The Visionless

The Visionless
By Trevor Gustafson

At the mere age of one and a half, Helen Keller contracted a severe case of scarlet fever which left her both blind and deaf. Her future looked incredibly dismal. What could she accomplish? Instead of feeling sorry for herself for the rest of her life, however, Helen decided to take action. Not only did she become famous as the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but she also became a strong advocate for other blind people. However, it took obtaining a vision and much work before she could accomplish this. All of us have dreams and visions, even those who are blind. Never the less, not everyone uses this gift. Sometimes we just accept the way that things are and choose not to notice the pain and grief all around us. Just like Helen, however, we can depart from the darkness of inaction and arrive in the bright sunlight of taking action. It is here, in the sunlight, that we have vision. Not of what our world is, but of what it can be.
Helen Keller was a spoiled child who got whatever she pleased. If she wanted ice-cream for supper, her mother gave her ice-cream. She was never punished for being disobedient or even hitting her nanny. This type of behavior would, of course, never be acceptable when Helen became an adult. Life is not full of people waiting to serve us. With the help of her tutor, Ann Sullivan, Helen realized that if she wanted to excel, she would have to work at it herself. Like Helen, we can take charge of our own lives and do something about our own predicaments. We don’t have to be lazy people who expect our parents, the government, or anyone else to do everything for us. There are some people, however, who don’t have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, In Plato’s cave, Susan Sontag describes this type of person when she mentions a photograph of “a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera” (476). This child’s situation was out of his or her control. To say that this child should help his or herself would be absurd. Someone should obviously help this poor child. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in capturing a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. Like the photographer, it is very easy for us to become inactive. Why do we become inactive to our own problems and the problems of others? Because we become desensitized into seeing what our world is instead of what it can be.
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. There are many possible reasons that this photographer 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 pain and grief. Possibly the most common way we become desensitized is through laziness. We see something that needs change, but instead of taking action we allow thoughts of how comfortable we are and how much pain and work taking action can be to desensitize us to the situation. It would have been easy for Helen to give up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to turn a blind eye to a problem that we see. It is easy for anyone to become desensitized
Because the photographer in Sontag’s essay allowed himself to become desensitized to the point where he became more interesting in capturing a photograph than in saving a human life, he became a useless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do a thing for someone else. A person who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that does not work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who does nothing when they could is just like a worthless appliance; they are no good and only take up room on our planet. This is not to say that society members who are physically unable to anything should be discarded, but rather that those who have the ability to take action should. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was proactive in helping not only herself but also the lives of other blind people? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive? How do we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first have an interest in learning about ways in which we can be active. Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, 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 choice of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach gladly dissected the fish because he was 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. Interest is the opening of our eyes to see the situation. It is the switch that turns on our action.
How can we escape desensitization and become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Some people may need to see a different tragedy than they are used to before they will become interested in seeing the pain and grief in and around their own lives. Maybe a trip to a slum in Central or South America will wake these people up. Percy examines this need for change when he states that occasionally “poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards” (413). Just as a student may learn more when exposed to new and different subjects, some people become more passionate about change when exposed to new and different tragedy. There are other people, however, who may need a series of events to slowly reveal the situation to them. 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 the fakeness of his world. However it took him thirty years. Some people just need more time than others to see something that needs change. There are still other people who may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the pain and grief around them. Something like 9-11 may wake these people up. There are many ways that people gain an interest in learning about pain and grief around them.
Why should we want to take action? Because we hope if we help someone else, the favor will be returned? Because we hope we can change our own lives for the better? There is no guarantee that if we take action, someone else will return the favor. There is no guarantee of personal advantage for taking action. Why would Truman want to leave his world? It was all he ever knew. He was content and happy there. However, there was the possibility something more. Something better. There was no guarantee that he would find a better place, but he set out anyway in hopes that he would. Ultimately a mindset of change is a personal decision. No one can be forced to do something they don’t want to and don’t have an interest in.
If we decide that we will be a maker of change, and set out to look for things that need change, 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 helping a child in Vietnam or escaping from a television show. It may be helping the elderly lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. It might be deciding to quite smoking. To mention all the ways we can make a change would fill books. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to make a change. If we are interested in being an active member of society, we will find those opportunities to take action.
Even though Helen Keller had lost her hearing and eye sight, she had an excellent vision for the world around her. A vision that did not see the way things are, but rather the way they can be. Why can’t we who have good eye sight see the way that things can be? We can, but choosing to see is a personal decision. We all see different things that need change. They may be big or they may be small. If we become desensitized, inactive members of society, we become the ones who cannot see. It is not those who are blind who cannot see, but rather those who refuse to see what can be who are the visionless.





















Works Cited
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 402-415. 2006.
Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 465-480. 2006.
The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Jim Carrey. Paramount. 1998.