My own understanding of the metaphor related to the red tinted glasses is that we limit or affect our thoughts to the interpretation of our senses. By this I mean that if somehow we were born with these tinted glasses glued to our eyes, we will only see everything in shades of red – perhaps we will think that the world only exists in shades of red. However, Knox says to Sophie that she “cannot say the world is red even though you conceive it as being so”.
On the other hand, if only 50% of the population were to be born with glasses, then those without glasses will be able to tell that the world was not just shades of red. These will have the experience and the knowledge while those with glasses will only be told about these ‘colors’ and have the knowledge, but not the experience, let’s call them rationalists. Rationalists are those who only believe in reason and turn it into knowledge. Their ‘rivals’, the empiricists, will only base their knowledge on what they feel.
I think this metaphor fully relates to our lives. For example, stereotyping a certain group of people limits us to certain thoughts about them without really knowing them. We are allowing these shaded glasses tell us that all these people are ‘dark’ or ‘bright’ or whatever has been telling you, and it affects our thought and perspective on these people because you’ve already been told and you haven’t really met these people yet, so you only have the ‘knowledge’. The ‘knowledge’ might not even be correct at all!
Therefore, we cannot completely rely on either sense or theory/knowledge, but combine them together before making a judgment.
1 comment:
I must agree that stereotyping is a very typical and good example to illustrate the tinted-red glasses. The way we perceive things area affected by what we are told - knowledge. These may sometimes be wrong which often results to us reaching inaccurate or poor conclusions of other people.
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