Imagine a world with a clear division between right and wrong, good and bad. Imagine a world where every single inhabitants, regardless of his/her nationality, culture, religion, gender, age views all aspects of the world with identical judgment. Just imagine. If that very model of a world did indeed exist, everything would be crystal clear and we would all find ourselves looking at the world through a flawlessly immaculate, transparent and thoroughly polished lens- no spots, no cracks to alter our vision even slightly. We would just simply accept what we sense, and apply that sensory experience to our reason for future occasions. Our empirical and rational outlooks will be one and the same.
Sadly, (or is it thankfully?) we do not live in a world where all of us can look at life through the same pair of glasses. Instead, we are in a world where we can “determine how we perceive the world around us”, thus decide what type of glasses we observe the world through. This is where Gaarder’s extended metaphor of the “red-tinted glasses” comes into the picture. The red colour of the lenses represents one of the millions of different ways to absorb the surrounding, and on the bigger picture, the limitation to the way in which one perceives reality. The frames that form rectangular screens across Sophie’s vision do not reveal the world in multi-colour, but instead, filter only the colour of red into her eyes. For as long as Sophie remains wearing the red-tinted glasses, she will be oblivious of the world in other colours; her life only restricted to the “pink…crimson” view before her lenses, leaving her fully unaware of the world in any other colours besides red.
Keeping Sophie and the red-tinted glass experiment in mind, let us add to the scenario a baby with blue-tinted glasses on. If Sophie and the baby were both to be placed in a beach, they will equally experience the same landscape. However, their perceptions of the view before their eyes will greatly differ. The red and blue coloured lenses symbolise the dissimilar “conditions governing [their] mind’s operation”. As an explanation to this, Kant believes that “perceiving things in time and space… precedes every experience”. This conveys that whatever we observe through our senses amends to our inherent reason of time and space. Because Sophie’s consistent experience tells her that the world is not red, she goes against what her empirical shows her. Contrastingly, the baby will perceive the world as it is in the colour blue- the baby’s lack of sensual experience easily breaks through the wall of innate reason and fills in the baby’s form of time and space, thus the baby will always see the world through the blue filter and create his own idea of the world.
The red-tinted glasses metaphor was a challenging conundrum to unfold, but it sure was worth the effort. The metaphor takes two extreme sides of the rationalists and the empiricists, and merges them together to form a single moderate and credible proposal. By comparing human perspectives to coloured glasses, Gaarder perfectly illustrates the idea of people absorbing and judging the world in their own individual ways. It is quite frustrating to imagine myself with a pair of glasses that influences everything I see, and my friends with a different pair. But then again, isn’t this very idea of having different perspectives the reason to personal opinions and beliefs? Personally, I would very much rather prefer a world of assorted outlooks and judgments than a world of fixed and universal viewpoint to everything. Different opinions are the key roots to inspirations and development of thoughts. What will become of the world with no diverse ideas to compare with and contrast from?
Individual red, blue, spotty, sparkly glasses are much more appealing than universally shared crystal clear glasses. A broken pair of glasses reflects more sense and reason than a perfect pair does. However, it would be a waste of our perspectives to keep our own views of the world private. We should swap our glasses from time to time, and get to know what the world is like not only “for me”, but also for you, for her, for him, for them and for us- even if that means not knowing what the world is like “in itself”.
Sadly, (or is it thankfully?) we do not live in a world where all of us can look at life through the same pair of glasses. Instead, we are in a world where we can “determine how we perceive the world around us”, thus decide what type of glasses we observe the world through. This is where Gaarder’s extended metaphor of the “red-tinted glasses” comes into the picture. The red colour of the lenses represents one of the millions of different ways to absorb the surrounding, and on the bigger picture, the limitation to the way in which one perceives reality. The frames that form rectangular screens across Sophie’s vision do not reveal the world in multi-colour, but instead, filter only the colour of red into her eyes. For as long as Sophie remains wearing the red-tinted glasses, she will be oblivious of the world in other colours; her life only restricted to the “pink…crimson” view before her lenses, leaving her fully unaware of the world in any other colours besides red.
Keeping Sophie and the red-tinted glass experiment in mind, let us add to the scenario a baby with blue-tinted glasses on. If Sophie and the baby were both to be placed in a beach, they will equally experience the same landscape. However, their perceptions of the view before their eyes will greatly differ. The red and blue coloured lenses symbolise the dissimilar “conditions governing [their] mind’s operation”. As an explanation to this, Kant believes that “perceiving things in time and space… precedes every experience”. This conveys that whatever we observe through our senses amends to our inherent reason of time and space. Because Sophie’s consistent experience tells her that the world is not red, she goes against what her empirical shows her. Contrastingly, the baby will perceive the world as it is in the colour blue- the baby’s lack of sensual experience easily breaks through the wall of innate reason and fills in the baby’s form of time and space, thus the baby will always see the world through the blue filter and create his own idea of the world.
The red-tinted glasses metaphor was a challenging conundrum to unfold, but it sure was worth the effort. The metaphor takes two extreme sides of the rationalists and the empiricists, and merges them together to form a single moderate and credible proposal. By comparing human perspectives to coloured glasses, Gaarder perfectly illustrates the idea of people absorbing and judging the world in their own individual ways. It is quite frustrating to imagine myself with a pair of glasses that influences everything I see, and my friends with a different pair. But then again, isn’t this very idea of having different perspectives the reason to personal opinions and beliefs? Personally, I would very much rather prefer a world of assorted outlooks and judgments than a world of fixed and universal viewpoint to everything. Different opinions are the key roots to inspirations and development of thoughts. What will become of the world with no diverse ideas to compare with and contrast from?
Individual red, blue, spotty, sparkly glasses are much more appealing than universally shared crystal clear glasses. A broken pair of glasses reflects more sense and reason than a perfect pair does. However, it would be a waste of our perspectives to keep our own views of the world private. We should swap our glasses from time to time, and get to know what the world is like not only “for me”, but also for you, for her, for him, for them and for us- even if that means not knowing what the world is like “in itself”.
2 comments:
Very well thought out response Karen. But, there is one thing I can oppose your argument with. People in our world do NOT actually see things differently! (At least if they're not colour blind or blind) What they actually experience, is one and the same. Look at your door and ask your mum if she can see the door and then describe the door and see if she agrees. I think you'll find that both of you see the same thing. What makes us perceive things differently, is the mind and how it interprets what we see. So I would actually PREFER a crystal clear view of the world, because then I know the truth about where we are, but I will still be able to interpret it in a way that I like.
Read it. Loved it. A very interesting read! But I must agree with Cameron's comment, we don't actually see the things differently, but its the WAY we see it, and sometimes how we want to interpret it.
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