On Looking

The excerpt of “Amateur Eyes” by Alexandra Horowitz is about our lack of perception from our surroundings and the reasons for it. The author believes that we seem to ignore our environment due to our evolution, which willfully ignores what’s going on around us to concentrate better on the things we wish to do. Horowitz goes on explaining in an evolutionary way how and why we ignore what’s going on around us. I feel that the author’s ideals deserve merit, but I believe that Horowitz ignores how society and our own egos also contribute to our “ignorance” of what’s going on around us. Alexandra Horowitz points to two main issues that affect our perception of our environment, which I agree with but at the same time I believe otherwise.

Horowitz argues that part of our lack of perception is due to evolutionary traits. The author points at two main problems, one of them being from nature. According to Horowitz, “The world is wildly distracting.”, which is due to the many things the planet has: things with different colors, sizes, and so forth. I feel that Horowitz is correct, but at the same time I believe that our perception is being affected due to modern civilization. In our contemporary day and age, perception is seen as a drawback from being able to accomplish what is deemed important: work and profit. Perception is treated as daydreaming, as something that only children should do since by adulthood a person’s focus should be in labor or in a way they can improve their work. I feel that nature isn’t a distraction, but our society deems it as such.

The second problem that affects our perception, according to Horowitz, is a human’s limited capacity of perceiving his or her surroundings. Horowitz says that “our sensory system has a limited capacity, both in in range and in speed of processing”. This statement is true, and I agree with the author. Even though mankind has developed his brain after millions of years of evolution, we are still limited to our own bodies. For example, being colorblind myself, I’m not able to experience the full range of colors that other people can. At the same time, some people theorize that there may be some colors that normal humans can’t see due to our limitations. The idea that humans are limited in their capacity to perceive their surroundings is true in my opinion.

In my opinion, I believe that we should all perceive more the world that we live in. Many of the issues that affect us in modern times, like our loss of empathy towards nature and our fellow man, have occurred since we have built a barrier between our individual selves and everything that surrounds us, including other people.  We have decided unanimously that if we ignore what is happening around us, then we have no responsibility of the effects. This way of thinking reminds me of Edmund Burke’s quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. We try to take the blame off ourselves, but by ignoring what’s going on around us and not acting accordingly, we are allowing misdeeds to occur, and we are facilitating wicked acts to occur. In the end, I believe that lack of perception is due mostly to our society and our willful rejection of what’s going on around us.