Sunday, March 12, 2006

Would you rather...

lose your sense of sight or sense of hearing? And don't say "neither" because that's a copout response that requires no thought, and we don't have room for nonsense like that on the comment page. I want you to think about it and explain your answer.
The only conditions are as follows:

We ARE talking about at this point in your life. So you HAVE known what it's like to have both. Picture a degenerative disease or something of that hypothetical nature.

Think and then comment! I'm curious...

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm...that's a really good question. I think I would have to say I would rather lose my ability to hear. To me, being able to hear would be terrifying if I couldn't see my surroundings. Although, not to be able to hear music would be devastating to me. But, you said we had to choose one so I choose to lose hearing.

Anonymous said...

i say sight because we tend to take our hearing for granted. if i am not able to see, i think i would pay more attention to the sounds around me... those i hear every day, but don't think twice about.

Daron said...

O man. Um, I would probably say hearing. The music thing would definitely be a major concern, because I love to sing so much! However, I just don't think I could deal with losing my eyesight.

Then again, because I do love music and singing so much, losing my hearing would also be devastating. I don't know! Sorry, I didn't exactly give a straight up answer, but I did give reasons for choosing each one...do I get credit?

Anonymous said...

I would rather lose my hearing. I can't imagine not being able to see the faces of my loved ones. It would hurt not to hear their words...but I would say I'd rather see them. There are many ways to communicate without hearing, but there is no other way to physically see people.

Anonymous said...

I definitely would rather loose my hearing. Think about it from this prospective. Our senses are how we interact with and detect the world around us! The most important of these interactions socialy and biblicaly is of course communication!

Initialy, this fact would seem to be contrary to choosing hearing, but if you think about it, words very seldom communicate what we think, feel, and desire half as well as body launguage such as facial expressions, hand guestures, and posture. A person who has no hearing can still communicate verbaly on some level (though it's not well) and the same person can still read lips or rely on sign language for understanding the words someone else is trying to portrey. However though, a person who looses sight looses the ability to sense the smiles, glares, reaches, and eyes that reinforce or even disprove the words that a person says. Without these, you have to rely on a person's openness to understand where they're realy coming from, while with the ability to see them you can tell if someone is emotionaly high or down, excited or relaxed, longing or cringing, tired or wired, in pain or in extacy. These all are things you would loose if you lost visual sensory.

Anna said...

I would rather lose my hearing. I would miss music, but I know so many great songs already, and would still have those in my mind. Losing my sight would more substantially limit social interaction and daily living. And I agree with the whole body language/facial expression. You can read so much of what people are saying without actually hearing them.

Anonymous said...

at this point in my life i think i would rather lose my sense of hearing because it would be easier to get around if i could still see. Though i love music so much, i have enough good songs that are always in my head that i think i would be ok. besides, cleaning up after a seeing eye dog when ur blind would be too hard! :) holla at a playa when you see her on the street. cassie <><

Anonymous said...

All of your commenters are completely wrong. Sense of sight is worth way less than hearing. Your ability to talk and effectively communicate will also go with your hearing, thus making it the most lonely experience. And, lets face it, blind people seem wise. They have a methodical wisdom about them that only comes from the lack of encumberances of visual superficialities. WHOO WHAA. You go girl.

Anonymous said...

Definitely hearing. To lose your sense of sight is more debilitating than to lose your hearing. Deaf people can still drive cars and are less limited in their ability to communicate. They've even developed a program to where you can sign through a webcam to someone else's computer- kinda like videoconferencing. A girl I worked with was Deaf and she was completely independent - it didn't seem to hinder her from doing anything, whereas being blind seems to come with more limitations.

Plus for me personally, I read people by watching them - seeing how they respond rather than what they say. And using that to figure out how much to trust them and how honest they're being and other things. And that's huge to me. I couldn't willingly give that up.

Although i would miss phone convos.

Anonymous said...

Definitely smell. I mean, I can see it getting you into trouble if there's a gas leak or something, but other than that. Oh that's not an option, then definitely hearing. Just look at people when they're wearing those stupid headphones. They couldn't be happier, because they don't have to listen to you, but you sure as heck(keeping it clean) have to listen to them. All their thoughts are coming out and loud. And I think you could still "hear" music in your head. Didn't Beethoven write his last symphony without the use of his ears? BOO-YAH. Rata tata tata.

Anonymous said...

i would much rather lose my hearing. While there are many wonderful things in this world to hear, such as celine dion, bacon sizzling, and my grandmother yelling "Yatzee", there's one thing i can easily (and would love to) live without...the sound of people eating.

will

Brooklyn said...

I would definitely choose to lose sight because it would awful not to be able to hear music anymore!! Especially playing the piano...i can play without looking but to not be able to hear the notes coming together...I've thought about this before, so thats my answer!

Anonymous said...

Lauren,
That's a good one. I would prefer to lose my sight for many reasons. For one thing, if I lost my sight I could block out all of the ugliness in the world. If I lost my sight and still had my hearing I could still hear the excitement, concern, care, etc in Stephen's voice every time I talk with him. If I only had my hearing, then all of my other senses would heightened. If I maintain my hearing, I can still talk and listen to my favorite music and hence dance like noone's looking. I really don't think that by losing sight you lose the ability to communicate with your face. Just because you are blind doesn't mean you are expressionless.