The "red-tinted glasses"

Alberto Knox’s “red-tinted glasses” experiment is simply a way to show us that people do not see the world around them as it truly is, but that there is an obstruction that contorts our views and perceptions. I believe this obstruction is caused solely by our experience and the influence the world itself, and people, have on us.

This obstruction is portrayed as the “red-tinted glasses” in the experiment that, when worn, transform our vision into a world where everything is red. Of course we know that when we take off the glasses, everything is NOT red but if we don’t, we continue living our life with the knowledge that the world is, in fact, all red. However, how can someone know that they are wearing the glasses in the first place if they have been wearing them all their life and don’t know that the glasses are not natural? As unless you know better, you wouldn’t try to remove something from yourself that you believe to be inherent. Consequently, even when you do take off the red glasses (because you know you had put on and have been wearing them and that they distort your vision), how can you be sure you aren’t still wearing another pair of “glasses” that may have been on you your entire life? Well, we can never know for sure because we have never experienced a vision without those “glasses”, if they even exist. That is, until we find a way to get those first “glasses” off. So I do believe that experience means a lot to the way we perceive the world because without it, we wouldn’t know if what we understand is real or not. Then again, even if we do experience something first hand, we still won’t know if it was truly genuine because it is only what we saw it as. Others might have been in the exact same situation and seen something completely different but I suppose I’m agreeing with the empiricists in a way; that experience still matters.

Continuing on, everyone wears those “red-tinted glasses” in some form or another but nobody’s is ever identical. For example, if one person wore blue-tinted glasses and another wore red, the person with the blue glasses would believe everything is blue while the other would believe everything is red. They would then think that everything the other person says they see is a lie because they themselves are seeing something completely different. They would only realize that the other person is right when they try on each other’s glasses. To put that into a real life, people all have different forms of obstruction that change their vision of the world. It could be religion, experience or even something they read in a very “trusted” magazine. That is why everyone has their own view on things and no one can really understand what each other sees because they have not been through the same things and simply do not share the same minds.

Take our voices for another example. The sound of our voice heard by others is never the same as the voice we ourselves hear. When you talk, you can hear yourself speak but if someone records your voice and plays it back to you, you wouldn’t recognize it as your own because you only ever hear what you sound like to yourself. You will never see through the eyes of another person (not literally) because even if you somehow manage to swap bodies with someone, it will still be you “in spirit” inside them, with your same mind and thoughts and “glasses”. For in life, those “glasses” aren’t actual physical objects we wear but preconceived opinions that influence our judgments and visions of the world, etched into our minds through individual experience. It is therefore quite impossible to swap these outlooks with anyone else.

You can say that we are born “without” any sort of “glasses” on us but as we grow up, we experience and witness things than affect our mind and change our views on life and the world. These things become our “glasses” and the only way to remove them is to erase those views. This, of course, is almost impossible because you will always have an opinion of something one way or another that influences your judgment of things. So in retrospect, those “glasses” will come naturally to you whether you want them or not. Consequently , you could say that we are born without any opinions but as soon as we commence living and experiencing even the smallest of things, we start to create our own views that shape the beginnings of our "glasses".

Many people can tell you to “open your eyes” to see the world better. But in fact, they should be saying “take of those glasses” because you can open your eyes all you want and only end up with sore eyes. To truly see the “real” world as it is, it is necessary to remove any preconceptions (glasses) we “wear” and view the world with a clear and impartial mind.