Censorship of Perception

Ben West, Rutgers University

“Perception” can be defined as observation, which is the result of using the senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation. In “The Ecology of Magic,” David Abram claims that the perceptions of modern Westernized society are limited. In “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See,” Oliver Sacks reveals that we can actually surpass the limitations of our perception. In “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, it was Friday,” Martha Stout asserts that we must attempt to overcome the limitations; otherwise we will forever fail to see the difference between the real and unreal. All three authors would agree that the vast majority of people in modern society have a limited perception of the real world, and that the continuance of this ignorance has dire consequences for these individuals and their surroundings. Furthermore, they would agree that it is indeed possible and necessary for these individuals to face the confines of the constricted modern perception that plagues them in order to overcome it.

Modern society has effectively disassociated from reality. Citizens of developed nations, with their ever-improving technologies, have censored Mother Nature herself, gaining only an artificial glance at her when they go to the zoo with their families after they find out that Six Flags is closed, watch the Discovery Channel with their friends when the a reality series isn’t on, or play with their increasingly boring dogs. Man can live without coming into contact with nature. Abram reveals:

Our obliviousness to nonhuman nature is today held in place by…the incessant drone of motors that shut out the voices of birds and of the winds; by the electric lights that eclipse not only the stars but the night itself; by the air “conditioners” that hide the seasons; by offices, automobiles, and shopping malls that finally obviate any need to step outside the purely human world at all. (21)

As modern society has blocked out the natural world, it has developed the belief that it can also abusively harness nature for its own, self-serving purposes. Man no longer views nature as a living, feeling thing that is equal to civilization; today, nature is mindless, soulless, and ripe for the plucking. We raise livestock in the most inhumane conditions, pumping them full of hormones until their legs collapse under the weight of their mutated bodies, and then hack their corpses into pieces that eventually end up on our barbeque grills. Even scientists deny animals any form of soul, claiming that because animals cannot speak, their actions are a result of built-in instinct (Abram, 19). In addition to our perception of reality being construed by our synthetic physical surroundings, man is also distracted from reality by the responsibilities and stresses that entail modern society. He is constantly worrying about job promotions, deadlines, the election, the Superbowl, and the potential winner of “American Idol.” The distractions that are placed upon a person by modern society cause her to split her consciousness. Stout illustrates:

[A] wife is working frenetically to pack her briefcase, eat her breakfast, get the kids off to school, and listen to a news report on television, all at the same time. She is very distracted. In the process of all this, she bashes her leg soundly against the corner of a low shelf. Yet, the woman is not seemingly aware that she has injured herself. That night, as she is getting ready for bed, she notices that she has a large colorful bruise on her right thigh. She thinks, “Well, now, I wonder how I did that.” (587)

The wife grants so much attention to the creations of modern society that she fails to perceive physical pain. The world that she lives in requires her to multitask on a constant basis; she is continuously disassociated from reality because society forces her to split up her consciousness to such an extreme extent. She doesn’t even have time to visit the zoo; she has to pick up her children, go to work, help make dinner, watch a movie, read her kids a bed time story, and then, go back to sleep for another day of incessant obligations. Not only does the contemporary world we live in distract our senses, but it also alters them. Man lives in a society in which appearance is everything. Society is boxed in by visual advertisements on skyscrapers, in subways, on television, and even on the clothes its members wear. Appearance is idolized in the form of “ America’s Next Top Model,” by the enviable, flashy lifestyles of the stars, and by the graphic action scenes that make or break a movie and video game. Our brain is altered by this; we become, as Dennis Shulman, a figure mentioned by Sacks, claims, “visually dependent” (485). Jacques Lusseyran, another case mentioned by Sacks, goes further, asserting that sighted people living in contemporary society actually lack the level of perception that blind people have. He claims that the blind gain “a single fundamental sense, a deep attentiveness, a slow, almost sensuous, intimate being at one with the world which sight, with its quick, flicking, facile quality continually distracts us from” (Sacks, 484). The brain of a blinded individual develops to appreciate other senses; however, sighted individuals, in a world in which appearance is unequally emphasized, become increasingly dependent upon vision as the giver of perception. This leads to further ignorance, as modern scientists who deny animals their own souls have revealed. Modern society not only distracts one’s brain, but also alters it in the process, causing one to perceive a reality that is far from real.

The ignorance of modern civilization has dire consequences not only for nature, but also for civilization’s members. One’s five senses naturally yearn to interact with nature; people around the world would concur that a stroll through a thick forest that is filled with the chirping of blue birds, the trickling of streams, and the smell of young, wet pines is nothing short of relaxing. By ignorantly cutting nature from the picture, one is starving one’s self of this natural relief and the senses of certain levels of awareness. Abram reveals that upon reentrance to the industrialized world, his health and perception changed quite drastically. He claims:

As the expressive and sentient landscape slowly faded behind my more exclusively human concerns…I began to feel—particularly in the chest and the abdomen—as though I were being cut off from vital sources of nourishment. I was indeed reacclimating to my own culture, becoming more attuned to its styles of discourse and interaction, yet my bodily senses seemed to be losing their acuteness, becoming less awake to the subtle changes and patterns [of nature]. (19)

Obviously, man’s intrinsic bond with nature offers him a type of sustenance that his body yearns for; Abram suggests that nature offers something that may be necessary to leading a healthy life. Shutting out the natural world has consequences that affect our health negatively. Stout points out that the pain that Abram feels upon reentrance into his world is actually referred to as “shin pan.” She claims there is:

[…] a common Japanese term, shin pan, inexactly translated as “agitated heart syndrome,” referring to a great pain between the chest and the stomach, just under the solar plexus. Shin pan, a condition as real within Eastern medicine as a cataract or ulcer or fractured fibula within Western medicine, is a pain of the heart that does not involve the actual physical organ. In our culture, we consider such a thing—a “heartache,” if you will—to be poetry at most. We do not understand that much of the rest of the world considers it to be quite real. (595)

Thus, what Abram experienced is indeed a medical condition. Unfortunately, we do not understand “shin pan” because we are so out of touch with reality; Western scientists question validity of such a condition simply because they cannot see this pain in a physical organ. The values of a society that is disassociated from reality strike yet again, preventing us from seeing the price of our separation from the natural world. Sadly, we cannot cure what we fail to perceive. We will be unaware of a major deficiency within us, and suffer from the consequences of this ignorant oversight. After failing to exercise our other levels of awareness for an extended period of time, the brain may reallocate the areas of itself that deal with those types of awareness, drastically limiting one’s perception. Abram claims that the limitations that we place upon our senses could possibly be permanent (17). Our inability to see our unfortunate condition makes this highly feasible. Furthermore, children born into our ignorant society may be comparable to those who become deaf early in life. Of those who become deaf at a very early age, Sacks reveals, “They have no sense of having ‘lost’ the world of sound, nor any sense of ‘silence,’ as hearing people sometimes imagine…only of living in a world constructed of other senses” (Sacks, 476). In a very similar fashion, those who are, from birth, bombarded with the artificial images from a culture that blocks out the natural world and emphasizes the appearance of human-made things may never realize that they have lost something; their senses may develop unequally as sight becomes the most important aspect of their existence. They may come to live in a world constructed by unnaturally imbalanced senses. Such a child may even fail to understand that nature, like civilization, consists of living, feeling, creatures that have the same right to walk the Earth as man does. Although we fail to realize it, our lack of perception does cause us pain among other appalling consequences. Because we fail to realize it, we may not be able to prevent the results of our obliviousness from affecting ourselves, future generations, and our surroundings.

We can, however, face the problem head on. It is scientifically proven that the brain and the perception it creates are flexible and that we can use this elasticity to our advantage (Sacks, 477). Sacks illustrates the story of John Hull, who, like most of his sighted contemporaries, also over-emphasized sight. After becoming blind as a middle aged man, he actually decided to reprioritize his senses, ultimately succeeding (Sacks, 475-76). He reveals that his remaining senses, especially his hearing, which he developed to the furthest extent, increased in power. Sacks reveals:

Thus [Hull] speaks of how the sound of rain, never before accorded much attention, can now delineate a whole landscape for him, for its sound on the garden path is different from its sound as it drums on the lawn, or on the bushes in his garden, or on the fence dividing the road… [ Hull testifies, “It] gives a sense of perspective and of the actual relationships of one part of the world to another.” (476)

Hull was able to shift his senses and change his perception; he gained the ability to perceive the world to a previously unimaginable extent once he was forced to be freed from the visual constraints of society. With the ability to change our perception made evident, Stout claims that we must use it; we must confront our habits to overcome them. The advice for those wishing to overcome mental habits formed as a result of traumatic experience also rings true for those wishing to overcome mental habits implanted by society. Stout discloses:

I do know that anyone wanting to recover from psychological trauma must face just this kind of dilemma, made yet more harrowing because her circumstance is not anything so rescuable as being locked in a house, but rather involves a solitary, unlockable confinement inside the limits of her own mind. The person who suffers from a severe trauma disorder must decide between surviving in a barely sublethal misery of numbness and frustration, and taking a chance that may well bring her a better life. (580)

Like those who wish to escape the imaginary world that is created by the brain in reaction to traumatic experiences, members of modern society must also decide between the numbness and frustration of being confined within an artificial world, which limits the senses, and a better life that embraces the natural world and that allows the senses to be fully exercised. The course of action towards freedom from the deadness of the man-made world is much more painless than that from the effects of traumatic experiences, which involve facing horrific memories. Unlike those who have suffered trauma, the citizens of modernized nations are merely locked in a house; they can be easily rescued. The latter process merely involves emulating the shaman and his magic that are described in “The Ecology of Magic.” This may sound silly at first, but Abram enlightens his readers:

[This] defines a shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular nature—boundaries reinforced by social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or language—in order to make contact with, and hear from, the other powers of the land. His magic is precisely this heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations—songs, cries, gestures—of the larger, more-than-human field. (7)

By temporarily ignoring the reasoning and boundaries created by society, one can perceive reality (Abram, 7). One must figuratively live along the boundary that separates civilization and nature as the shaman literally does. Abram’s definition of “magic” reveals that it is not as mysterious and alluding as we construe it to be; rather, anybody can practice it as both the shaman and Abram have. Gaining perception of true reality is possible, necessary, painless, and rewarding.

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