Eyes are the Window to the Soul

by Matt Perry

I had a visit to an eye doctor today and had to get my eyes dilated, and I will admit that it made me think, with help from my further understanding of L'Intrus and the idea of self, of the phrase "The eyes are the window to your soul." Thinking back to the moment the doctor examined through my dilated pupils the health of my retina and optic nerves, I can not help but think this phrase, and how ideas of the self and the soul are commonly connected. All was well with the check, and thus my soul windows are still functional and dissecting that phrase, even more, I can understand how the concept of self, or the soul, is so intrinsically hidden from itself, and how deep down the rabbit hole of thought about self can go. I think at its core, this phrase holds up well when held against when viewed metaphorically. If we envision the body as a house of the soul, the eyes are where we perceive all visual stimuli; however, this window only goes one way, so the eyes are more akin to the one-way mirror. Like a glass window, they can be modified with films, and additional supplements to what they do, but ultimately, they are fragile, and out of all parts of the house, they show wear the most, but humans don't have Windex to clean away the blurriness in their vision, and in a purely utilitarian sense, parts of the eye are replaceable. So this came full circle back to L'Intrus, and I think that while this thought of self was something I had considered in the past, this class has helped me understand the replaceability of the body, and it is terrifying how replaceable a body can be, but also so integral to life.

In podcast episode 7, in which Professor Donig interviewed Arthur Caplin, bioethics was heavily discussed, and I think the discussion of brain death was fascinating in the context of self, as we hold the self as being rooted in the brain, so brain death is ultimately the end of self in a way that happens before the body can end. I think diverging from the idea of self, this interview was extremely fascinating in how it discussed progress in biotechnology, as it brought up moments in which unethical experiments were performed in the name of making scientific discoveries. This caught me especially so due to Arthur Caplin specifically using the word suffering in relation to progress, and I think the examples mentioned are strong examples of times in which human suffering led to scientific progress. In relation to the current times of the pandemic, it is terrifying to think about how much suffering is happening before we get to progress. The lag time between patient zero, and the time that our government officials made any mandates regarding masks and business closures absolutely had to come after suffering, and one issue I feel is really essential to understanding the growth of this pandemic in the United States is the lack of value placed on certain human lives. Whether explicitly said or not, the lack of adequate response and handling of this pandemic by certain government officials, are showing that the line in the sand between those suffering and not is the access to wealth as well as the access to scarce healthcare resources. Reusing the analogy that Professor Donig has used so many times about the current moment being like a fallen tree that we cannot stop, steering it in a direction that supports all people in the United States can be commonly countered with a "who is going to pay for that?", and whether the answer is though repurposing accumulated wealth or more suffering, I am unsure; but value is found in both the dollar and life, yet one must exist or the other loses meaning.