What does it mean to see?

This was the last post that I worked on a few years ago before simply quitting the blog. The end was abrubt, as I'd reached a kind of emotional cliff with it. Listing the physical, perceptual and cognitive aspects of eyesight was a fairly straightforward matter. Delineating limitations and the decisions that those limitations implied was more difficult.
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Most of us might think that this question is hardly worth asking as the answers must be terribly obvious. But for those of us who have lost or are facing the loss of our eyesight the question takes on special meaning.

We are primarily visual creatures. Of all the creatures of the earth, from the blind to the gifted, our eyesight falls somewhere in the middle in terms of acuity, field of vision, color sensitivity, contrast discrimination and phase or pattern discrimination (Simplified, how do we detect edges, borders and lines on often chaotic backgrounds? How is the “line” at the edge of a table discerned from the “line” that separates two tiles on the floor?). Taken in context with the other senses such as hearing, the vestibular, and the kinesthetic, vision is crucial in everyday life. We can hear lower pitched noises than most dogs. Combine that with an ability to visually locate sounds approximately twelve times faster than a horse and considering that this must all occur in the context of how the head is oriented in space and we have the makings of an incredibly refined and sensitive system. We can see in “frequencies” above that of those that either cats or dogs can sense (Though their superior ability to sense lower frequency movement makes them look insane as they track and pounce on shadows that we cannot see.). Nearly the entire back or “occipital” portion of our brains to a depth of about 3 millimeters is dedicated specifically to vision – far larger than the proportions found in most other animals.

Human eyesight can be effectively divided into 3 component parts: 1)The optical, or that which occurs inside the eye, as in a telescope – the mechanics of vision, if you like, 2) the perceptual, or that which occurs in vision systematically, from the retina, the retinal ganglion, through the optic nerve and the central visual pathways of the brain to the visual cortex itself and, lastly 3) cognition, which is an extremely broad term but for our purposes can be thought of as a subset of visual perception that includes how we think about what we see and how visual phenomena such as optical illusions and “figure/ground” effects are interpreted.

Vision is a sense that we so take for granted that we seldom consider the practical or emotional components to it. It simply “is what it is” until something goes wrong with it. When something goes seriously wrong with our eyesight what it means to see comes to include our physical safety and our emotional well-being. For those not suffering with a serious visual impairment this may be difficult to get a handle on.

Vision is very much about our ability to navigate and accumulate information. It is about being able to drive yourself to work, see the highlights in your lover’s hair, find your keys, see a movie, read a book and appreciate art. It’s about being able to see the stars. It can be about being able to take that discreet, appreciative sidelong glance at someone you find attractive. It can be about being able to see that appreciative sidelong glance, as well. [A1]

The first thing that comes to mind with regard to physical safety is mobility and navigation. Some of us have continued to drive well beyond the point that we should have stopped, for our own sakes as well as for the sake of those that we’ve shared the road with. I stopped driving nearly twelve years ago but only after several close calls with other cars as well as pedestrians. Navigation and orientation on foot may also become problematic. Still in that “in between” time of being sighted and being impaired but having already attended blind school I often exercised the option to navigate city streets and the insides of office buildings without my cane. Though I’m still here to tell the tale, I’ve not escaped the exercise of that option unscathed

To see, and be a male who exercises even a minimum of freedom, means to drive. In Portland, it meant the ability to independently plan for a hiking trip, alone or with a friend if my wife wasn't up to going, pack my shit up, set my alarm, wake and go - to just drive away, whenever and whereever I wanted. It's an even bigger deal here in Phoenix, where people don't seem to bat an eyelash at driving 20 miles for dinner our or a trip to Best Buy. So driving, for these purposes, is about the ability to move about freely and independently - to just go when it suits us. As a measure of both internal and external independence (degree of independence as perceived by others; i.e., "He's a rugged and independent man.) the ability to not simply move yourself from point A to point B, but the ability and inclination to drive yourself there, becomes and extremely important component with regard to how we fit in socially. Another way of looking at this independence might be in terms of what kind of help we can offer those who need it; our families, our friends, our co-workers. Who's turn is it to drive us to lunch? Who's going to help you move this weekend? I'll refer directly back to this in talking about what it might mean to be without eyesight, but we'll stick with this for now.