The optic nerve dominion

 

A bundle of 1 million nerve fibres connecting the back of each human eye to the brain constitutes the optic nerve whose job is to relay visual information through electrical impulses. To put it in another way, the optic nerve channels what we see straight to the brain to aid us to perceive the world. That being so, it’s rather boisterous than our other senses and tries to dominate us. What we see is a story created by the optic nerve and the brain together. Largely, the story blends with reality but the brain tends to bend the story to meet our inclinations. That’s why a magician could fool us, and optical illusions confuse us. Now, I have to say I’m quite ill at ease with this fact.
We only see what we want to see. Hence, we are led to bias, prejudices, and assumptions about people and things. And it can be hugely compelling, even when those stories are false. When the brain emphasizes mostly only what we see, we are often left dazed when we must deal with things that we cannot see. The disposition of people or things changes over time and we often don’t see it. We also do not see microscopic infectious agents and greenhouse gases. But these things we cannot see can play havoc with our lives when it’s time. A rich food platter brings instant comfort, but it might have an outsize impact on climate change.
There is plenty of information to process daily. At some point, I start feeling that my brain is broken and lagged. All at once an annoying fly tries to land on my face and I quickly swat it. Then I realize that my brain is good enough to predict the path of motion of the fly before it happened. So, our brains can predict, evaluate, and alter one’s course. The example might seem daft, but I feel these smaller things form the base for complex things.
All in all, the human brain works hard to make stories especially when we are quite uncomfortable with uncertainty. When the brain senses a disagreement between what we see and what we know, the brain often defaults to an erroneous recourse. This is a tricky call to every living and thinking person. You might see things differently from me, but neither of us is close to reality. I believe knowing this, can help us empathize better with each other. Meanwhile, it's within our power to take delight in the beauty our planet that's propagated along the optic nerve. It's time that we see the beauty!