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.
What makes us more or less strangers, it seems, is that even though we can experience lives that are virtually the same, there are always going to be those things that we experience differently. We meet different people, read different books, have different close encounters that pull and tug us in ways that no one who has not lived our own life can truly understand. Over time they accumulate into a truly unique point of view.
True story: This is the same list that I found! And here is the film I would be most interested in watching:
Number 9:
“Imagine, 2012”
It is described as…
“‘Imagine’ is set at a restrictive school for the blind in Portugal where children are taught to stay in their comfort zones, stay insulated, and stay clear of the dangers in the world around them. But that all changes when a new teacher comes to the school – a man who is blind himself, and teaches the students to hear, touch, and imagine the world around them, and to start truly living.”
And isn’t this basically how the plot unfolds in Children of a Lesser God? To interact or not interact with the hearing world? What does it mean as a deaf person to “truly live”? Or as a blind person. The part that involves both worlds coming together in order to create the most rewarding interactions.
Unfortunately, when I went to places that sell DVDs, this film is only available on a format not compatible with American DVD players. When I tried to view it at Amazon prime, I was informed “this title is not available”.
Which brings me around to how you would experience a movie…hearing what is on the screen but not seeing what the words and the sounds are connected to. Again, the gap between our two perspectives. Do you steer clear of movies because of what you are unable to “take in”? Or is it some other reason?
Yes, so much here would revolve around your contact with those who either are or are not blind. Also, I would imagine that with those who come closest to sharing your own understanding of – or experiences with – the world are likely to be those that you are able to better communicate with. Better able to share the world with. But it always comes down to individuals. In Scent of a Woman, we are left imagining a relationship between Frank who is blind and a political science professor who is not. But here it seems to revolve around all of the things they might share in common given the same interests.
Anyway, I’ll continue my search for something that might allow me to get a little closer to understanding a world that overlaps with mine in that we are all human beings, and that does not because human beings can be in worlds all their own in so many fascinating – and sometimes exasperating – ways.
Over the years I have come to live more and more “inside my head”. That’s one option when, less and less, you are out in the world with others. The emotional fulfilment becomes more and more vicarious, true, but in a way that is hard to explain, more and more intense. I suspect that is because when you are with others any number of things can happen that distract you from what you are feeling through books and films and music. Or, at times, take it away completely. Again, really, really, really hard to explain.
And, if I could change something in my life, it would be to become my own rendition of Benjamin Button. To go in the other direction, in other words. Not likely, I suspect.
Trust me: You know a whole lot more about lockdowns than I do. The irony here being that the more you implode into your own little world, the less likely you are to come into contact with a world that is ravaged by pandemics. So, really, almost nothing at all has changed in regard to my day to day existence.
But I always come back to the part in life where we think and feel one way…and then something like the Covid virus comes around and we are forced to reevaluate parts of our lives that we may or may not have given much thought to.
What were some of the tipping points for you? What new insights occurred to you as the days became weeks and the weeks became months in a world that you were actually out in…a world, given my own unique set of circumstances, I was largely able to avoid.
It’s good though, isn’t it? The fact that we can never know each other fully, even though we can get ever more closer to doing so, seems like a much better option than the only possible alternative, which is that everyone is exactly the same as everyone else. The journey of discovery is the exciting part.
I noticed that one too, about the school in Portugal, and I imagine that the techniques the new teacher teaches the kids are based on what is actually taught in schools for the blind. They mentioned clicking in that clip, for example, which is encouraging. And talking of Children of a Lesser God, I’m surprised to learn that it was a play, before it was a film. I had assumed it was a book.
Yes, that’s basically the reason I don’t watch films, or indeed TV, very much. Some, however, come with optional voice-over descriptions, and these are, well, ok, is probably the best way of putting it. I do, nevertheless, have a few favourite films that stick in my mind, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy (I’ve also read the book, and still love it), Serendipity (I literally cried my eyes out), and the original Wicker Man (by far the best Pagan musical thriller police procedural ever made). What all these have in common is a highly emotive soundtrack.
Which brings us, neatly, to what you said about taking emotional fulfilment from books, films and music. Believe me, I can fully relate to this, though in my case, it’s specifically music. Music has the ability to reach one’s very soul, and transform it. Only if you like that type of music, though. And that’s the weird thing, the totally subjective nature of it. Trad folk, for example, is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly mine. As for books, I prefer non-fiction (though not exclusively). I’m currently reading a book about the history of end of the world prophecies from the time of Zoroaster to the present day (spoiler: they all failed).
I was round at a friend’s house last year, in March, when Boris Johnson went on TV and told everyone to stay in their homes. We all knew it was coming, but didn’t quite believe it when it happened, and it still sends a slight chill up my spine even now, the moment everything changed forever. I came back home, and didn’t set foot outside again for about a month. I became fearful of ever venturing outside again, or meeting other people (it reminded me of an Azimov story about people living on a planet but never actually meeting in person), and I realised I had taken my life, which is actually pretty good, and all the people in it, for granted. One of my main failings, which I fully recognise, is a tendency to judge others too harshly and too quickly, and I’ve said some pretty hurtful things. I decided that if we ever came out of this, I would try and put all this right.
And then it all fizzled out and by summer we were all back to normal. Well, not quite, but sort of. Nothing is ever quite as good, or as bad, as you expect. There was another lockdown in the autumn, shorter and less restrictive, and again, another in January that has only started easing in the past few weeks. And, I must admit, I’ve been largely ignoring this latest lockdown, visiting friends and so on (since I live alone, I’m allowed to be part of a social bubble), but have not forgotten my promise to myself to try and be a better person.
It’s good, but in order to keep it good [or to make it even better] it’s important to recognize the parts where not being the same can create the sort of conflicts that make it bad instead. That’s the part where you have to work out a way of communicating which takes into account different perspectives. Here though that would seem to be the case for both blind and sighted people. You accept that there will be differences and you try to the best of your ability to understand them by coming as close as possible to understanding the worlds of those you love and care about.
What draws me to it is the part where the new teacher, like James in Children of a Lesser God, struggles to connect the dots between the blind world and the sighted world. The part where the students either sustain their “comfort zones” more or less isolated at the school or go out into the world that would provide them with more options. And more challenges. Only, unlike James, who is not deaf, the teacher in this film is blind himself.
As with most other things we are drawn to, films are always going to reflect our own unique world…as individuals. And here, as was explored in Serendipity, we can ponder things like the role that fate plays in our lives. We have experiences that may or may not be planned. Something happens that we may or may not have expected. But because it happened we find ourselves thinking about the world around us in a different way. We’re never quite sure where the next relationship we have will take us. Just recall what Sergeant Howie’s investigation on Summerisle Island resulted in. And the very profound differences that were explored between Christian perspectives and “the frivolous sexual displays and strange pagan rituals” of the islanders.
Same thing here. Books, music, art. We take out of them what we first put into them…ourselves. And I think my own reaction to my own favorites here was best captured by Emil Cioran
“If everything is a lie, is illusory, then music itself is a lie, but the superb lie…As long as you listen to it, you have the feeling that it is the whole universe, that everything ceases to exist, there is only music. But then when you stop listening, you fall back into time and wonder, ‘well, what is it? What state was I in?’ You had felt it was everything, and then it all disappeared.”
And much the same regarding my reaction to books and art. Somehow I “fall into” the experience of being in the worlds that they create “in my head”. And the intensity is derived from the experience itself. Whereas in “real life” with others it’s only a matter of time before something happens and the experience is gone. On the other hand, did I explain how difficult it is for me to describe this to others?
Wow. I can only contrast your experience with my own. With me, nothing much changed at all. On the other hand, I have had traumatic experiences in my life in which there was definitely a great big Before part and then a great big After part. As for judging and criticizing others, I am in a world all my own here. I think about how my values come mainly from the life that I lived. And, thus, had my life been very different, I would have acquired very different values instead. I’m always pulled and tugged in many conflicting directions.
A truly precarious, problematic frame of mind here.
Yes, it’s certainly the case that too much of a good thing, in this case, differences, can actually be bad, and indeed, in the worst cases, lead to conflict or even war. In the particular case of the differences, or perhaps more accurately, different life experiences of blind and sighted people, the basic issue, I think, is that there is no shared frame of reference (and I am, of course, only talking here of those born blind), for issues involving vision or lack of it. The solution, as you say, is accepting the differences, indeed, I would say, even celebrating them, and at the same time, to try and come to as close an understanding as possible, simply by talking and sharing.
I wonder if that film is based on a true story? It doesn’t say so on the web page, anyway. And I also wonder what the school was supposed to be like before the blind teacher turned up, and why.
I’m very glad to hear that you’re familiar with the classics, namely, Serendipity and the Wicker Man! In Serendipity, they allow the fate of their love to be dictated by the workings of blind chance (or rather Sarah does), but this, as it happens, is exactly how the world works anyway. We have agency, in a limited and localised sense, but overall, in the bigger scheme, things just happen. For a purpose, quite possibly, but a purpose that we can’t (yet) see. As for the Wicker Man, my greatest take away from that, in addition to all those beautiful songs by Paul Giovanni, is Christopher Lee’s voice!!! (And he was also in LotR, as Saruman.)
I know exactly what it’s like to lose myself in a piece of music, to the extent that the rest of the world doesn’t exist any more, and it is truly one of my greatest pleasures. Falling into it is exactly what it feels like, and the thoughts and feelings it evokes in my mind are quite indescribable, once it’s gone again. So yes, I definitely get what you’re saying there. Do you have a particular favourite book, film or piece of music, and if so, why? Not an easy question, I know.
We are all, for good or ill, shaped by our environment and things that happen to us, and these things are probably more powerful forces than we even realise. Again, the workings of fate in the universe, but that is certainly not to preclude the possibility of personal decision making and the ability to change things for the better, which I’m also a great believer in. I imagine that you find the best solution to a precarious and problematic frame of mind is exactly what we’ve just been discussing above, namely, the ability to lose oneself in something. Is that right, would you say?
In my own exploration of these two worlds, I came across an article in the Washington Post entitled, “No difference in blind and sighted people’s understanding of how others see the world”:
"Even when blind from birth, sightless people understand how others see the world in the same way that sighted people do – though they have never personally experienced a single visual image, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University.
What’s more, the information is recorded and processed in the same way by the same areas of the brain, whether a person is blind or can see, the research, published in the October issue of the journal Cognition, determined."
In other words, an attempt to intertwine these two worlds in terms of both nature and nurture. There is how the biological imperatives seem to work for both communities and then how blind and sighted people come to interact in terms of what they are taught to think about blindness. The part where stereotypes and prejudices can take the place of the actual truth. Like when you pointed out how blind people are not likely to “map” someone’s face with their fingers.
Tried Goggling it but nothing popped up. It’s just frustrating that the movie does not seem to be available to those of us in America. But my thinking here is that it may or may not be based on a true story, but if I can imagine that it could be based on a true story, then that’s what counts.
Here, of course, it all comes down to how far you go in attributing things to fate. Some argue that everything we think and feel and say and do is fated or destined to be. Others think that, no, the most important things are always within our grasp…and our command. Me? Well, as with most things this “big”, I’m more or less drawn and quartered. Tugged in conflicting directions. Ambivalent.
Same with Christianity and paganism. How far do those who advocate them go insofar as they interact with those who are not of their own faith. For example, Sergeant Howie is appalled by the casual nudity and sexual license in the community whereas the community is, instead, appalled at his own rigid conservativism. I have no spiritual faith myself so I tend toward the belief that I will do the least harm in my interactions with others. Or, rather, that I would if I had any interactions with others in the flesh.
Me too. On the other hand, the way in which I seem to be different from others is that instead of being “in the mood” for a particular song or kind of music, I have every imaginable genre there is on my “mixed tapes”. I simply shift gears from one mood to another. It never fails to boggle my mind, however, how this “works” for me in ways that it does not seem to for others. Then the part where my emotional reaction becomes intertwined in an esthetic reaction. And those rare songs in which there is also an intellectual element.
Why? because it grabs me and then grips me on all three levels. It’s a very beautiful song esthetically. It evokes an intense emotional reaction in me – sorrow, regret, despair – and it also tells the story of a relationship in which the woman is saddened not only in losing the one she loved but losing him to those that they had both fought against.
I was in a relationship just like this in the past. So it really hits home. Any songs like this that grab and grip you?
My favorite films are, well, too numerous to count. But I suppose if I were pressed to pick the top five they would be Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo.
But in part admittedly it is because of how I reacted to them visually. They were extraordinary just to look at. While your own favorites would be for different reasons.
As for books, two in particular pop into my head:
1] The Magus by John Fowles…an exploration into how reality can be manipulated by others in order to bring us around to this:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” T. S. Eliot
2] The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Here in particular the character Father Ralph de Bricassart. His struggle to find a relationship with God in a world bursting at the seams with reasons not to have one.
Yes, I lose myself in many, many things. Knowing that there are things “beyond my control” but in ways that I can never really be certain of.
But: While sometimes a precarious and problematic frame of mind can be entirely exasperating, other times in admitting that you can only understand people and things up to a point it gives you more options in which to explore them all the more.
+++“Blind people can’t be doing it through simulation,” Bedny said. “There has to be a mechanism other than simulation. They have to have an abstract theory of mind.”+++
Yes, definitely. When I read something, or hear a story, I don’t have to “simulate” anything. It’s all just there, in my mind.
+++“You can know lots and lots [about] the ways that the minds of other people work without having had this experience yourself,” she added.+++
This is undoubtedly an innate, and indeed essential, human capacity, the ability to imagine what other people are thinking.
I’ve been asked many times how I think, what’s actually in my mind, if it’s not visual images. Probably, in fact, as many times as I’ve asked sighted people to describe seeing (well, almost). And, you know, it’s a very difficult question to answer, because it’s that frame of reference thing again. What I can say is that my mind is absolutely full of stuff, all the time. Not just abstract stuff either, such as ideas, but representations of physical objects. Little ones, big ones (such as buildings, or street layouts), music, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, feelings, emotions, memories, each one triggering others in an unstoppable cascade. And I’m sure yours is too, as is everyone’s, because we all possess that most mind-boggling of things, a human brain. I had CT scans when I was in my teens (I wasn’t ill or anything, they just wanted to probe me) and was told that my visual cortex had largely been given over to other things, though a small part was apparently inactive. Our brains, as the article pointed out, are insatiably thirsty for information, and will suck it in from anywhere. Echo-location, for example, gives me a 3D representation of my surroundings without having to touch them (the range is about 30 metres, by the way, under ideal conditions), and this, of course, is also exactly what vision does.
A lot of people in the Pagan community like the idea of provoking Christians, arguing with them, and claiming to be persecuted by them, as if the 17th century witch trials were still raging, but I find all that really annoying. For me, my Paganism derives from my love of nature, and wanting to be at one with it. And nor is it true that Pagans hold orgies all the time, as hilariously depicted in the Wicker Man! In fact, there are some branches of Paganism that go in the exact opposite direction, tending towards asceticism. My own spiritual journey has been becoming more focused, I would say, over the past three years, and I have definitely felt better, and more at peace with myself, for it.
That is indeed a very beautiful song, and very sad too, but sad in a beautiful way, as all the best songs are. If I had to pick just one as an example of the sort of thing I really like, it would be this traditional ballad from Pentangle.
A love song, and one with a happy ending, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect, so it comes as a nice surprise. (The same tune is also used as a march towards the end of the Wicker Man.)
Out of those films, Solaris is the only one I’ve heard of. I’ve heard of both books though, and I like the sentiment expressed in the T. S. Eliot quote. In a more general sense, what would you say makes a good work of fiction? Are there any essential elements? I like LotR, for example, because it’s a journey. A journey from the homely, comforting Shire, through many epic adventures, and then a final return home, transformed. But the triumph is tinged with sadness, a longing for what can never be, because in being transformed, they have actually lost the ability to return to the simple life they had before, and they can never go back there again (a bit like Brenda and Eddie). But hope is eternal, and they then (well, some of them, anyway) embark on the next stage of their journey, to the Undying Lands in the far west, beneath the setting sun. As Galadriel said in Sally Oldfield’s gorgeously sumptious song Nenya.
“It’s sunrise and high tide, in the blue endless space my eyes open wide, and there’s a land I can see.”
And yes, it absolutely makes sense to me that knowing you have a limit to understanding people and things in certain ways actually gives you greater options for exploring them in other ways. It’s the story of my life.
Let’s face it, the human mind is nothing short of this stupendous achievement when it comes to the evolution of matter going all the way back to the Big Bang. Or God. And then the part where not only does it allow us to imagine what other people are thinking, but, over and again, it allows us to wonder why we don’t think the same thing. What is it about the life that we have lived that predisposed us to think one thing rather than another. And then the part that most fascinates me: blind or not, “how ought one to live”? Is there a way for philosophers to determine that?
Admittedly, it is this exchange I have begun with you that has prompted me to wonder the same thing in turn. What can it possibly be like to think about a world that I could not see? I think of physical things that I do from day to day to day, and I can imagine how my other senses would make sense of them. I think of being in love or having a friend or interacting in a family, and imagine the same thing. But there is still that gap that can only be unimaginable. Sounds in my minds, smells in my mind, tastes in my mind, the way things feel in my mind. Just no sight. And I suppose we will both be stuck up to a point here in describing ourselves in the world around us. As usual I’m ambivalent regarding the idea of a possible optimal reaction. There is only you and I doing the best we can here to communicate the things that are important to us.
And isn’t this always the bottom line? That our brains are cascading with all of the things and all of the people that fill our days. It’s just not likely that those are or are not blind or are or are not deaf will ever stop wondering what it’s like for those who are other than they are.
I can’t help but wonder here if there is any possibility at all that medical science might one day find a way to restore your sight. Or are there some conditions in which there is little or no hope of this?
There is both text and video here. It starts by noting that…
“Advances in science and technology are enabling people who are visually impaired or fully blind to see for the very first time.”
Is this a possibility for you? I’m not sure if you had mentioned this before.
When it comes to spiritual matters, I tend toward this: whatever works. If you can find a frame of mind that grounds you in something that somehow enables you to bring all the disparate parts of yourself together into some sense of feeling whole – as with nature or God or Buddhism – then more power to you. As long as it allows for tolerating others who go in different directions; and as long as, in pursuing your own path, you don’t bring pain and suffering to others.
I no longer have that myself and I often challenge those that do. But I suspect that revolves around my remembering when I did once have this myself…and wishing that somehow I could have it back again.
Yes, I am very familiar with Pentangle. In fact I posted many of their songs on my music thread here including Willy O Winsbury. Although I’m more familiar with Sandy Denny’s recording of the song.
My favorite by them [and one of the most beautiful songs ever composed] is Suil Agrar.
Hmm. I was going to ask you if the Solaris film you were familiar with is the George Clooney remake or the original. The original is far better. But in large part because it is so much more beautifully filmed. And then there is a part of me that wishes that you were able to see so that you could experience it as I do. And then I realize that I can never experience film as you do and I find myself once again feeling uncertain about how to react to that.
As for fiction [novels mostly], like you, I prefer those in which the main characters are on a journey. And in a book that is an actual story of this journey. I love novels able to take the things that are important to me – morality here and now, immortality there and then – and explore them through characters that inhabit worlds [and interactions in those worlds] that I can at least attempt to understand in terms of my own life.
The Eliot poem is mentioned in The Magus. Here the main character Nicholas Urfe thinks he understands himself. But the Maurice Conchis character [older and wiser] takes him on a journey in which he discovers how little he really does understand the world around him.
How ought one live, is a question I’ve been increasingly concerned about myself. I don’t know if the question is solvable by philosophy, or philosphy alone, though, if it doesn’t take into account emotion and intuition. Some types of Paganism, and I’m thinking specifically about Wicca here, have a philosophy summed up in the phrase, “An it harm none, do as ye will” but to me, to be honest, that sounds like a recipe for doing nothing worthwhile. In practice, it doesn’t work out like that, and Wiccans, as well as Pagans in general, are often in the forefront of the Green movement, among many other things. But Wicca is not my path within Paganism.
Well, I’m very glad you’re finding our conversation interesting, because I am too. Sometimes, indeed, the process of putting things into words is able to crystalise one’s thoughts, and I always welcome the opportunity for that.
Here’s a question for you, that you’ve just reminded me of. Where does your consciousness appear to reside in your body? I don’t mean where is actually resides, but where it appears to reside, from your point of view.
My reaction to possibilities of medical advancement being able to give me sight is, shall we say, a complicated one, and one that I’ve thought about long and hard. I should point out initially that I don’t actually have any eyes, well, not real ones anyway. I wear prosthetics. Assuming some solution to that is found (eye transplants might become viable in future, but to be honest, the idea freaks me out), the first question is, is my life so bad that it actually needs such a thing? The clear answer to that is no. The second question is, would I like to be able to see, and the equally clear answer to that is yes. But it’s not something that keeps me awake at night.
Yes, toleration of others and their beliefs is essential, and, indeed, is something I’ve been less than perfect at myself, in the past. And, personally, I would go further than simply not causing any pain or suffering to others, and this is connected to the gradual focusing of my spiritual path that I mentioned before. This involves sacrifice (though not of the Sgt. Howie variety), in other words, a refraining from personal gratification. In Pagan tradition a priestess is a healer and a guide, a counsellor, in modern terms, but also a conduit to the divine, and there are a number of Pagan groups around (not exclusively Wiccan noes) that offer training in that. And, you know, I can’t help wondering if being blind might actually be an advantage, and that I’m exactly how nature intended me to be.
I might have caught about half an hour of Solaris once, but my memory of it is pretty vague. Ok, here’s an exercise then. Can you describe the visuals to me, in a way that I might understand? (Hehe.)
Again, where I myself tend to get “fractured and fragmented” here is when we are faced with situations in which people on both sides of the moral divides do what they think and feel is best and in so doing it it results in harm for others. Both sides are able to make reasonable arguments for doing the opposite of what the other side wants. Like with abortion or the rights of animals or owning guns. From my point of view, the best of all possible worlds still revolves around moderation, negociation and compromise. As opposed to those with the most power always getting their way or those who insist that only if others think exactly like they do are they being reasonable and virtuous.
Well, I think that we are both intelligent, articulate and really, really curious about the world around us. And also willing to explore the way in which we have come to understand it given both the things we share in common and all of new things that we can impart to each other given the way in which our lives are different.
We know scientifically that mind is a matter of the brain intertwined in a staggeringly vast number of chemical and neurological interactions. But when we try to pin down this “I” that we speak of…where to go? For some it is the eyes, for others the mouth. Then the part where some want people to “speak from the heart”. Or for others still it all comes down to the existence of a soul.
Me? Your guess is as good as mine!
So, here and now, you are “comfortable in your skin” as some say. But you are also tugged in both directions for equally intelligent reasons. I suppose it will come down to whether or not in the future medical advancements do reach the point where you could be faced with a decision to see or not to see.
As for eye transplants, I couldn’t help but Google it:
“There is currently no way to transplant an entire eye. Ophthalmologists can, however, transplant a cornea. When someone says they are getting an “eye transplant,” they are most likely receiving a donor cornea, which is the clear front part of the eye that helps focus light so that you can see.” Milan Eye Center
All I can do is to imagine myself faced with this option. But, again, with you there is the reality that you were born blind. And, as you have noted, that can make all the difference in the world.
But, yeah, it would be kind of spooky to see the world through the eyes of another. It’s just so much more intimate than a kidney or a liver transplant.
Beliefs of this sort are always very mysterious to me in the end. People live lives that are very different from mine. That meet people and have experiences that they can attempt to describe to me to the best of their ability. But only to the extent I can have similar experiences or meet similar people is it ever really likely that the gaps can be narrowed.
If you’d like to, why don’t you tell me the sort of experiences you have with those in your community. What sort of things do you do, what sort of things do you avoid? How are distinctions made between the role of the individual and the group as a whole?
Thanks. It’s one I hadn’t heard before. I love Jacqui McShee’s voice. It’s like with Nick Drake. The voice alone is so evocative. It fits in so well with the emotion being imparted.
I’m not sure I could describe them in a way that even I might understand. I could tell you what I see in a way that would make more or less sense to you but here and now I have no real grip on how to make it mean to you what it means to me. And the visuals are only a way to explore the larger themes being conveyed by the filmmaker. Especially the exploration into human nature itself. So the question might become this: Is it necessary to see in order to grasp the nature of human interactions or can those who do not see grasp it in ways that may well be even more profound? One of those questions in which there is surely not just one correct answer.
Moderation, negotiation and compromise are most definitely essential, especially on issues that are so divisive, such as abortion and animal rights. (In the UK gun control is not so much of an issue, though, as pretty much everyone agrees with it.) On the first two, my own views on the sacredness of life very much colour my opinions, but I would be loath to try and impose them on others.
Presumably in order to know if a soul exists, we have to first understand what one’s actually supposed to be. We can all too easily get bogged down in words and definitions though. To me, the soul is simply the thing that animates matter and infuses it with the life-force. It’s not actually a word I use very much as it has far too many religious connotations that I don’t wish to express with it. I prefer spirit.
My experiences in Paganism have been very numerous and varied. I first became interested at school, and began going to moots, as they’re called, pretty much as soon as I moved back home, when I was 18. A moot is a fairly informal gathering of Pagans to which members of the public, those who are interested or just curious, are welcome. They generally take place in a pub function room, hired for the evening, and are usually fortnightly or monthly. Often, they will have a speaker for the evening, talking about some subject of interest to Pagans, or sometimes they will have a workshop or demonstration, and sometimes nothing at all. Most big cities, at least in the UK, have an established moot, sometimes more than one.
There is nothing secret about moots, and the moot leaders usually go out of their way to publicise them as much as possible, especially online. It’s at the moots, if you become a regular, that you get to know other Pagans in person, and start finding out about the groups they’re in, which are often a lot more secretive. There are quite a lot of different types of Pagans, but the most common are Wiccans, Druids and Heathens. Wiccan groups are called covens, Druid groups groves, and Heathens don’t seem to have groups in quite the same sort of way, but have meetings called blots, I think (I’m not an expert there). Druids are into Celtic mythology and Heathens into Norse mythology. Wiccans are more eclectic but Celtic seems to be the most popular there too. What I’m saying here grossly simplifies it all, of course.
I was invited to attend meetings of a Wiccan coven. In the room where they met, at the home of the high priestess, they had four candles at North, East, South and West. In the North there was also an altar, with various items of equipment on it, such as a wooden disc called a pentacle, a sword, a knife called an athame, and a chalice. At the start of the meeting the high priestess cast the circle by walking round it and sprinkling a bit of salt water on the participants. Four chosen people would call the quarters in by standing in front of the candles and calling in the guardians of the North (etc.) to watch over the meeting, and these were said farewell to at the end in the same way. After each calling we all repeated the words “so mote it be”. Then came the actual meeting itself, which was usually some sort of spellcasting, such as for healing. There was also sometimes a pathworking, which is a guided meditation, and the high priestess sometimes consulted the tarot about something. Then they passed round cakes on the pentacle, and wine in the chalice.
The role of individuals within the group varied quite a lot. There was the high priestess, who had set it up. The four quarter callers had the next most important roles, though these could vary each time. In practice they didn’t much, as there were rarely more than about six or seven people present altogether.
Ok, that covers my own introduction to Wicca. As I said before, I gradually came to realise that it was not going to be my chosen path. I’m conscious now of the rather lengthy nature of the above, so will leave it till next time, if you want to hear more!
Yes, Jacqui’s voice is lovely, and perfect for the genre. And yes indeed, I very much like Water Bearer too.
My own opinion is that you don’t need to see to be able to grasp the nature of human interactions, but, as you say, it may be that I’m grasping something different about them, if only subtly.
Here there is really no alternative but for each of us one by one by one to make an attempt to think through these divisive issues to the best of our abilities…and then to take that existential leap to a point of view. I’m just more ambivalent than most because I have thought myself into believing that, in the end, there does not appear to be a way for me to get around feeling as fractured and fragmented as I am. On the other hand, I know full well how difficult it is to convey this to others. And I always assume that I may well be wrong. I can only go into places like this and explore it with others.
For me this always goes back to the profound mystery embedded in existence itself. Human existence in particular because, as far as I know, it is the only existence “out there” actually able to imagine a spiritual realm. What that means, however, is, again, so profoundly intertwined in the personal experiences of each of us – apart from and among others – we can only “go in” so far in exchanging our at times very different understanding of it. Or, rather, so it seems to me.
Okay, so here is the part where I ask you if you might be willing to take me into the last moot you attended or the next moot you will attend. To give me an idea of what is discussed and what activities unfold. At least insofar as it is not too “secretive”. I’m always most curious about how people come to belong to groups like this and how the group members deal with issues in which there may not be a consensus. Obviously many people go from the cradle to the grave and never come into contact with a pagan community. Then for any number of reasons they do. That is always what fascinates me the most about any set of beliefs. Not the beliefs themselves so much as how, in being able to believe in something, it allows one to anchor their sense of self to something that is so much bigger than they can ever hope to attain as just one person in a sea of humanity. Also, the part where the different groups have similar or different beliefs and you have to examine them and decide why to belong to one rather than another.
The communities I was once a part of myself but am now no longer able to be. Though, over the years, not for lack of trying.
Are there other blind members in the moots that you attend? Does being blind ever come to the surface in your interactions there?
This is something that I could never even begin to grasp other than as someone who is able to grasp it from a frame of mind rooted in my own understanding of these things. But my own understanding of them can never be more than my own subjective collection of stereotypes and prejudices. Again, if this allows others to anchor themselves to a “larger meaning” in their interactions with others then [for me] it always comes down to tolerance and “do no harm”.
Haunting. I had never heard this song. I just included it on my music thread. But easily one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I have ever heard is this one: youtu.be/Pq2cFmhyfoI youtu.be/pzolVZofcRM
I have begun to read a new novel. It’s called Blindness by Jose Saramago.
How to describe it!
It’s a sort of science fiction tale. People in a particular community begin to go blind “out of the blue”. But instead of black they see white. An “opaque milky white”. And in becoming blind they become contagious. So it is necessary for the authorities to quarantine them in, it turns out, an abandoned mental institution. One of the characters, however, is able to see but no one but her blind husband [who is an ophthalmologist!] knows it. I’ve only just begun it and given that I read 3 or 4 books at a time, only read a dozen pages or so a day.
Here is a passage from it:
“Like most people, he had often played as a child at pretending to be blind, and, after keeping his eyes closed for five minutes, he had reached the conclusion that blindness, undoubtedly a terrible affliction, might still be relatively bearable if the unfortunate victim had retained sufficient memory, not just of colours, but also of forms and planes, surfaces and shapes, assuming of course that one was not born blind. He had even reached the point of thinking that the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than simply the absence of light, and that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of beings and things, leaving them intact behind their black veil. Now, on the contrary, here he was plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible.”
Yes, sometimes it’s a good idea just to take stock and re-assess you entire set of beliefs and opinions. You mentioned that you’ve been in communities in the past, what were they? Anything analogous to, say, the Pagan community?
I’ll describe the last moot I attended, but I think you’ll be disappointed, because I most certainly was! (See below, for other more interesting stuff, though.) It was in February last year, about a month before the lockdown, at a pub well-known among local Pagans. There were only four of us present, and since two of the others were smokers, we had to sit outside in the beer garden, and it was a bit chilly. It had been billed as a discussion about the Northern tradition, but pretty soon one of them lit up a spliff, right there in the middle of the beer garden. I didn’t want to get thrown out so I left, in disgust. And then a few weeks later the lockdown happened and the world changed. I imagine moots will be starting up again soon, though, and indeed, other events such as rituals, though I don’t have any specific details yet.
As for belief, this is not an important concept in Paganism. Practice is much more important, as with the form of ritual, for example. There are Pagans who believe in all sorts of different gods and goddesses, Pagans who don’t, and Pagans who don’t think it even matters.
Being blind has impacted my journey through Paganism in a number of ways. For example, a very common practice in Pagan ritual is visualisation, which is used, for example, to visualise the result you want to happen. This is no real problem to me as I just imagine the result without any visualisation. More difficult are colours, which are used in almost all Pagan rituals, with each colour having specific meanings, often connected to the planets and astrology. My workaround for this is the same technique I mentioned before about associating colours with their most familiar linguistc couplings (blue sky, green grass, red blood, white snow, black night, and so on).
I’ve never met any other blind people at any Pagan events that I’ve attended, but I know other blind Pagans online. As for the attitudes of other Pagans to my blindness, this runs the whole gamut that I get from people in general, Pagans or otherwise. Ranging from nervousness and being uncomfortable talking to me at one end of the spectrum, to a desire to befriend me and ask me things about being blind at the other. My reaction to people being nervous, as always, is to de-sensitise the issue by making jokes and talking about it as openly as possible.
Ok, here’s the more interesting description of a Pagan event that I promised earlier, hehe. A few years ago I attended a handfasting at Glastonbury. A handfasting is a Pagan marriage, and Glastonbury is a well-known centre of Pagan and New Age activities in south-west England. The handfasting took place on Glastonbury Tor, a large hill with a lot of legendary and mythical associations. At the top of the hill is a ruined church tower. We started at the bottom of the hill then walked up it, gradually spiralling round the hill till we reached the top. They had laid out a design in the tower with sticks, comprising three squares, one inside another. The bride and groom each had nine followers, called maidens and knights. I was one of the maidens, in other words, a bridesmaid. When we got to the tower we each took our places in the squares laid out on the floor, then moved around in a complicated pattern decided by the bride and groom (who stood outside), symbolising a battle, followed by reconciliation and union. This is the part that relates to your question about how conflict is resolved, and why I chose this particular example, because the answer among Pagans, at least in theory, is through use of stylised ritual (in practice, of course, Pagans are just as fractious as anyone else, perhaps more so). The bride and groom took their oaths, and after that we all went down to a nearby pub for a meal.
Sounds like a interesting novel, but I have to note that the author seems to believe the common fallacy that blind people see black, or darkness. It certainly shouldn’t affect the story though, as you describe it, which looks like an intriguing concept.
My point about these communities revolves more around how we come to be a part of them because of the circumstances in our lives that bring them to our attention in the first place. Had this or that not happened or had we not met this or that person we might never have become aware of the group at all. The complexity and the uncertainty of it all. I was once a devout Christian, then a Unitarian, then a political radical, then an existentialist. What began to dawn on me however is that being part of a group was really the most important consideration. It provided me with a “meaning of life” that allowed me to ground myself in something far more substantial than my own insignificant existence in the vastness of “all there is”. Now that this is gone I’m left with stumbling about as best I can to make sense of things. But the consolation is that in not being a part of a group that makes distinctions between the right way and the wrong way to do things, I have many more options from which to choose.
Well, if you ever become a part of one that is more to your liking let me know what you took away from it. That’s the part that always intrigues me. There is what you think and feel. Then you become a part of a community where others think and feel the same. And you have to dig down deeper into why you think and feel what you do in terms of being a part of the community itself. And then the part where something comes up in which there are different, sometimes conflicting reactions. Always wanting to be a part of the whole but recognizing the challenges that are sometimes posed in integrating “I” and “we”.
Or, sure, maybe, I’m really thinking more of my own experiences over the years. Only when I get to know you better will I perhaps come closer to a “middle ground”.
Yes, sooner or later what you believe is going to be tested “for all practical purposes” in your interactions with others. Some things will click, others won’t. Same with some people. All we can really do is to be willing to live and learn. And then of course the part where sheer luck – what some call serendipity – comes in.
Have you ever encouraged others you know who are blind from birth to explore this community with you? That way you would have another mind able to interact in the community and enabling you to discuss your own shared experiences from the same starting point.
By the way, I just finishing watching The Miracle Worker for the zillionth time. The 1962 original. I was wondering if you had ever had a relationship with someone who was deaf from birth. I’m trying to imagine what conversations between someone who was totally deaf and someone who is totally blind would be like. Each having to make their way in a world where most can both hear and see but having to so in this case from a different starting point.
Thanks. That was really well described. I understand the need for ritual in our lives. And it transcends particular communities to basically include all of us. It seems to be a part of how the brain evolved to make sense of the world. By engaging in rituals we do the same things in the same way for the same reasons. And it is precisely in doing this that it gives the behaviors weight. And it is from this that we able to anchor ourselves to a necessary reality. With me though I find myself thinking about it in this way and the more I do the less I can participate in them myself. The part I find very hard to explain to others.
In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that even though the novel is called Blindness, the fact that all the main characters [except one] are blind seems to be of less importance than the manner in which they become blind. And the fact that blindness actually becomes contagious. Like a viral pandemic. And then the manner in which it is necessary to quarantine them. The pages are riddled with capital letter words like Government and Authority. It seems more an attempt to explore a community cut off from the rest of society and forced to create their own world. A kind of Lord of the Flies only all the people are blind.
Though this may turn out to be wrong.
As for blackness and darkness, that is still really difficult for me to understand.
"It’s often assumed that blind people experience complete darkness, but in my experience this is far from the truth.
“I appreciate this is going to sound odd coming from a blind person but when people ask me what I miss most about not being able to see, my answer is always ‘darkness’”
And then…
"Though I’ve had the cord cut between my eyes and my brain, it seems that the world has not turned black. All metaphors, similes, analogies, and literary flourishes about blindness and darkness should henceforth cease to be used because I’m saying it’s far from dark. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.
"So what replaces 3D technicolour vision once it’s gone? The answer - at least in my case - is light. Lots of it. Bright, colourful, ever-changing, often terribly distracting, light.
"How do I even begin to describe it? Let me have a go. Right now I’ve got a dark brown background, with a turquoise luminescence front and centre. Actually it’s just changed to green… now it’s bright blue with flecks of yellow, and there’s some orange threatening to break through and cover the whole lot.
“The rest of my field of vision is taken up by squashed geometric shapes, squiggles and clouds I couldn’t hope to describe - and not before they all change again anyway. Give it an hour, and it’ll all be different.”
Is this anything like your own experience?
To me it all seems counter-intuitive. Blackness is what I would expect but, of course, I have no experience with being blind and I don’t understand the technical, biological, chemical, neurological etc., interactions between the brain and the eyes.
Also, the author does not appear to have been blind from birth.
Yes, being part of a group is indeed one of the most important things about movements such as Paganism, or indeed any other. It’s also why I’ve stuck with it all these years, despite some very annoying tendencies within it. I was pretty naive when I first became involved, of course, wide eyed and innocent, as they say, and it was all quite thrilling, too, going along to secret meetings of covens and such like. That eventually wore off, I’m glad to say, not least because I found Wiccan rituals actually quite boring (it’s all a matter of taste, though). But by then I had already made lots of other contacts in the Pagan community.
I have to admit that being a devout Christian is something I have a hard time imagining. If you’d like, perhaps you could cast your mind back and describe how it affected your actions and thoughts on any average day.
I shall indeed describe the next event I go to, whether moot, ritual or whatever, if you like. What I personally take from these events differs according to the event. A moot is basically a social occasion, meeting and chatting, even if it also includes a talk of some kind. So what I get from it is community feeling. A ritual, on the other hand, is very different, and what I get from it is a spiritual communion with the forces of nature. Or at least, and this is the important bit, I should do, if it’s a good ritual. Another type of event is a festival or camp, and these combine elements of both.
Well, yes, I’m definitely a great believer in serendipity, and luck. I would call it the guiding principle of the universe.
It’s a nice idea, setting up some sort of blind Pagans group, but the numbers involved probably wouldn’t make it viable. At best, it would only be an online thing, with members thinly scattered across the world.
I’ve never had a relationship with a deaf person and, indeed, don’t really know any (a few of the people at our school, though, were hearing impaired as well as blind, but not fully deaf). I assume, since a large proportion of deaf people can lip read, communication would be verbal. Though not necessarily. I’ve heard of blind people learning BSL (British Sign Language) by touching the hands of those who are signing.
For today’s musical feast, how about a sea shanty?
Sounds like that book is a bit like Day of the Triffids then, where almost the entire population of the earth is blinded by a strange meteor shower one night, and have to pick up the pieces of civilisation afterwards, in the face of (well, this is John Wyndham, after all) walking carniverous plants. I much prefer the Chrysalids by him, though. The Kraken Wakes, on the other hand, was as dull as dishwater.
That BBC article very much highlights just how different the experiences of those who lose their sight are, compared to those born blind. Since I’ve never had any visual input at all, I simply don’t have a “field of vision” in my mind, of any sort whatsoever. And I fully realise, of course, that sighted people are literally hardwired to find it impossible to imagine this, just as the converse is true for me, with regard to seeing.
This sort of thing is often really, really difficult to communicate, to explain to others. And I’m no exception. And that is because unless I am you what can I possibly now about how you came to think and feel about what you do here. Especially about something as profoundly intimate as an attempt to grapple with “a meaning of life” – philosophical, spiritual of otherwise – that connects you to a bigger and bigger reality. That’s why, in the end, I have to accept that I will only understand you up to a point. And that, in regard to beliefs like this, a person should at least try to avoid being intolerant in regard to others and, above all, try to minimize any possible pain and suffering in the lives of others.
Well, that was many years ago and it revolved almost entirely around a chance meeting on my part with Reverend Deardorf. I was going through a difficult time in my life and he brought me into his congregation and, through his understanding of God, gave me that “larger meaning” that had been missing in life. My life itself did not change much at all, only a far more uplifting frame of mind in which to put all of the turmoil into perspective.
Yes, I understand the profound importance of feeling you belong to a community. I have experienced it many times myself. Both in a religious and in a political context. Only now, however, it’s a rather glum frame of mind embedded in me from day to day…knowing it is not very likely to ever come back around. Still, I have made the adjustment to a solitary existence and recognize how fulfillment and satisfaction can be gotten from both experiences.
But, yes, on your next close encounter with one or another event, try to explain what it is about the experience that meant the most to you. Also, anything you would like to see in the way of changes. The “I” and the “we” parts that always fascinate me the most.
Actually, I was thinking more of you inviting others who are blind to join you in the communities you are already involved with now. Not a Pagan group consisting of the blind but others who are blind able to share your current experiences in a way that might allow you or enable you to share the experience more fully given the sort of empathy that comes from the same starting point.
It was just a thought. Though I’ve had experiences with both blind and deaf people when I was a political activist, they were only on the surface. I never actually befriended someone or came to understand their world more in depth. It just seems fascinating to imagine that sort of exchange. The thing they share in common but in a different way.
I have a half dozen or more of them on my music thread. Some more or less ribald.
Yes, the further into the book I go, the more I suspect that blindness is not the point. These people are just thrown into this abandoned mental institution with little or no compassion from those not infected. It’s like the world just wants to be rid of them. The reader seems left to explore how they come to figure out ways to make their lives the least hellish. Again, unless the author is just setting this up at the beginning to go into a more constructive understanding of blindness. And of human interactions in general.
I’m still not all that sure if I will ever understand what you mean then when you react to words like blackness or darkness.
I recall as a boy reading this science fiction novel in which “in the future” there was this device that doctors and psychologists could use in order to “get inside the head” of patients. They could literally experience the world as they did. In terms of thoughts and feelings and sense perceptions. Imagine if that was ever to become a reality.
Don’t you see any possibility of ever shaking free of your glum state of mind, then? I know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut, but the way you describe it, it sounds rather more long-term. How do you see the rest of your life panning out? And how about things like work?
I’ve never made any secret of my involvement in Paganism to my blind friends and acquaintances, probably to the point of boring them to death with it, hehe. While I certainly understand the point you’re making, I actually prefer to keep those two communities that I happen to be part of quite separate.
And I did indeed wonder why you mentioned relationships, to be honest, and was hoping we were not heading down that particular rabbit hole.
That’s the original Parry piano score. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Elgar bowdlerisation is better.
The way you describe the book then, it seems increasingly like a typical post-apocalyptic, distopian anti-fantasy, of the sort churned out by sci fi hacks for the past century or more. In other words, some disaster happens, and the survivors have to battle it out among themselves afterwards. And, of course, this sounds perfectly reasonable. Human nature is pretty nasty, violent and selfish, after all. But that’s not all it is, if it were, we would hardly have survived as a species. Human nature is also kind, compassionate and altruistic. Often all these traits are found in the same individual, even. What would happen, then, after a terrible natural disaster? Would the survivors start tearing each other apart, or would they try and work together for the good of all? We have a clue to this in the events of the past year or so, and while the recent pandemic was not on the scale of apocalyptic fantasy, it was still pretty bad. I can only really speak about events in the UK, of course, but I strongly suspect other places had similar experiences. What happened was, quite remarkably (and perhaps even unexpectedly), is that everyone pulled together. Total strangers organised themselves into groups with the specific intent of taking food and other necessaries to vulnerable people who couldn’t get it themselves, or who couldn’t afford to. Others volunteered as drivers, or to work in hospitals, and so on. Those are just examples, and perhaps, in a way, there was a sort of society-wide catharsis, a re-examination of essential values, to go along with the personal ones that many of us experienced too. So essentially, I am optimistic about such things, as I am with much else, too.
Actually, as something of an amateur historian myself, we can easily look to previous collapses in society to learn some valuable lessons about human nature. One period of particular interest to me is Dark Age Britain, after the Romans left in the early 5th century, and for approximately the next two centuries. This, of course, included the time of King Arthur, and all the myths and legends associated with him (he was also, incidentally, supposedly buried at Glastonbury, hence all its mystical associations). There’s precious little evidence that he actually existed, but what archaeology tells us very clearly about the period is that instead of descending into anarchy and barbarity, civilisation continued here virtually uninterrupted, despite plagues, famine and other natural disasters. That’s one of the reasons, by the way, why I sometimes regret not going to university, because if I had, I would probably have studied archaeology, which at least has the advantage of including a lot of hands-on, outdoor work, rather than been cooped up inside all the time.
That sounds like a pretty neat device, especially if it allowed me to see what seeing is like. Pity it’s just made up.
Actually, since I argue that given new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas, there is always the possibility that something might manage to reconfigure my current frame of mind, there is never not any hope at all. And the glumness does not extend to all of the things I do in which I am anything but glum. Instead, it revolves more around the assumption that in the absence of God – just another assumption – there does not appear to be a way [for me] to make any objective, wholly true distinction between good and bad behaviors. I can only try to be as tolerant of others as I can and to minimize any harm I might do. Everything here is far more precarious and problematic given what I have thought myself into believing. I’m not part of a community that provides the sort of meaning that you have in being a Pagan. The sort of meaning I had as a Christian or a political activist. I’m just not able [here and now] to imagine a way back to it. But that might change.
Again, I am far, far removed from understanding what motivates you here. That is a part of your world and I know almost nothing about it. I can only imagine that if I were blind interacting in a community of sighted people, I would want to include others in that community who shared something with me as fundamental as this. But then that is a frame of mind rooted in the existential parameters of my own life.
Not sure what you mean by this. I am curious about your relationships in the Pagan community. I am trying to understand what it might be like to be a part of a community in which what most consider to be an important part of their life – the ability to see – sets you apart from all of the others. Just as the manner in which my own philosophy of life often set me apart from others in the past. The part where we seek others who are like us in order to share experiences more fully, more intimately.
Yes, that’s well put. Eighty pages into the book, and a lot of what has unfolded so far fits the “nasty, violent and selfish” description. But the author, José Saramago, is no hack. Among other things, he is the recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. What I am most curious about is why he chose Blindness as the title of the book. Perhaps it is less in regard to blindness literally and more in the way of a metaphor. How, in many important respects, we are all blind to important things around us. And how this blindness allows those in power – his capital letter Government – to create the conditions that the literally blind in the story are enduring. Increasingly more appalling. That’s what keeps me reading…to find out what blindness he is talking about.
What I will do is finish the book and come up with my own conclusions. And then I will go on line and Google reviews of the book. To note the conclusions of others.
Again, really well put. But what always intrigues me is why actual individuals go in what some construe to be constructive directions, while others choose destructive directions instead. And, just as importantly, what happens when behaviors that are deemed constructive by some are seen to be destructive by others. How is all of this more a manifestation of the lives that we lived predisposing us existentially to go in these different directions; or, instead, more as derived [philosophically, scientifically, spiritually etc.] from our capacity as rational and virtuous human beings to “think up” the “right thing to do”?
One of the points I always raise on the philosophy board here revolves around the part where how we view ourselves in the world around us is – or can be – profoundly dependent on the historical age in which we were raised. Surely, the manner in which folks back in Medieval Britain reacted to the world around them is going to be different – sometimes very different – from how modern day British citizens see things like government, social interactions, gender roles, plaques, etc… Maybe even blindness itself?
And yet at the same time, there are all the things we share in common as members of the human species. The things that are always true for all of us and the things that seem, instead, to provoke conflicting thoughts and feelings.
That’s always what most attracts and intrigues me.
“Attitudes to disability were mixed. People thought it was a punishment for sin, or the result of being born under the hostile influence of the planet Saturn. Others believed that disabled people were closer to God - they were suffering purgatory on earth rather than after death and would get to heaven sooner.”
Yes, for those who are blind from birth, there always seems to be the part – the consolation? – where they don’t have to think they have lost something…or to experience the reality of actually having lost their vision. But then the part where from time to time they can’t help but wonder what it is like to see the world around them. Especially if they don’t believe in the afterlife. Something like, “this life is all there is and I will never see it”.
Just think of the part where in “falling in love” many sighted people can become obsessed with “looks”. Is she pretty? Is he handsome? And sometimes in putting too much emphasis on that they choose the wrong partner. So, the first thing that might pop into the head of sighted people, is how not having the capacity to assess “looks”, affects those who are blind in regard to their own relationships.
Or imagine a sighted person who was preoccupied with looks in a relationship, losing his or her sight and then engaging in future relationships.
Again, all the complexities and uncertainties involved here.
Yes, there is always the possibility of change, in all things, and this is a source of great hope. And in my experience, when big changes happen, they all come very quickly. Important events are not spread out at random, but rather, they seem to cluster in bunches. Which probably gives a clue to the workings of fate.
With regard to relationships, in the more general meaning of the term, I’ve never had any problem making friends, whether in the Pagan community or anywhere else, as I think I’m a fairly sociable sort of person. In particular, I’ve never had any hang-ups about mixing with sighted people, which is not the case for all blind people. In fact, I prefer it. And this goes back to the previous point about not blurring the lines between the two communities. My purpose in becoming involved in a Pagan group or event is to take from it what it offers on its own terms. I have no wish to change the nature of the event to suit my own needs, or bring people along for support, who may be there mainly for my sake, rather than the event itself. And yes, being blind does indeed set me apart from all the others at such events, but this needn’t be a bad thing. It has certainly opened doors for me that wouldn’t necessarily have opened otherwise.
Ah, Enya (or “Enema” as a friend of mine at school used to call her, yes, very juvenile, I know), another excellent choice. And from Enya we move quite naturally onto Clannad.
Newgrange is one of those places I’d really love to visit one day, though I’ve never actually been to Ireland.
You still have cassettes? I do, but that’s because a lot of audio books, especially older ones, come in that format.
He probably chose Blindness as the title of his book for its shock value. It is, after all, something that most people fear quite badly. It’s also a very good metaphor, of course.
I think most people have an inner voice, a conscience, that tells them when something they’re doing is right or wrong. At least, I like to think that’s the case. Often, though, people will ignore their conscience, and persuade themselves that what they’re doing is right, or for the best in the long run, or whatever. A million excuses to tell themselves that they’ve done the right thing, when in fact, they know they haven’t. But then, there are always grey areas. Take vegetarianism, for example. I can fully understand the argument of those who say it’s wrong to kill and eat a living, conscious creature. I don’t happen to agree with it, simply because that’s not how humans have evolved. I do, however, think that we owe it to these animals that we keep for food to make their lives as comfortable as we can, beforehand. And obviously, we should never waste the food so provided. As for myself, I’m currently in a vegetarian phase, but that’s primarily as part of my drive for physical and spiritual purification that I mentioned before.
I hadn’t heard that thing about Saturn before, I must admit. But then, I’m not an expert on astrology. I know that blind people were put to work in the middle ages, rather than just left to vegetate. For example, on building sites they were often employed in groups to walk round giant treadmills to provide lifting power for wooden cranes and things like that. Sounds particularly dull and repetitive, but quite a lot better than just being left on the streets to beg. Which also happened, though. Prior to the Reformation, many welfare services were provided by monasteries (hospitals, hostels, alms, and so on), and the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII caused quite a major crisis. So the state had to step in, and began to get a lot more heavily involved in welfare legislation during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Yes, the old saying, what you’ve never had you never miss. And, you know, it’s true in a way. But only up to a certain point. I would dearly love to know what it’s like to see, if only out of intense curiosity. Having said that, I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose one’s sight. Truly awful, presumably.
In terms of physical attraction, it’s smell that does it for me, and that’s something I pick up on the moment I meet anyone (actually, usually just before I meet them).