Jill, yes, thanks. That makes sense. Bland no longer has the time to keep up with subjects like these as much as he would like!
One phenomena bland found greatly intriguing in his student days was "blind sight", which would occur if there was damage to parts of the actual image-producing areas of the brain. Subjects would be able to sensorily detect a ball being tossed at them and react either to evade or catch it, because the nerve pathways the actually "perceive" it were still intact, but there was no way for the brain to actually register an image of what was happening.
This intrigued bland more than anything else for its value as a suggestive metaphor of the whole human condition. We are able to sense, respond, react, etc., to the world and its events around us within certain strictly defined perceptual ranges (time frequencies, light frequencies, sound frequencies, etc.)...but we cannot form an adequate image of reality outside those ranges. We are tuned only to specific bands of the spectrum, yet the entire spectrum bathes over us at each and every moment. Therefore there are influences constantly exerted on us that we are unable to recognize and "objectify" both in "real time" and on reflection. Non-verbal communication, "entrainment" to other individuals or groups, circadian and many other overlapping biological rhythms, etc., are a few examples. Our "equipment" simply does not capture these forces and their effects on us within the same frequency range that our perceptions generally deliver to our consciousness as "cause and effect". The information is there, but it's not processed to our immediate consciousness in a way that we can understand it for what it is. So we make and act on interpretations based on just snippets of the data that actually appear on our screen.
It's rather like cable TV. Infinite channels, but we can only watch one at a time, no matter what else is on. The story line is infinite, but we can only the follow the station we have on. |
