Reply #62: You said it!

[vickitulsa]

About how a blind person could see so much better than the rest of us....

And she was not just blind, but blind AND DEAF! Completely, not partially. I think none of us can even begin to imagine what it was like to live inside her body, trying as a young being to figure out the world outside herself and her own place in it.

That's why I'm so glad she became a very public woman and did so much, wrote so much, taught so much, after she had studied and grown into a wonderfully intelligent and eloquent adult. Her very life itself is an amazing and beautiful example of the best human traits and capabilities. But her intellectual conclusions go far beyond even that brilliant light she represents, I think.

Paraphrasing your statement, I would say, "How could someone with no sight have so much insight?!" :)

The only way I can imagine what she went through from the time her illness took her sight and hearing is to think of the sensory deprivation chambers that have been created by those wishing to study human endurance for this sort of thing. The way I understand it, individuals are immersed in a sealed container of water that is body temperature, floating and with all sight and hearing muffled to nothing artificially.

I've read that many of the early astronauts in testing and training went through this. In fact, it was quite enlightening for the experimenters, who found that people have a decided inability to sanely cope with such extreme isolation. There were reports of disturbing hallucinations occuring after only a short time in such a chamber.

I also recall that Jeri Cobb, who was an Oklahoma native and the woman who ranked first among the FIRST female astronauts program (that was cancelled "for no reason" early on, only much later to be revived), held out longest in the sensory deprivation environment before calling to be let out. And generally, their findings were that women, for some unknown reason, generally could bear up longer in that state than the men in the astronaut program! Interesting, eh?


Thanks for this link -- this is great reading.