Assignment 2!

The metaphor ‘red-tinted glasses’ can be interpreted as how things appear to our perception, be it different or similar. This view is affected by our upbringing, culture and heritage –leading to us being individuals. In some occasions, it is how we CHOOSE to perceive what we see and what experience has taught us to view it as. However, we must also combine the rationalists’ view in to form a complete puzzle of our perception. We require ‘reason’ to see what we can. Hence, to sum up in a few words, the ‘red-tinted glasses’ is a representation of our mind – the instrument which helps us to determine how we interpret and see.

In life, we often see things through rose-colored glasses, which mean carrying an optimistic way to view people. However, we also ‘wear colored glasses’ – a Chinese proverb meaning that we view things derogatively. We ‘use’ these ‘glasses’ to determine people - whether they’re smart or tempestuous through their appearances. This I believe is a stereotypical barrier. We are prevented to view the ‘real’ side of matters and hence neglect them. What is considered as our ‘knowledge’ from our shallow first glance might not be always correct and unreliable. From this, we can conclude that there are two layers to different matters – we could stop at the surface, or we could continue digging deeper.

Another example is an ink drawing. This is often used as a psychology experiment – by opening an ink bottle and just splattering the ink onto a sheet of paper, and asking the subjects what they can see. Often, everyone has different answers, hence showing that we are all different and through wearing our ‘red-tinted glasses’, we still may not view the same things the same. This situation also proves that not all can be reasoned – we cannot limit what people imagine and think. In a nutshell, we once again need two sides to each and everything – the empiricist’s ‘all knowledge of the world proceeded from the senses’ view as well as the rationalists’ ‘the basis for all human knowledge lay in the mind’, in order to take a closer step to a more ‘whole’ view.

In the book, I particularly liked the quote ‘if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn’t understand it’ A question is brought up from this: are we looking deep enough into things? Besides from surpassing the surface, should we look into matters even more?

Hence, to conclude, we should push away the barriers and prejudice that we are clutching on, and breakthrough obstacles and fears.