WITH BOTH EYES OPEN

Leigh Travis, Ph. D.

Seeing things in perspective is not always easy.

For example, try this experiment: first, hold your index finger about 12" away from your nose, focus on your finger with both eyes. Notice how clear your finger looks to you, how round and tall, how three-dimensional, how "real". Now, close one eye and look at your finger again: notice how it has lost its "real" qualities, seems flat, two dimensional. Next, close the open eye and simultaneously open the closed eye: did it appear to you that your finger moved? Repeat the closing and opening of your eyes: does your finger appear to move back and forth, from left to right, and back again? Did you also see a patch of blackness (what the closed eyes aren't seeing) moving from side to side?

Did your finger actually move? Of course not: what you experienced was an optical illusion of sorts as a result of confusing your stereoscopic vision. If you kept one eye closed and continued to look at your finger in that way, you would be exercising a kind of conscious "selective perception," would be willfully seeing only half of the picture: the other half would be lost in blackness. We need both eyes open and focusing on a given object (or subject) to see things clearly and in perspective.

For another example of selective (one-eyed) perception, this time a complex undoubtedly unconscious psychological mis-perception more difficult to see than the trick of the wagging finger: on June 6, 1986, newscaster Paul Harvey broadcast the story of a young mother who was inside her home, housekeeping, while, outside, unseen by the mother, her infant child fell into the backyard swimming pool, and sank to the bottom. Nearby, the infant's sibling, a two-year-old, saw the infant drowning and ran inside to seek the mother's adult assistance in the emergency. The mother rushed outside and pulled her infant child, alive but not breathing, from the pool.

The mother then left the infant by the side of the pool to be supervised by her two-year-old, and went inside to dial "911" for help. However, AT & T was on strike and she was unable to get through; blinded by panic, the mother then ran to the front of the home, outside, and - screamed at the top of her lungs.

And kept screaming.

Some hundred yards away, a blind man in a wheel chair, whose legs had been blown from him by a land mine in Viet Nam, heard the mother's screams and began wheeling himself towards the screeching noises. However, his wheels got snagged in weeds approximately 80 yards short of the screams and, pushing himself off the wheelchair, he crawled the remaining distance to the frenzied mother, was led by her to the infant, who had now turned blue, administered first aid and saved the infant's life.

How do you interpret this tale? Paul Harvey saw it as a tale of heroism: is this in perspective, or did Mr. Harvey have one eye closed?

Look at the story again, this time with both eyes open, using what might be called your "stereotypical vision" (the ability to spot stereotypical perceptions in yourself and other people). What you might see with this second look is a picture not only of a rescueof a poor Damsel in Distress and her child, but also the other half of the picture, a picture of a negligent, incompetent, and hysterical American female, whose parenting skills are at best adolescent. Here, I do not only refer to her screaming helplessly instead of doing something real to help her child: I refer to the fact that had it not been for the common sense of her two-year old, the mother could have been charged with criminal negligence, of which crime - had the infant died - she was clearly guilty.

With both eyes still open, you should also see - as did Paul Harvey - a "hero," a Knight in Shining Armor, a hero who had already proven his heroism, apparently at great cost to himself, in a war fought to (in part)protect women and children from Godless Communism. But the tale not only does indeed have one hero - whose heroism in war has rendered him blind and legless, but nonetheless of clear head and good heart - it has another hero as well: the two year old child!

Please notice, however, that our heroes are only one half of the tale: with both eyes open what emerges from the darkness is the other half of the story, a villainess whose outrageously incompetent behaviors Mr. Harvey was apparently unable to see clearly, or perhaps see at all. Maybe Mr. Harvey had one eye closed, selectively perceived only that level of the tale that suited his biases: who is it, we may rightfully ask, that Paul Harvey - consciously or unconsciously - wanted to see, who is it that he wanted to prevent himself from seeing? For the three-dimensional message of the tale, it seems to me, is not that men should spend their lives being heroes in wars and rescuing inadequate mothers and hapless infants, but that little children should not be left alone with young mothers who don't know elementary first aid. Period. But we can all see that now.

Can't we?