// records ·

The Blind

Han SanghoonHan Sanghoon·Seoul·EN

Many people are incapable of truly reading a text. They lack the analytical capability to extract the core argument from written words. They cannot discern which part constitutes the premise and which part serves as the supporting evidence. This has little to do with intelligence or academic credentials. It is because they have never properly trained the ability to extract it, failed to learn it when taught, or simply forgot it even after learning. Consequently, though they have opened their eyes, they have effectively become blind.

The tragic reality is that this phenomenon becomes far more pronounced under stressful situations. Individuals placed under severe stress lose even the capacity to interpret characters literally. Scolding a young child provides a vivid illustration of what this means. When a young child is reprimanded for a mistake, they begin to lose the ability to fully comprehend their parent's words and start missing the core message. Nevertheless, because they are trapped in a punitive situation, they merely offer mechanical responses like "I am sorry." This is precisely why, if you ask them to clarify exactly what they did wrong, they often give utterly incoherent answers. Fear and stress transform perfectly normal messages into unreceivable static, and the weaker a person is, the more frequently they shift into this unreceivable mode across all forms of communication.

Having to interact with someone who is selectively capable of communication, rather than someone who is permanently illiterate, is akin to torture. Obscurely blending arguments with evidence into a disorganized mess to avoid delivering their point clearly is a predictable strategy they love to employ. Because a clear, well-defined argument stands a high probability of being refuted, they intentionally muddy the waters by mixing their claims and premises with vague criteria.

I do not enjoy engaging in conversations or entering into disputes with these selectively blind individuals. While they are essentially entities with whom logical debate is impossible, one inevitably encounters them in the course of life. They are scattered across every corner of society and actively operate in all kinds of online spaces. They preach absurd arguments based on flimsy evidence, and because they fail to grasp the core points in an opponent's words, they respond with completely irrelevant nonsense. Through their speech, these selectively blind people propagate flawed knowledge and ideologies to those around them, while tormenting the very individuals who attempt to provide them with constructive feedback.

Just as these disputes do not exist for every single issue, perhaps living as a selectively blind person myself might be the wiser approach from a modern perspective. It is a distressing reality. If these selectively blind individuals are the inevitable byproduct generated by the system, they are pitiable entities struggling desperately to survive; yet, at the same time, they remain entirely unhelpful to society. It is profoundly ironic. While each individual merely strives to survive, within the macro system as a whole, such individuals become nothing but a detriment. That a detrimental entity must commit even greater evils to survive, without mitigating its own harmful nature, can be considered the ultimate tragedy of the world we inhabit.

▩ END · posted · 2025-08-29 · seoul
← previous

血誓深淵

next →

寂滅