?Sense Enough?
If you prick your finger, do you bleed? But how do you know if you?re bleeding? You can see it and feel it, sure, but are you actually bleeding? When you see your finger sliced open, and you see red oozing out of your pinky, how can you be sure you?re not hallucinating? Our brains don?t function perfectly all the time. In fact, our brains never function perfectly. There are always some neurons fluttering about and bouncing into each other or crashing into our sub cortex. How can we trust our sight then? Since we can?t be sure if what we?re seeing is reality because our brain might be malfunctioning or hemorrhaging, we shouldn?t believe what our eyes tell us. Have you ever could?ve sworn you saw something and then it wasn?t there? Then you unwittingly ask the people around you and say something like, ?Was someone there a second ago? I could?ve sworn I saw somebody.? Of course, there was nobody there and those people around you just look at you funny. They condescendingly respond, ?No?are you OK?? And don?t you feel like an idiot then? Of course you do. But you have to play it off like it was a joke and keep going with it, to try and redeem yourself. ?Must be that crack I smoked earlier,? or ?Damn, I?d better quit drinking.? That seems to make everything better, and those people around you laugh and stop looking at you in a funny way. These hallucinations aren?t just limited to humans, however. They also extend into the realm of inanimate objects. What?s the number one excuse for going through a STOP sign? ?I didn?t see it.?
If our optic system can?t be trusted to relay reality, what does that say for the rest of our senses? They all work together after all.
This deception doesn?t end with sight and sound, though. No, this problem is rooted much deeper than two out of five. Our ears are very skilled in the art of sense trickery. We sometimes hear our name being called, and when we turn to see who was calling us, there is no one in sight. Even when there are people around, the response is similar to the above-mentioned ghost people response. We ask the people around, ?Did you hear something?? They didn?t hear anything, because our ears were tricking us. Eerie sounds get louder when we can?t see, too.
So much of the population doesn?t have the sense to not believe everything that is handed to them, and that?s a problem. Those are the people who would go walking into an empty street and those are the people who use potholders because they believe the pot would actually burn them. However, since our senses are not to be trusted, especially sight and touch, an empty street might be full of speeding Ferraris. If you see an empty street and believe it, then it is of my opinion that you should go walk out into that street that you believe to be empty. Go ahead! But be sure to scrape yourself off of Todd?s windshield, because I certainly won?t be helping you. For all I?m aware of, you don?t exist anyway.
