Notes on Notes on Blindness

A few months back, I decided to jump onto the Virtual Reality bandwagon and bought myself a Samsung Gear VR headset. As much as I would love to get an Oculus Rift or a HTC Vive, they are just too expensive for me. The Gear VR however, was only $100 and is a fantastic way to get your foot into the door of VR. 

Much of my time on it, has been playing rather simple games, that in all honesty, probably could have been done with out the use of VR (and in some cases, might have been better without it). But there are gems in the small but growing library of games. Stuff like Land's End, Herobound, are great games and things like Titans of Space, and The BluVR, are excellent examples of immersive learning apps. All in all, I love the Gear VR, and even though I might not be able to play some of the biggest and newest games in VR, I still have greats like Minecraft.

Oddly the app that got me thinking the most about stuff was a small one called Notes on Blindness. On a device that is designed for the sighted, it was an app about blindness that has had the most impact on me. Notes on Blindness is a short VR story told from the audio cassettes of of John Hull as he went blind. What I found in the short videos, was something that made the Gear VR worth the buy. It immersed me deeply and moved me like few other "video games" have done in the past.

To call it a video game is not really accurate. There is no game play, all you really do is sit there and ride along with John Hull as he narrates things, but saying that cuts it short. The simple visuals combined with the great sound effects and being able to look around at what is going on all the while somehow feeling like you have lost some of your sight is a feeling I would like to share with all of you.

Like a good thought exercise should do, it got me thinking of how I perceive the world. I have rather bad eyesight, I need glasses to see, and even with the fancy best poly-carbonate or whatever the plastic lenses are, they are still pretty thick, but I can see. Sure things are blurry if I am not wearing them, and to be completely honest, even with them things aren't perfectly clear, but I can still see what is around me, see people's faces, and beautiful sights this world has to offer. I can scarcely imagine what it might be like to be blind. 

But then I thought about how everything is really geared for us who can see. From our entertainment to our private moments, we see to enjoy. There is a pretty steady estimate of 2.3% of the population is blind. Not large by the overall numbers, but that is still 700,000 children and 7.3 million adults who cannot see. It doesn't seem to matter much if you are male or female, young or old, it seems to hold close to that amount. Here in my home state, there are 270,000 blind people. 

"Being human isn't seeing, its loving." -John Hull. So much of what makes us who we are is being able to see. There could be a whole new world out there when it comes to our understanding of God if we removed sight from way we learn. I am not saying that we should have services in the dark or wrap everyone's eyes, but in our society we rely on so much sight. We need to see God, but we are called to trust, have faith and believe without seeing. I wonder if it is easier for blind people to believe than it is for those of us who can see.