the red tinted glasses

My interpretation of the metaphor, “red-tinted glasses” relates to the limitations of what our senses can detect and what we think there is. The red-tinted glasses give us a false interpretation of the world being displayed in colours of crimson and pink; “the glasses limit the way you perceive reality”. However, we know that the world is not only in shades of red as we understand that it is portrayed in red merely because we are wearing a pair of filter glasses.

This goes back to the rationalists and the empiricist; it is only due to reason that we understand that the world is not simply in shades of red; it is because of knowledge that we are not deceived by the tinted glasses. However, this does not mean we should simply base everything on knowledge, like the rationalists did.

Yet the fact that the glasses have deceived us into believing the world is red shows that the empiricist’s beliefs are wrong and cannot be trusted; “Don’t believe everything you see”. I agree with this thought as there is more than what meets the eye. The metaphor “red-tinted glasses” also directly relates to a Chinese proverb, which literally means “do not wear coloured glasses” – this means that we should not be superficial and judge people simply from their appearance before knowing them personally.

However, in reality, people in society still wear tinted glasses. The human senses are simply too shallow; a lot of people judge people by their appearance, their sexuality or their race etc. For example, some people discriminate against coloured people, simply because they look different. Again, our perception of people is misled due to our senses. Other stereotypical thoughts such as “all Asians have small eyes” or “all blondes are stupid” limit our vision. Simply basing their opinion on people from what you have been told or generalising from previous experience will mislead you. Thus your ‘knowledge’ of others may not be reliable. People who only interact with others that resemble the same race or appearance are never going to reach beyond their ‘circle of safety’ and never going to succeed beyond that point.

My experience would be that there was a classmate who appeared very quiet and, what it seemed, boring. Thus, I didn’t approach her. It was not until fate placed us into working a group together, that I got to know her better and thus becoming friends after that. If I had not put on a pair of tinted glasses, I would’ve gotten to know her better earlier.

The red tinted glasses are worn on people’s eyes due to peer pressure and social influences. Kant tries to explain to us in this chapter that we cannot believe everything that we see, but we cannot base everything through knowledge either. I believe that the message sent across is that by relying on our knowledge or senses alone, our perception would be deceived and thus we must incorporate both beliefs together for us to remove the tinted glasses from our eyes and to broaden our horizons.