Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Love at no sight

We live in a world where many people are obsessed about the way they look. You might think that blind people would attach little importance to others' looks, especially when it comes to falling in love. Some people might even say that it gives visually impaired people the moral high ground, or a better appreciation of others' personalities. Is a blind person unable to "fall in love at first sight"? Are blind people really as prejudiced as the rest of society when it comes to looks? In this magazine article for the BBC, Damon Rose invesigates perception and love.
And by the way, is it just me, or was Lionel Richie stalking that poor woman? If you are interested in building your own Lionel clay head, I found a nice website about it here.

2 comments:

KAT said...

That’s certainly an interesting article.
It dispels any hope that we can blame our prejudices on a blinding glare of physical attraction; instead, it is a more pleasant thought to realise that this sense serves us as well as any other in our interactions. The blind, lacking sight, still share our prejudices; for better or worse, are judgements are built upon more than visual perception.
Although attraction based purely on appearance is the subject of much debate, it is difficult to believe that that is purely the case. More interesting might be the loss of the sense of smell. We create pictures of each other using the conscious senses of sight or sound; the loss of the subconscious triggers of scent might be harder to compensate for. Any thoughts?

Mike Smith said...

I agree. I also think that we tend to put blind people in a special category. We all try to associate ourselves with "attractive" people. Why should blindness make us any different (or any less shallow)?