I was thinking the other night how blind people appear to have heightened touch and hearing etc. Sure the lack of sight will mean less distractions but their ears and fingers are the same as a sighted persons. All this made me wonder how much we are missing due to the fact that we are not using our senses to their full potental whether it is because of distraction or lack of training. I wonder what sort of world we would "see" with all our senses heightened and trained to their full potental?
Do you think the physical senses would be more powerful than emotional and psychological awareness when it comes to experiencing the world? I think not, but you're right, most ppl are probably using only a fraction of the potential granted us in our physical and emotional form, but hey, we're only animals.. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Perhaps this is only a matter of focus. The ears, tongue, nerves, nose, and eyes are working to full potential, but are muted by the brain. We (sighted people) focus on five senses when blind people have four. Think of it in the way a computer processes information. When one program runs, it runs fine; up to full potential, but when running multiple programs, it runs slower. A blind person has the same brainpower running less 'programs' so preceive greater amounts on particular senses. If one could only hear, but not feel, see, smell, or taste, that person could probably navigate the world easier than a 'normal' person.
I suspect that a sighted person might not be able to train his other senses to be as effective as those of a blind person, even if he were willing to spend the time and effort to try to do so. Many years ago, I knew a blind man who played an oriental game called Go (or Wei Ching). It is played on an 18X18 board, but you put pieces on the intersections so there are 19X19 places to place a piece. Black has 181 pieces and white has 180. This game is considered by many people more difficult than chess. No person familiar with both games considers it less difficult. To play blind folded is far more difficult than playing chess blind folded. There is no doubt in my mind that this blind man was using the same internal brain functions that a sighted person would use to construct a perceptual image of the board configuration. The difference is that he collected the necessary data using his tactile senses instead of his eyes. A sighted person has a complex neural network dedicated to creating a perceptual image using an incredible amount of input data from the optic nerves. This blind man similarly used a complex neural network to process a lot of tactile data. I do not think there is enough brain power to create a complex perceptual image using your eye sight and also do the same using some other sense. It is a matter of allocating limited resources to processing optic nerve data or allocating those same resources to processing auditory and tactile data. In a normal game, the pieces are little round stones, either black or white. My blind friend has a set which used plastic golf tees. The black pieces had been ground so that they were convex instead of concave. When the blind man had to make a move, he ran his fingers over the entire board several times. He was not playing from memory. From his activities, you knew he was using his fingers like eyes to build an internal image of the board. Just as a sighted person would inspect the configuration of the pieces on the board, he was inspecting the configuration.
i saw a guy on guiness prime time that figured out a rubix cube after studying it for a while, then was blind folded and solved in 5 or so minutes.... only using his mind.... if this is something like this is possible, then why claim that blind poeple dont have hieghten senses go outside and listen and look, then close your eyes and listen "whats that smell, i didnt smell that before!!" youd be surprized that you just might hear more, cuase since your not relaying on your eye site you become more focused on your other sense, blind poeple go thur this every day of their lifes, you have no choice but to focus on their other senses like all creatures, we adapt to our enviroment, may it be temperarly or long term... or genetics.... if someone cannot walk they adapt in the best way possible so they have fredom of moving around from place to place, the same is not true for a blind man????
I am a sighted person and I have hightened senses. Part of it is due to a sensery "disorder" that causes hightened senses. I don't know if this 2nd part is normal but I can think of something and then my senses take over as though it were real. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I have very intense visualization skills since I was a little girl. For instance I can think of my dog, a Berger Picard who died in Sept. and feel his wiry coat. In fact my daddy caught me petting the invisible dog a few nights ago. I can think of certain foods and smell them as though someone were cooking them. I can't really use the oven well because I visualize myself being burnt and feel it happening even though it didn't. In some ways it's a detriment but in others it's not so bad.
