Deaf or Blind?
Posted on April 6th, 2006 in Regular Rants
I had a nightmare last night. I dreamt that I became blind. It was terrifying! Strangely, I seemed to be able to see myself getting blind (pretty much like watching a movie). Yeah sometimes dreams manifest themselves from a third-person perspective.
This dream reminded me of a question I used to ask myself and some of my friends:
If you were to choose, would you rather be blind or deaf?
First of all, obviously we would never face such a situation. Such a choice is a luxury in cool hard reality. When reality hits, it usually does so with such speed and surprise that it renders us helpless, let alone giving us the option to choose.
That aside, I think I would choose to be blind. I get alot of emotional stimuli through the aural senses. Sometimes listening to a song or parts of a soundtrack triggers immense memories. Somehow to me, the sense of sight isn’t as rich as the power of hearing. Also, the auditory system is omnidirectional; that is, unlike the visuals, we can sense audio signals no matter how we are oriented. That’s empowerment.
Most importantly, I cannot give up music. I’ll take a good ol’ catchy riff over a famous painting anytime.
What would you choose?
Definiely Blind over Deaf…
Why?
1) If you are blind, means you become a better musician (think Ray Charles…) Just joking but there is so much uglyness in the world that i think i will better off without my eyes
2) if you are blind, you can still talk cock with people. That is very important to me
3) Music is everything to me… so i cannot be deaf…
Remember… the sound of silence is deafening…….
If you become deaf, also can become better musician (think Beethoven…) Just kidding too.
I think sight and hearing are not as independent as most people think. When you lose one, you lose part of another. Emotional stimuli through sound are also enhanced subtly through visually reading body language. Music triggers memories which for me is vividly visual. Moreover, I think music has a visual quality to it that makes it so magical. It’s like you can almost see a high sustained note floating above the orchestra, see the dissonance, the colours and textures. If I go blind, my visual lobe might go into atrophy and music to me will lose a dimension.
I can’t lose music but neither can I lose breathtaking scenery, or dance, or Van Gogh or professors drawing on chalkboards.
In the end, I guess I choose deaf over blind, only because of the minor advantage that it is more convenient.
Yah man, the sound of silence is definitely deafening!! My left ear is slightly deaf (due to stupid range) and I cannot hear some high-frequency sounds. But there’s this irritating high-pitch noise always present in that ear. It becomes freaking loud in the silence of the night. Took me a while just to get used to it…
Yiheng- interesting you mentioned that advantage thing… There was a study which shows more men tend to choose deaf over blind because of that advantage, and ladies the other way round!
I’d rather be deaf than blind. Simply because I like to read.
But when I read, I actually “read out loud” to myself in my mind, so I guess I’m a audio-person after all. Wonder if I’ll still be able to do that if I’m deaf…
I used to keep having nightmares that my teeth will fall off. Back to your question: Deaf or blind? I would rather be deaf. Living a life withouth sight is far worse in my opinion. The world is so beautiful not to be seen.