The red-tinted glasses metaphor

Albert Knox’s metaphor of this pair of glasses subtly opens Sophie’s and our eyes to the way humans perceive and “experience the world”, a thought that goes beyond our normal daily thinking.

From the novel, we see a clear contradiction between the empiricists and the rationalists. Empiricists strongly criticized the concept held by rationalists that humans have “innate ideas that exist in the mind prior to experience”. They believed that our perception of the world wholly comes from what we hear and see. Interestingly, Kant found a compromise between the two. He proposed that we are born with the “red-tinted glasses” of mere knowledge of “time and space” which shape our perception but meanwhile, it is our experience through senses, combined with our innate power of reason, which gives us the knowledge of the world.

I have come to agree with Kant. In my opinion, as we grow up and experience new and different things, our “glasses” of reason are modified to fit to our understanding gained from these experiences. And we go on wearing these modified glasses to view and comprehend new phenomena.

Looking at the world today, one can see the effect of stereotypes, formed from experiences in the society. Stereotypes are one aspect of our “red-tinted glasses” that prevent us from penetrating to the truth sometimes. For example, when we first encounter a black person, our stereotypes may force a snap judgement on us, leading us to perceive him/her as “lazy” and traits that correspond to this specific stereotype. Yet in most cases that is not the reality. As we come in contact with this person and let emotions dominate our so-called “reason” (stereotype), we can be shocked by the degree of contortion created by the “red-tinted glasses”. The society can easily distort our thought and mislead our judgement by shaping our “reason” for us if we are not aware of the danger. We therefore must learn to take off these glasses at times. In addition, the “red-tinted glasses” metaphor provides an allusion that in our life, not only our “vision” is limited, but also our other senses including “hearing” and “touch”, evoking my awareness to the power of our senses that give us the experience.

From this meaningful extended metaphor, I believe that we have to take our time to question and search for the mystery of the humans and the real world, with and then, without our “glasses”.