Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Andrew Leland's world is gradually shrinking. In the author's 2023 talk, he explains how his disappearing field of vision has shaped his perspective and understanding. And it has implications for how the rest of us see our identities. He'll explain after the break.
A white man with glasses sits at a marble table next to a plate of sliced pears.
Chapter 2: When does vision loss become blindness?
Hi, I'm Andrew Leland. I'm blind, and this is a TED Talk about blindness, which is confusing for me and for you, because just by watching me right now, you can probably tell I'm not blind. For example, I can tell that on this plate right here, there are five slices of pear arranged in a smiley face. Or that that is a photograph of a very sad hippo.
So you might be wondering, if I can see all that, why am I talking about blindness? Okay, so I'm going blind. I don't know exactly when. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, which is a degenerative retinal condition. In my teens and early 20s, I only noticed it at night. Then in my early 30s, my peripheral vision started to deteriorate.
Right now, I have central vision, but I'm seeing the world through a pretty narrow porthole. So even though I can see these pears and that hippo, I'm legally blind. I have severe tunnel vision, but it doesn't look like a tunnel because your brain adapts really quickly to whatever you see.
Like if the frame of the movie you're watching starts to shrink to a much smaller size, at first you'll be annoyed. This sucks, you might say to yourself. I don't like watching this movie on this tiny screen. Then your complaints will soften and disappear, and your brain will adapt to the new normal.
Like the first time you watch a movie on your cell phone, it'll be annoyingly small at first, and then you just get used to it. So every time I lose another chunk of vision, at first I feel super extra blind, sometimes scared or claustrophobic. My world is shrinking. But then a week will go by, I get used to it. I don't feel so blind anymore.
This experience of super gradual vision loss has given me time to think about what blindness is, which might seem like an obvious question. Blindness is the absence of sight, but it's actually more complicated than that. Trying to define blindness can start to feel paradoxical. There's a paradox that's useful in thinking about blindness. It's called the paradox of the heap.
Let's say you have a heap of something, like sand or marbles or goji berries. Now, imagine I take a single little goji berry off of the heap. Is it still a heap? Okay, what if I remove a second tiny little goji berry from the heap? Obviously, that is still a heap also. But the ancient Greek philosopher wondered, at what point is it no longer a heap? How many goji berries do I have to remove?
Is it still a heap when there's only 10 left? Five? Vision works this way too. How much vision do I need to lose before I can legitimately call myself blind? I saw this photo online the other day.
In the photo, a black woman holds a white cane and looks at a cell phone.
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Chapter 3: What does it mean to be legally blind?
At a certain point, we do have to agree that someone's not blind, even if they don't see very well. I do think it's important to reserve blindness for people who don't have the luxury of correcting their vision, who need assistive technology to do things like read print or walk around. On the other hand,
Separating out blindness like this can lead people to view the blind as strange or mysterious or off-putting. And that can lead to fear and sometimes damaging misconceptions and stereotypes, like the idea that blind people are psychic, which some people actually believe, or that they have super hearing.
Words appear, superpowers for the blind. The brain rewires itself to boost the remaining senses.
or more destructively, that they can't go to a normal school or hold a normal job or travel on their own. So the next time you see a blind person do something that you think only a sighted person should do, like making eye contact with you or watching a movie or standing at a bus stop checking their phone, remember, it might be possible to see, even if you're blind.
Genomics pioneer Robert Green says many parents want their healthy newborn's DNA screened for diseases that may or may not show up later in life. There is an argument that knowledge is power, and many families would like to know everything, whether it's treatable or not. The debate over revealing the secrets in babies' DNA. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.
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