As I relinquished my eyes and put myself in the body of a blind man I felt my humanity. I was still me, still a human, except one of my channels had been cut, but my being stayed intact. I thought of Hellen Keller, what if more channels were cut? If I couldn't hear, couldn't smell, couldn't touch, I would still be me, couldn't taste? Though without exposure to others and the outside world it would be hard for me to grow, to find my self. I would have nothing to analyse, to compare myself to. One step further, I would still be me without hands, without legs, so clearly I am not merely my body, am I my brain? My measly organic brain? Even if I am, a person without channels is tantamout to an autist, channels are intrumental to the blossoming of intelligence, in a way the tools are on the same footing as the foundation.
Back to simple blindness: the blind since birth must have a different concept of what a person is. For an eminently visual being as the human it is easy to forget it's simply a sense, to the blind you have no skin color, no beauty in form, their exposure to you is a collection of smells, touches and sounds, aspects which are minor to us compared to our vision, but are we any of those senses either? We are not, of course, again they are just channels we can use to transmit information and feelings to one and other. Looking at it more deeply, who are we? How can we have contact with someone else's being rather than just their body. We can't, or more precisely we do it all the time, we create a language with the mixture of symbols available or taught to us and translate an abstract thought through the physical world to be decoded by the receiving other. How superficial is the closeness of the caress of skin compared to the formless concept of affection it points to?
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