The blind eye

The Visionless
By Trevor Gustafson
Working draft

Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880 as a normal child. She could talk, see, hear, and run like anyone else. However when she was one and a half, she contracted a serious case of scarlet fever. While she recovered from the disease, it left her blind and deaf. One might think, “what can a blind and deaf person do?” Not Helen. Helen became famous as she was the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but it took many steps, and much work before she reached that point in her life. It is easy for us to, like Helen, become blind and desensitized to our own world. We fail to notice the pain and evil in our own neighborhoods. Just like Helen, we must take many steps to get from the darkness of inaction, to the bright sunlight of caring for others.
It is important that we realize that we must be the ones to do something about the predicament. If we don’t do anything, chances are no one will. Think about those who don’ have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, “In Plato’s cave,” Susan Sontag describes this type of person when mentions a photograph of “a naked south Vietnamese child just sprayed * American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera.” This child’s situation was obviously out of his or her control. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in getting a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. This photographer had become desensitized to evil and thus to change.
Where does desensitization come from? It comes from many places. The photographer in Sontag’s essay was possibly desensitized by visions of how much money he could make selling this photograph. Possibly he became desensitized to believing that it was better for him to make a political statement than to save a human life. Possibly he had become desensitized because he had seen so much pain at war already. Possibly he became desensitized by laziness. There are many possible ways that this photographer may have become desensitized, but it is not helpful to dwell on an incident that took place thirty-five years ago. What about today? There are many ways that we become desensitized to evil and pain. We can become desensitized by greed, by political agenda, by to much exposure to pain, but possibly the biggest way we become desensitized is through laziness. It is much easier for us to accept that things aren’t the way we want them to be, than it is to do something about changing it. But it is not through easy feats that great things are accomplished. [Keep on tract of talking about desensitization]It would have been easy for Helen to have given up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to do nothing. To do nothing is to really turn a blind eye to the situation. If no one took the initiative to stand and do the not so easy thing, our society would change so drastically that it would be unrecognizable from what it is today. Everyone would be forced to fend for themselves. Crime would go up because no one would care to watch over someone else’s stuff while their away. Those who are physically disabled would receive no assistance. All this would happen if we chose to be lazy and not watch out for others.
[why the visionless are so bad]All forms of desensitization are really just forms of inaction. If we become desensitized to the point where we chose to do nothing for others, we become useless members of society. The photographer in Sontag’s essay took no action to save a human life. Because the photographer was more interesting in getting a photograph than in saving a human life, he was a worthless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do anything for anyone else. Someone who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that doesn’t work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who is useless is just like a worthless appliance; it is no good and only takes up room. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was not only proactive in helping change the lives of others by assisting those who were blind? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive. How is it that we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first be interested in learning about ways in which we can be active. If we are uninterested, all the learning in the world will do us no good. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. He gives the example of two young people, one in a school laboratory, the other on a beach. Both are presented with a dogfish to be dissected, but Percy claims that the person on the beach has “a great advantage over the… [person] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk.” [409] Why does the beachgoer have an advantage? Because he is interested in what he is doing; it is not an assignment that must be done. If a teacher were to give a student the chose of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach will gladly dissect the fish because he is interested. Just like Percy’s example of the two young people, we must be interested in learning about what needs change before we will set about to change anything. If we are uninterested, we will likely never lift a finger to help others. Interest is vital. We must want to learn about our world before we can change it.
[Interest is the opening of ones eyes]How is it that we become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Other people will need to see a different tragedy than they are used to. Maybe a trip to a slum in central or South America will wake these people up. Percy discusses the need for change. He argues that “poetry students should [occasionally] find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards.”[413] It is so easy to become desensitized to the evil and pain right around us that sometimes it takes seeing a different evil or pain to make us realize that we are living in the midst of pain and evil. Still other people may need a series of events to slowly show them the truth. In his movie, The Truman Show, director Peter Weir tells the story of Truman who is unknowingly the star of a worldwide televised program. Since Truman was a baby he was put in a controlled world where everyone he had contact with was actors. He thought he was living a normal life, but everything presented to Truman was fake. Slowly, through a series of events, such as stage deficiencies and actor blunders, Truman realized that his world was fake. However it took him thirty years to realize it. Some people just need more time than others to receive a passion for helping others. Some people may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the evil in their own backyard. Something like 9-11 will wake these people up. There are many ways that people realize that there are others in need of help. It is not important how they come to this realization, but merely that they do.
When we open our eyes to see the evils around us, what will we see? There are many things that are in our own neighborhoods that can use our assistance. It may not be as drastic as someone starving on the street. It may be watching a single ladies kids for an hour after school until she is able to get off work. It may be helping the old lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be sitting and talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to serve. To mention all the ways a person can help those in his or her own neighborhood could fill books. It doesn’t matter in which way we help, only that we help.
Ultimately a mindset of service is a personal decision. No one can be forced to care. There are hundreds of ads out there vying for people’s attention for a worthy cause. But ultimately it is up to the individual to make the decision that he or she will serve the community instead of being a useless member of society. What means he serves in, or to what capacity does not have as much affect as that he or she merely serves. Once one person starts to serve, the idea will catch on. It only takes one person to be the start of a movement. Will you help start that movement? Will you actively serve your community?
[Tie in Helen Keller and the truly visionless]