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It should be common sense that staring into the sun may not be the best of ideas. Doing so can very well result in damaged or loss of eyesight. So what would it take to incite dozens of adults to stare into the sun long enough to lose it completely?
Well, religious superstition, of course.
At least 50 people in India have lost or damaged their eyesight after staring into the sun, hoping to see the Virgin Mary… And that’s only so far. Despite the obvious dangers and growing number of casualties to this Virgin Mary in the sun folly, believers are reportedly STILL staring into the retina-burning star in the hopes of (ironically) seeing something.
Excerpt:
Forty-eight cases of sight-loss, allegedly caused by photochemical burns on the retina, have been recorded at St Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital in the region since Friday.
Despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of their actions, believers are allegedly still flocking to a hotelier’s house in Erumeli near where the divine image is said to have appeared.
“All our patients have similar history and symptoms… They have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun,” Dr Annamma James Isaac, the hospital’s ophthalmologist said.
2 responses so far ↓
1
Teshi // Jul 29, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Religious fervour causing the self-infliction of grievous or minor harm was historically considered quite normal. While I doubt these people were deliberately attempting to blind themselves, it must have been quite a feat. We’ve all glanced at the sun on a bright day, and know how painful a moment can be.
Many female medieval saints and holy women starved themselves, eating only nominal amounts of food in order to stay alive. This wasn’t a punishment for sins, it was an act intended to bring them closer to God.
The ability of humans to ‘override’ powerful basic physical signals, such as pain, injury, thirst, hunger or lust is amazing. Presumably the mechanism is part of the processes that allow us as humans, unlike other animals, to spend more time thinking, inventing and philosophizing rather than being constantly plagued by the overwhelming need to mate or eat.
We share our need to protect ourselves and our families/tribes at all costs with other animals, but other animals do not act in this way unless under survival duress.
But aside from the obvious evolutionary advantage of intelligence, surely the need to eat when we are hungry, mate when we are lustful, sleep when we are tired, and look away when the light is too bright are rational needs, not irrational needs.
Forgive the conjecture, but it seems that the human ability to make irrational decisions- to skip meals, to put ourselves in danger- is what enables us to use our time and our minds in a distinctly human fashion; to think, to invent and to reason.
If so, the very nature of our being enables us to make this kind of self-destructive, irrational decision to look at the sun until we lose our sight. It seems as if our evolutionary advantage has rather nasty side-effects.
Is it possible that the very thing that makes us able to reason is the same thing that makes us able to indulge in certain irrational behaviors?
2
Kyle // Jul 30, 2008 at 12:54 am
On a less serious note, this really gives a whole new meaning to “blind faith”.
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