Bewilderment without it life becomes stale

Abbey is a beautiful writer.  He paints a picture for the reader by not telling us about the desert but showing us the “the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last year’s scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper . . .”  I have never been to the desert, but Abbey knows exactly how to make his words jump off the page and pull the reader into this Hellish, magnificent place. He sees a paradise of life and beauty within the dead land "Life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in sparseness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock.” Abbey is completely blow away by the vast landscape that lays before him bewildered by the complete diversity in the environment and the species that live there.

There is such a wonderment experienced by the Abbey he loves the park that he watches over. Every morning he watched the bird sign their song. Maybe to mate maybe to not be lonely. But when it comes to the snakes he’s baffled by them. At one point there is a wedge head under his trailer right between his heals. And even he had the ability to kill he would hesitate Abbey even says “I’d rather kill a man than a snake.” Showing his attachment to nature. A couple days later he see to gopher snake start to perform a dance which strongly resembles one done by lovers. The ranger slowly crawls toward them watching their every move their winding and unwinding. He watches from a snake’s-eye level as the two gopher snakes put on a performance for him.  He is not afraid to get down in the dirt, up close and personal with the couple.  Even when they notice him and advance in his direction, he is “paralyzed by wonder” and does not move. Abbey’s complete connection to the world around him, his being mystified by the complex animals around him make you realize that if you didn’t have bewilderment if your life it would be quite boring. Nothing would shock you, spark that thought of “Wow would you look at that?”

Bewilderment and Certainty: The Broken Knife and The Heart of Iron 3

Bewilderment is the break of one’s daily pattern with the unforeseen. Bewilderment goes against all of the experience a person has and acts as a personal test. A test that measures how well a person can conquer the unknown. Certainty comes from all of the experience a person has, Edward Abbey’s experience with the bullhead ensured that he felt safe around the snake. Certainty is needed in our lives because it allows us to trust the world, without trust we wouldn’t be able to get anything done, because we’d always doubt the end result. Bewilderment is important because it’s fun. Finding a rattlesnake between your legs might not seem awesome at the time, but afterwards it definitely makes a good story. If everything was a pattern the world would be too boring. Let me give another example with the immortal and grand show that is Spongebob Squarepants. When Squidward has had enough torture and decides to venture out to Tentacle Acres (I googled it) he loves his new home, all of the people are like him and every day he does what he loves. But then tragedy strikes, and Squidward gets bored of living every day the same way, he misses Spongebob, he misses bewilderment. We need spongebob in our lives to keep it fresh, to introduce the unknown, to meet the unexpected. Without squarepants we would all be roundpants, never able to be content and fit in the flat chair of life. Oh and we need bewilderment too.

Least and most trustworthy the least trust worthy sense I have is vision for many factors one being that I am visually impaired and need contacts to see and without them I would not be able to distinguish anything it would all just look like black silloutes around me. I also can not see at night so without light I would be completly blind and finally the eyes can make you see things that aren't really there like when you Think you see someone you know and you turn back and it's not really them. The most reliable sense I have to say would be my sense of taste because when you eat something new you can relate it back to something you have eaten before like my friend has told me shark taste like chicken is it really chicken no but he can relate the flavor and texture back to what is familiar. Your sense of taste can also tell you when something taste off or if something needs to be added to it and also give you cravings for food you need in your body.

Reliable and Unreliable: Which is the Most Trustworthy?

After listening to the podcast "Colors" and reading "How We Listen" by Aaron Copland, I believe that our least reliable sense is our eyesight or seeing. It's not trustworthy, the little girl that didn't know the sky was blue until she was introduced to the color believed that the sky was white for the longest. Also the fact that there are so many more species that can see more colors than us gets me to believe that we only see a fraction of the world for what it really is. Imagine have 16 receptors like the mantis shrimp or even just 2 more than we have now, we would see the world in a whole new different way, and it would open us up to an entirely new world.

The most reliable of the five senses we have, is the sense of hearing. This sense just needs to be trained or it needs to flourish, for example a blind person can't see, but his sense of hearing is phenomenal they don't need to see their hearing is there vision. They develop their hearing to a stage that they hear things an average human being wouldn't be able to hear. We all have different levels of hearing if tuned we would be very extraordinary human beings, we all hear things differently, but this sense is the most reliable.  

Senses and Objectivity: Complimentary or Oxymoron?

After listening to the podcast “Colors,” and reading, “How We Listen,” I have come to the conclusion that on some level, all of our senses are subjective. All of one’s senses are detected using the human brain, and while we may all have the same ability to pick up on these senses, it is how we interpret our senses that usually differ person to person. With that being said, I think that one’s sense of touch is their most reliable trait, while the rest of one’s senses are nearly evenly less reliable, with one’s sense of hearing being the least so. 

The reason one’s sense of touch should be considered as the most reliable is because it is the least subjective. If a group of people were to touch a surface that, by scientific standards, would be undeniably rough, it would likely feel rough to most, if not everybody. The sense of touch requires the least amount of critical thought by the brain, and is the least likely to be tampered with. Some specific cases, like paralysis or arthritis, can hinder one’s sense of touch, however, they still don’t make the sense of touch any more subjective or unreliable.

On the other hand, one’s senses of listening and sight, for example, are quite unreliable. The author of “How We Listen” even went so far as to say that many aren’t conscious of an entire plane of listening when hearing music. He describes this plane as the “Musical Plane”— a plane in which we listen to music purely for the components of the music itself, like the harmony, rhythm, melody, etc. He also said, however, that people that are trained to listen to music in this way often rely on this plane of listening too much. There is a very fine line when it comes to how much or how little we should be tuned into this plane of listening, let alone the other two planes the author describes in unison. The author himself even doesn’t seem 100% sure how to describe a perfect sense of listening to his audience, purely because of its subjectivity. Similarly, in “Colors,” it is nearly immediately stated that there is no objective color. Color is interpreted different to everybody. It was even stated that 1 in every 10 males have some form of color blindness. So, with all of this being said, color may be interpreted very differently and more vividly by, say, an artist, rather than a musician; a song may also be interpreted more vividly by a musician rather than said artist. It is very difficult to tell. This is why to me, these two senses are very unreliable when it comes to objectivity.

Seeing and Feeling: Trusting Your Senses

                It is well known that our eyes are more that capable of playing tricks on us. Whether it be by the means of a random pattern of colors or through being preoccupied with other thoughts and they begin to seep from your mind to your eyes. Our sense of site is by far the least trustworthy of our senses. By now the act of seeing has become muscle memory, your first impression of most of the world is based off what one is able to see. The sense of site cannot dig deeper, it is limited to simply looking at the cover of the book, not what is within.

                The sense of feeling however, the sense of touch, provides our brains with highly critical information. With a sense of touch, we are able to establish limits and feel them physically, we are actually able to feel the existence. Touch is the most trustworthy of the senses. Whenever you to feel your heart beating in your chest or get a painful paper cut, it is a factual confirmation that we are still alive and human.

Vision and the Lack of Trust

           My thoughts about senses where quite plain before reading How We Listen, by Aaron Copland and before listening to Colors the podcast produced by Radiolab. After I completed listening to Colors I began question my own eyesight and also came to the conclusion that vision is my least trusting sense.

            I am one of the 10% males that are colorblind and have honestly never trusted my own eyesight. When the podcast Colors broke down the concept of light it even made me more untrustworthy of my sight.  Colors talks about how many animals see different things based on different visions. For example there are dogs who have only two cones, certain females who can see more colors and also a Mantis Shrimp who posses’ the most high quality vision. This leads me to believe that there are so many ways to see the world when it comes to vision and so many people see it differently. That makes me uncertain about my vision because who’s to say my vision is right or a dogs vision is right. The thing is, is that nobody is right because we all perceive the world differently.