Living in the Dark

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"The Deepest Sense" by Constance Classen talks about in the Middle Ages when the sun set, everywhere - inside and outside - would be dark. People learned to place their furniture along the walls of the house in order to move around the room safely. 

While I was studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic I took an Intercultural Communication course. One of the excursions in the class was to a simulation where a group of us walked through a series of pitch black rooms pitch, so it was like we were blind. We were led through these rooms by listening to the voice of a blind man. We had to walk through a "kitchen" and find different appliances along with walking through a "park" and guessing what each of the statues were.

None of us did very well, which is understandable because we aren't used to living a life in the dark. Our blind guide made it appear easy to walk through each of the rooms and "see" using his hands. For the blind, the sense of touch is heightened because they have to make up for their lack of sight.

In the Middle Ages people would also have to go through sensory adjustment. Their eyesight and other senses would be more adjusted to the darkness. They would be more adjusted to the nighttime being in full darkness every night for their whole life, whereas in modern times we can easily make it bright again with the flip of a switch whenever we want.

Humans experience a reality different than a ladybug or a fish because our senses are different. A TedTalk by David Eagleman talks about new technology to help the blind and the deaf use their other senses to increase their awareness of the world around them.





The simulation we went through was through Invisible Exhibition. The website is in Czech, but I attached the link below in case you wanted to check it out and are able to translate it:

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