Week Two - The Ghost's Eyes

When I was still a primary school student, I once encountered a pair of red blinking and moving spots on the night sky and wondered of them. Having experienced a night flight before, I knew instinctively that the red-spots were the red lights of an aeroplane – what else the red spots could have been? Perhaps noticing me musing over the red-spots, my father said that the red spots could have been ghost’s eyes, according to the elderly. Curious, I asked of the reason and he simply replied, “None of them had ever seen an aeroplane before.”

And this brings us to PERCEPTIONS.

Perception is unlike physical seeing; while seeing is basically seeing, perception is HOW we see things. Why some people are fascinated by lightning and the others see it as an ominous sign or even a bad memory? Why is seeing babies’ gummy smiles always bring adorations while a smug smile from someone we loathe makes us want to beat the daylights out of the said person? Why is the smile seen as smug by the way? Why is a white room look bigger than a black room? These are all because of perceptions.

Perceptions are based on first-hand knowledge and experience and could be affected by culture and social environment, as well as space and time context.

For my case as stated before, I had been onto an aeroplane on a night flight and happened to see the red lights on the aeroplane’s wings from my window-seat; hence, with this knowledge, I ‘instinctively’ perceived the red-spots as aeroplane’s lights. The elders who lived years ahead of me most likely had never seen an aeroplane before, let alone to know what kind of equipments an aeroplane might have or even to know of aeroplanes having night flights. Living in a more-superstitious society than today, it would not be such a farfetched idea if the people back then settled for supernatural explanations to explain the identity of red-spots – BLINKING and MOVING red-spots – on random nights on the sky.

This is how perception can be affected by social, cultural, space and time context. And there is a lot more examples out there that could illustrate this, even on the global scale. Let’s take dragons as the example.

Dragons are always been perceived by the Western culture as flying fire-breathing lizard-like creatures that ‘enjoy’ wrecking havoc across the land. This could easily be seen in Western written literatures and arts; heroes – and occasionally heroines – usually have to slay a dragon to restore peace for their society.

These depictions may arise from the fact that the dragons resemble serpents in a way or another, the very animal that has caused both Adam and Eve to be thrown out of Eden.

Hence, according to Western context, dragons are the embodiment of evil that cause sufferings among the mortals and leaving ruins in their paths. However, things are different in the Eastern culture.

In the Eastern society, dragons are mythical creatures that possess magical powers in which some may rival god and in some cases, are gods and goddesses themselves. Some are said to have the power to control over weather; some are acting as guardians of sacred places; some are said to have the ability to grant impossible wishes and give unimaginable riches for the fortunates.

Dragons are important in some of the Eastern countries that they are part of the culture. The ancient Chinese for example, it is not rare to see dragon sculptures being place on rooftops and gates in the belief of bringing good luck and safety.

           

The Emperors themselves adorned their royal yellow robes with the design of five-clawed dragons to signify their status.

There are also dragon dances being held during festive to bring good luck.

All these are just the surface of what differentiate the perceptions of dragons between Western and Eastern context. Whilst the Western may be influence by Biblical teachings, Eastern culture however sees dragons as sacred beings and therefore have to be respected accordingly.

It is not uncommon that a lot of people perceive the same thing differently; it all depends on the environment they are living in and the ‘ingrained’ knowledge within them. That is how, anyway, perceptions work.

References:

§  Berger, J., Bloomberg, S., Fox, C., Dibb, M. & Hollis, R. (1972). Ways of Seeing (pp. 7–33). London and New York: Penguin Books.

§  Jamieson, H. (2007). Visual Communication: More Than Meets The Eye (pp. 13–27). Bristol: Intellect Books