Tag: hear

Everyday Concepts which are Almost Impossible to Explain as a Challenge

Everyday Concepts which are Almost Impossible to Explain as a Challenge

The concepts “perspective“, “music“, “flavor“, “home” and “God” do not need to be explained for most of us as we see or experience them multiple times in our daily lives. It’s not rocket science, but how would you describe these concepts to someone that has never felt them or has no reference points that can guide them to understanding the concept. Look at these cases below and have some time to think before continuing to read:

Imagine

  • meeting a blind person since birth, and he asks you to describe what “perspective” is in “art”.
  • coming accross someone born deaf, and you are asked to define “music“
  • chatting with an anosmic person and she wants you to tell her all about “flavor“
  • being abducted by nomad aliens, who do not have the notion of “home“. How would you persuade them to take you home?
  • you are a preacher and you somehow time travel to the stone age and meet a bunch of cavemen… Tell them about “God” and preferrably convince them.

    perspective1 Perspective – About two decades ago, we teenagers did not have mobile phones. We were “social” but lacked “media”, so we frequently gathered face-to-face and had these brain teasers as challenges. The first one was “How to describe perspective to a person born blind”. The best way, we agreed upon was to use another sense other than seeing to describe it. As the most developed sense in blindness is “hearing“, we decided to use that to explain the concept.

The Method: Switch on the TV, pick a channel with a weak signal (preferrably one with white noise), volume up, guide the blind person towards the TV, ask them how loud they can hear, take a few steps and repeat the process, go to another room (a distant one) together and ask about the loudness of the sound again, tell them that the closer an object is, the bigger it seems… Just like the “white noise” of the TV set. The closer they are to the sound source, the bigger the object is…

music1

Music – Explaining the concept of music to a deaf person is no different. But, here, we picked another sense (touch) to explain the concept since vision would not work.

 

The Method: Switch on a music set that is connected to huge amps, tell the deaf person to touch the amp with both hands, play a song with a repeating melody in high volume, sit back and relax as the vibrations will do the trick…

How-to-Reduce-Salt-and-Retain-Flavor-700x395

Flavor – Anosmic people cannot smell nor taste flavors, so this one is going to be tricky as this time it’s two senses that are useless. I think it’s best to use “touch” one more time.

 

The Method: Prepare a table of various food with different flavors, seat the anosmic person, tell them to close their eyes, feed them with one hand, touch them with the other hand in different ways (a gentle caress, patting the head softly, a back rub or a slight slap on the cheek) for each flavor and ask them how it feels. For sweet flavors, do the pleasent touches, for bitter or sour ones, do the not-so-pleasent strokes… For leek, punch them 🙂

The last two concepts; “Home” and “God” are challenges for you to tackle. Think about them for some time, then leave a comment on this post. I’ll reply every comment!

Thanks for reading…

 

The Evolution of Sound to Rhythm

The sounds of nature have always been so soothing, peaceful whether it’s birds singing in harmony in the morning breeze or wind gushing through a dense forest, shaking each leaf to create a note to our liking. What about the sound of flowing or falling water? It would have been marvelous if it didn’t make you want to pee after a long exposure.

So, do all sounds fill us with joy?

An average adult hears about 712000 different sounds every day, from sounds of speech to sounds of cars honking and not all sounds we hear are pleasant  (The figure I provided above is made up to give this article the credibility that some people long for. After all, it’s not a rounded up number, so all such figures are credible enough for some readers to proceed).

The sounds of traffic, a baby crying to an audience of strangers, a dog barking at irregular intervals at a distance or a boss shouting at an employee at regular intervals at a proximity are all enough to fill us with unexplained rage.

But, why?

The answer lies in the familiar rhythm that we are born with: our heartbeats! A silent sound that goes on within us until the end. And the heart is nearly always associated with love thus we love the sound of love.

There are still some things unexplained like the torture method of making one listen to the rhythmic sound of a dripping tap, the ticktocks of a grandfather clock or some forms of youth music.

After all, we are only human.