Thread by @KrisAtLarge

I / we have *strabismus*. that's where your eyes don't quite line up, and you see a double image—if you're even *aware* of the double image, because usually the brain ends up picking one and passing it along through the human perceptual apparatus. it's very annoying.

(1/x)

it's taken us a long time even to be aware of it. for a while I used to think it was *caused* by drinking, but drinking turned out to be irrelevant—it was just that I was more apt to notice the strabismus when I was drunk. it leads us to make many mistakes of vision.

(2/x)

such unreliabilities of perception are not easy to talk about in Western society; bullies and abusers currently have the uppermost, in terms of popular psychological advice. in the U.S., @GOP and #Christian fascısts have infested the "soft sciences", specially #psychology.

(3/x)

such charlatans as @jordanbpeterson in Canada, and @DouglasKMurray in Britain (and that @Quillette crowd in Australia)show how widespread the phenomenon is.

all these people recognize only two kinds of humans: functioning ones and broken ones. the saved and the damned.

(4/x)

these people are bigots; they divide people up into groups, and treat people in those groups according to their stereotypical notions of what those people are like. this extends to *all* human characteristics. @jordanbpeterson isn't just one bigot, he's _hundreds at once_.

(5/x)

and one of those habitual bigotries is against anyone with impaired eyesight.

people with faulty sight or *no* sight are habitually treated like _broken people_ in the purportedly #Christian values of right-wing politicians (and those of Mr. @jordanbpeterson).

(6/x)

Western society doesn't have a place for anyone with any disability.

possession of a complete set of all the usual human body parts, in pristine working order, is about the only situation that any Western person (especially if they're right-wing) is prepared to meet.

(7/x)

in fact, people like @jordanbpeterson or @RichardDawkins probably feel vaguely that disabilities only ought to be tolerated in soldiers and police officers (and their colleagues). they would have good reasons for it that they never can quite bring themselves to explain.

(8/x)

anyway I've had that *one* disability to deal with at least: strabismus. I'm experiencing right now! I'm still typing with both eyes open even though I can see two images. if I need, I can close one eye.

strabismus has gotten me into a whole heck of a lot of accidents.

(9/x)

or *us* rather. Kris and myself. we've misjudged distances, read the wrong words on the page, missed road signs, that kind of thing.

that ain't the half of it though! you see...there's something more upsetting than "seeing double". something trickier for the brain.

(10/x)

that's when the left eye and the right eye see two different things. yes, it happens—we've caught a few definite instances of it. one eye arrives at a slightly different notion of what you're seeing than the other. one eye sees a heap of clothes; the other eye sees a cat.

(11/x)

then you blink or shake your head or whatever and refocus, and your eyes are back in agreement.

we've, uh...we've been given reason to believe that this unusual phenomenon—this occasional mismatching of input from our eyes—has been important to us in the past.

(12/x)

but because it's so *disruptive*, we've dissociated from most experiences of it, especially in the early days.

we're still sorting out a lot of this stuff. we feel as though we're only semi-aware of all the pitfalls in our perceptual apparatus.

(13/x)

people talk about "liminal experiences" a lot, in a way that's meant to be spooky, but "liminal" covers a lot of territory, and a lot of that territory is pretty humdrum.

like, can you taste the gum any more when you chew it? you're entering "liminal" territory.

(14/x)

you're testing your own thresholds of detection: is there any mint taste left in this wad of gum? or is it expired? I don't know if anyone's had a spiritual experience while "stimming" by chewing gum, but it seems likely enough to me.

why am I talking about this stuff?

(15/x)

because I think that we—we in general, the people of Western society—have been taught to ignore the wobbliness of our own perceptions and our own bodies. #capitalism and #Christianity have poisoned Western culture; they've got us terminally fixated on perfection.

(16/x)

there truly are human beings on Earth right now (@dalepartridge, maybe, or @MattWalshBlog) who would claim that my "lazy eye" (that's a vulgar term for strabismus) was a sign of some mental disorder—something that meant they no longer needed to consider me fully a person.

(17/x)

I mean, they'd do that for *other* reasons, but the "lazy eye" would be enough.

it can be anything. @dalepartridge is fully capable of regarding a random involuntary spasm of a person's eyelid as evidence of demonic possession. he can't WAIT to damn people, on the spot.

(18/x)

(that's because Partridge is in need of company, where he is—but let's end for the night, shall we?)

~Chara of Pnictogen

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