Blindness

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I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.” José Saramago’s Blindness can be viewed as an allegory for a world where we see but in fact neglect what is around us. It is a human condition, unquestionable a disease that in contemporary time has only agravated. Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, not one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind." Film adaptation: there is a good film by Fernando Meirelles also called Blindness starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael García Bernal, released in 2008. While this adaptation isn't as graphic and visceral as Saramago's novel, it's still worth seeing. It is said that Saramago was in tears when the movie ended and said to director Meirelles: "Fernando, I am so happy to have seen this movie. I am as happy as I was the day I finished the book." The advantage enjoyed by these blind men was what might be called the illusion of light. In fact, it made no difference to them whether it was day or night, the first light of dawn or the evening twilight, the silent hours of early morning or the bustling din of noon, these blind people were for ever surrounded by a resplendent whiteness, like the sun shining through mist. For the latter, blindness did not mean being plunged into banal darkness, but living inside a luminous halo.” We failed to put up resistance as we should have done when they first came making demands, Of course, we were afraid and fear isn't always a wise counsellor..."

IN the wake of recent disasters - from nuclear reactor failures to oil spills to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market - we have focused on which people and institutions might be to blame. How, we ask in hindsight, could people and institutions have failed to foresee clear signs of trouble - even in the face of warnings?What did it matter if the women had to go there twice a month to give theses men what nature gave them to give.” Our Talking Books service is absolutely free. Giving you access to over 40,000 fiction and non fiction books for adults and children in accessible formats that suits you. Formats available Some of this filtering is beneficial. It "oils the wheels of social intercourse when we don't see the spot on the silk tie, the girlfriend's acne, or a neighbor's squalor," she writes. At a basic level, selective vision also helps us remain engaged and optimistic day to day. Ms. Heffernan's final salvo is a hopeful one: the idea that willful blindness, as "a product of a rich mix of experience, knowledge, thinking, neurons, and neuroses, is what gives us the capacity to change it." The boy with the squint was a patient of the doctor's, which is most likely how he became infected. He is brought to the quarantine without his mother and soon falls in with the group in the first ward. The girl with the dark glasses assumes a motherly role for him, as she takes care of him and ensures his safety. [2] The car thief [ edit ]

But Ms. Heffernan is chiefly concerned with the dangerous effects of this blindness. She offers a wide range of examples, including spouses who ignored evidence of a partner's adultery, homebuyers who took on excessive mortgage debt, and companies whose compliant employees assumed "levels of risk beyond their ability to recover." Writing in clear, flowing prose, she draws on psychological and neurological studies and interviews with executives, whistleblowers and white-collar criminals. She analyzes mechanisms that limit our vision - individually and collectively - and thus jeopardize our safety, economic well-being, moral grounding and emotional wholeness. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that’s bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.There must be a government, said the first blind man, I'm not so sure, but if there is, it will be a government of the blind trying to rule the blind, that is to say, nothingness trying to organize nothingness. Then there is no future..."Saramago’s work reminded me of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, both are about the crumbling of our civilization as we know it. Blindness is a masterpiece and an important reminder for us to be appreciative of several things that we take for granted, to look around and really see. Without an honest and accurate vision our very existence can disintegrate.

The one person who remains seeing through the whole catastrophe realises in the end that people might not actually have been literally blind at all: I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.” urn:lcp:blindness00sara:epub:b4828970-a363-4511-a609-c067e3fc4cef Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier blindness00sara Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8w95zw09 Isbn 0156007754 I finished this masterpiece last week and I let it to sink in a little bit before reviewing it. The power of this book was quite overwhelming at times and I had to stop reading for a few days at a time. I do not think there are many books that disturbed me like this one. Maybe Never Let Me Go but there the message was much more subtle.Though Leland is accused occasionally by friends of “over-intellectualising” his situation, his fine sensibility, lucid writing and dignified treatment of his subject feels anything but indulgent. This book invites us all to rethink what it means to desire, to read, to be independent, to sit with uncertainty and to assume a new identity. Leland models how we might accept inevitable changes in our faculties as we age with tempered apprehension, humour and interest. Although I found this book interesting, I didn't find it the cutting edge work of genius that I had read about. I don't think I would ever read another Saramago because life is too short to struggle through such a difficult writing style. The book took me about three times as long as if it had been written in a more usual manner. It seems to me to be an ego thing to write in a way that is completely different to everyone else. The reason there is a standard way of writing is that it is easy for us all to understand rather than having to adapt to anyone's idiosyncratic idea of spelling and grammar. Or you can now get your books through an Alexa enabled device such as your smart speaker, tablet or phone. This book left me speechless (which is a rare occurrence). Please enjoy the pictures to illustrate the plot while I recover my gift of rambling.