots of people who claim to have seen ghosts, or spoken to the dead, and so on. Doesn’t mean that any of them are right, but what I find suggestive is that these sorts of claims have existed throughout human history and in all cultures. Why would all societies throughout time and in all parts of the world have a similar idea about ghosts, for example? Or spirit communication? If they were just subconsciously making it up out of fear and loss, surely they would have come up with a million different ideas? When I was little I had a theory that when we die we go and live inside stones, just normal stones like you find in the garden. Why? I have no idea, it was just a childish thought, and not one I actually believed, either. This is the sort of random idea you would expect if people were making up their spiritual beliefs out of thin air. But this is not what we actually find.
I think there’s actually a very good reason why, at least at first glance, it appears that we can know nothing certain about the afterlife, and that is natural selection. Evolutionary pressure would favour the survival of those who fear death more, thinking it might be the end. So most of us end up hardwired to be unsure about it.
An interesting discussion you’re having with iambiguous. The English language is visually biased. There is the widespread metaphor of knowing as seeing. The blind see all the time metaphorically in English if not in other languages. Do you see what I mean?
Ha!
I think of the word "appear’. Phenomenology literally means the study of appearances. As a sighted person when I think of an appearance I think of something present in my visual field. But something can just as likely appear in my auditory field, or my tactile field or my olfactory field or my mental field. So it seems that conventional visually biased language tends to default toward mapping all phenomena metaphorically at least into the visual mode of perception.
Yes, language is full of visual metaphors, which is not surprising, since vision is by far the dominant sense among humans in general. But this is not exclusively the case. Something can feel right, or sound good, for example, or smell a bit off, or be in bad taste. I had to think about some of those, though, which shows just how dominant sight is.
I suppose this is so in part because, for some people who are blind, there is the concern that others will come to think of them only [or mostly] in terms of them being blind. And skip all the other parts. And, for sighted people, the concern that they will say or do the “wrong thing”…if they do not have much experience interacting with those who are blind. Each situation is always going to be different. It seems to come down to both recognizing the need to come up with a way to translate their differences into both the least dysfunctional and the most rewarding relationship.
Does this make sense to you, or have your own experiences been different?
Yes, this is the perfect example of all of the things that sighted people really don’t give much thought to. There are many different cues that allow someone to make a distinction between night and day. But why bother to explore them if all that is necessary is to open your eyes? And then there are the stories of those who can open their eyes, can see, but they are in situations – like prolonged periods of total darkness – where they too lose the ability to make this distinction. And haven’t developed other methods to compensate.
This is hard for me to fathom. The distinction between seeing black all the time and not seeing anything at all. When I close my eyes I never see complete blackness. There are always areas that contain splashes of color. In fact, after a vigorous aerobic workout, I can shut my eyes particularly tight and see these startling splashes of alternating blue and yellow. It’s nothing short of dazzling. Is there anything like this experienced by you?
Sounds like the best of all possible worlds then. As long as the individual students are in a possition to think through their own situations and come to decisions that work best for them, then, being blind or not, one is likely to be – to feel – the most satisfied. You chose what you wanted to do, you’re doing it, you like what you do. That’s great. You make the lives of others more satisfying. Others can only be glad for you.
My whole frame of mind here is that, sure, others may well have had any number of experiences that convinced them that life [in whatever form] continues on after the death of mere mortals on this side of the grave. But I have not personally experienced anything along these lines myself. So all I can do is to ask those who have to, to the best of their ability, provide something in the way of evidence that might persuade me to believe that, yes, it’s possible that I myself might continue on after death.
After all, what else is there? There can only be this: how close someone is able to come here to closing the gap between what they believe is true about life after death in their head and what/how they are able to demonstrate that their own experience really happened. And then in providing ways that others might experience it themselves.
Of course this takes us back to the truly mysterious reality of nature itself. Why this particular rendition of nature and not another? Why and how did the matter that we consist of come “alive”…given, biologically, the evolution of life on planet Earth? And why are some of us born blind and others not? And then all of the other ways in which biologically, socially, psychologically, etc., we can be different?
Then the part where some evoke God or the Gods. Then, in philosophy discussions, those who ponder things like sim worlds or dream worlds or solipsism or Matrix realities.
The really spooky stuff that revolves around understanding the amazing fact of existence itself.
Ok, let’s assume that an image is anything that’s imagined, as the word seems to imply.
When I imagine an object, or someone happens to mention an object, a representation of it immediately appears in my mind. Let’s stick with bricks, shall we, as they cropped up in the discussion I’m having with Iambiguous. A brick appears in my mind and I’m immediately aware of its weight, and the rough texture of its surface. I know its shape, all its various angles and pointed corners, including the distinctive grooved indentations at the top and bottom. The brick is clean and new. It probably doesn’t match any real brick in the real world, but that’s fine, it doesn’t have to.
Yes, that’s very much what a lot of blind people worry about, being pigeonholed, as if their blindness defines who they are to the exclusion of all else. I’ve experienced it myself too, but I don’t let it worry me. My response is to try and show that this is not the case, without any rancour or ill feeling.
No, I don’t experience any flashes of colour or any visual input. This is one of those areas where language fails us. When I say I don’t see anything at all, it’s something sighted don’t seem to be able to grasp, and this is certainly not the first time I’ve tried to explain it. Just one of those unbridgeable gaps in understanding, I suppose.
It is very different, however, for people who lose their sight. Quite often, apparently, they receive a constant bombardment of colours and shapes, to an extent that can be very stressful. This goes back to what I said before about the differences between congenital and acquired blindness, and how they are actually quite distinct conditions.
I haven’t experienced any positive proof myself, either, of an afterlife, and maybe such proof is not really possible. I do note, however, that physicists currently think that about 85% of all the matter in the universe is dark matter, which seems more than enough (to put it mildly) to account for any number of souls, spirits, higher planes of existence, or whatever non-corporeal phenomenon one wishes to try and explain, surrounding us and literally within us at all times, exactly as the ancient mystics said. Just a thought, anyway. Or perhaps a hypothesis that needs testing, if anyone can think of a suitable experiment.
Why this universe and not any other? Maybe all possible universes exist, but if so, where? I can only fall back on intuition again, and say that there is surely some meaning, some purpose. The fun part is trying to find out what it is.
Yes, that sounds like the most constructive way in which to go about it.
In part it would seem to revolve around the intention of others. Are they really interested in getting to know you in all of the different ways that anyone can get to know another? Or, instead, do they always seem to come back only to the parts that interest them. Seeing you the way they want to. And for reasons you may or may not be able to comprehend.
I suppose you would have to bring that all out into the open and start from there.
Like the song says, “people are strange”. Or they sure can be.
Here I find myself going back to the relationship between James and the deaf kids in Children of a Lesser God. They could not hear music but it dawned on him that music can be conveyed in other ways. Like for example putting your hand on a speaker and “feeling” the music through the vibrations.
Is there anything that you are aware of that might be the equivalent among blind people.
Also, are there any books or movies or music that you have come across that, in your opinion, best examines the relationship between the blind and the sighted?
I try to imagine a discussion among those in both groups as to which may be the better or the worse “condition”. Just as I do in regard to my own “affliction”: Agoraphobia. I’ve known those who can’t recall when they were not this way, as opposed to myself, when the “attacks” did not start until much later in life.
Yes, I often find myself going back to the astounding mystery of existence itself. The universe, the multiverse, the quantum world, the dream world. There are just some things that pop into our heads simply because they can. And however any particular frame of mind might seem to be implausible, the very existence of reality itself – human or otherwise – isn’t exactly crystal clear. Albert Einstein himself once quipped that, “reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
So, in any number of ways, we are all blind to whatever is or is not “behind” the curtain of Reality. What Sartre once described as “being and nothingness”.
But since we don’t know what’s behind “all there is”, we don’t know what’s not behind it either.
Yes, people are strange, when you’re a stranger… The Doors, I believe.
I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character, or at least intentions. Anyone who gets to know me will find out the sort of person I am. But, you know, people are curious, and that’s fine. It can even be an icebreaker. The one thing I won’t tolerate, however, is pity.
Yes, I’ve heard of deaf people feeling the vibrations of music, and blind people do indeed have techniques of their own. For us, it’s all about memory. For example, I have memorised how many steps, on average, it takes to walk around all the rooms in my flat, to the extent that I don’t need to use my cane. The same is true of other places I go often, such as my parents’ house (where I used to live, of course), and the leisure centre where the senior citizens’ club meets, though that’s actually quite a big building and I still need my cane for most of it. In my flat I keep everything in exactly the same place all the time, including the food in my kitchen cupboards, stuff in the bathroom, different items of clothing, and so on, so I never have any trouble finding it. I also keep the place very tidy (quite austere, in fact), so I don’t trip over anything, or knock something over. Lots of little things like that that are just second nature.
An interesting question about books featuring blind characters, and one for which I don’t have a ready answer. I’m not a great reader of fiction, and much prefer stuff about history, legends, archaeology, unsolved mysteries and so on. As for films, I know of a few that were heavily criticised in the blind community for featuring blind characters as helpless victims, always women, of course, with no agency. But sadly, I can’t think of a positive one, though I’m sure one must exist somewhere.
I can certainly relate to agoraphobia as I really don’t like crowded places, although I imagine there’s probably more to it than that. Was there anything that specifically triggered it, in your case? What sort of solutions, or workarounds, have you found for it?
The fact that so much is unknown, or even unknowable in our current physical state, is definitely a source of great wonder and optimism. Imagine a universe in which we know everything, and have nothing else left to find out. Thankfully, such a universe is surely impossible.
Yep. And the more they are not like you, the stranger they can seem. So, how do we become less strange to each other, other than by coming as close as we possibly can to understanding the way the world seems to them. And in recognizing that with some differences you can only close the gap so far.
And the best way to avoid that in others is to live your life self-confidently. Accomplishing tasks that make it clear that pity is the last thing you would expect from them. And that revolves around options. Those you create for yourself and those you create with the help of others.
That would be the way to go about it. Create the world around you so that it is entirely in sync with the world as you understand it in your head. A place for everything and everything in its place. A sighted person could understand it up to a point by imagining how they might come up with a way to do things if they were to lose their own sight. Only for you there was no before and after here. In having always been blind everything comes to revolve around ordering the world around your other senses.
Since I am curious about that, I’ll go to Google and see what I can come up with. I am always interested in understanding how people who experience the world in different ways can come up with something – with anything – in the way of a “common language” that helps them to bridge the gap. How they can learn from each other about the world from unique perspectives.
My own experience with the onset of “panic attacks” is largely derived from a life that had been for years and years bursting at the seams with considerable stress. I figure the accumulating trials and tribulations prompted my body to trigger its own “solution”. The anxiety forced me to pull back from everything “out there”. Now I basically live in a cocoon world of music and film and books. And philosophy of course. But no one need pity me either. I have many, many day to day experiences that bring me lots and lots of fulfilment. And, since I was surrounded by people my whole life, it’s actually rather satisfying to go it alone now. In part, I suppose, because everything I do I do only because I want to.
Hard to explain though to those who can’t even imagine living as I do now.
Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better myself. And I doubt that anyone else here can either. The sheer immensity of the universe itself is nothing short of mind-boggling.
Perhaps at the end of the day, we are all just strangers in a strange land, groping our way in the dark. (And I hope you liked the literary reference there, by the way, hehe.)
Let me know if you find out about any books or films, I’m curious myself. Having done a bit of Googling, I’ve found this list of films from the CNIB (the Canadian equivalent of the RNIB).
I’m not an avid watcher of films, I have to say, but reading through the list, two of those are indeed familiar, namely, At First Sight, with Val Kilmer, and Scent of a Woman, with Al Pacino. I can’t really say much about them though, other than what’s on that page.
What I find interesting about that list is the relatively high number of films (4 out of 10, by my count) that depict romances between a blind person and a sighted one. This is actually quite rare, and of all the blind people I know who are partnered up and/or married, every single one of them has a blind partner. I suspect this is simply a result of the circles they socialise in, however, rather than any innate preference.
As for books, a Google search for “books about blindness” brings up an overwhelming number of pages!
I can understand feeling the way you do, and have often wondered what it would be like to go and live in the woods somewhere on my own, in a little wooden hut with an open fire, surrounded by nature and no people at all. Completely impractical, of course, and I can’t see myself ever doing it. So would you describe yourself as happy with your life? Is there anything at all you would change, if you could?
Did the lockdown affect you, by the way? And if so, how? I’m assuming that you had one in Baltimore, though I know that different American states and cities had different policies on that so I might be wrong. The first one we had here, last year, probably affected me more than I even realised at the time, forcing me to re-assess a number of things in my life, but I’d be interested to hear your perspective as someone who is already agoraphobic.