Charles Manson, the infamous, diabolical master manipulator and
maniac, responsible for instigating the murders of 7 people, was known
particularly for his demonic stare, and for almost never blinking during a
conversation.
This blink-less stare chilled his interlocutors.
Thankfully, this irredeemable reprobate finally passed
away last year.
But what if, in some cosmic quirk of fate, you somehow end
up in the world’s ultimate end-all be-all staring contest with this psychopath?
And - determined stare-er that you are - and dead set on winning
this contest of wills against this evil bastard - let’s say you
don’t close your eyes... for 30 days.
What would this lead to?
Might you become a bloodthirsty criminal like Mister Manson?
Could you lose your mind?
At the very least, won’t you cause some kind of irreversible trauma
to your eyes?
As previously mentioned, Mr. Manson has departed this earthly coil, and
is likely burning in some nether hell somewhere, so we can’t ask for his
“unblinking stare” advice.
But before we condemn our eyeballs to such a
torment, lets see why blinking occurs in the first place.
Our eyelids close quite often, approximately every 2-3 seconds,
15-20 times a minute.
This is an amazing roughly 28,800 times a day.
This act moisturizes our eyes, and helps protects them from foreign invaders:
be it a speck of dust, a finger of a passer-by poking you in your pupil,
or a bright light emanating from the sun or a high-watt flashlight.
But, according to scientists, to perform its protective functions, the eye
shouldn’t have to blink so often.
So, then, just why the heck do our eyes blink so much?
First let’s talk about another activity the eye engages in, something you
probably never even thought about before.
It is important for us to have clear vision, a sharp eye, in order to gather
information about the world around us.
At the core of our ability to see lies something called
saccades.
This is not an actual physical “thing”, but rather an action: it is
the tiny, swift, synchronous, almost never-ending movement of our eyes
between fixed points.
This helps our brain build up a 3D image of the
what is around us.
But why, you might ask, don’t we visually notice this
constant movement?
Why do we see a smooth image instead of a series of jumps when scanning something?
Why don’t we “see” the in- between spaces?
And why isn’t our vision blurred when moving from
one place to the next?
We’ll answer this in a moment...
Blinking is another eye action that most people never give even a
passing thought to.
When we blink, even though we are momentarily cutting off our view of the world, the light
does not appear to diminish, it doesn’t even seem to flicker... and the
overall image doesn’t change in terms of brightness or sharpness.
Why does everything appear to remain exactly the same as it was before we
momentarily closed our eyelids?
The answer in both situations is because a critical part of our brain turns
off when we blink, or when our eyes move during saccades.
This hides the darkness of a blink, or movement of a
saccade from our visual system.
By the way, saccades and blinking are very fast.
Did I say fast?
I mean REALLY fast!
Saccades are the fastest movements performed by
the human body, though blinks achieve a higher peak speed.
When blinking, the eye closes for just 3 tenths
of a second.
Even the fastest Bugatti in the world would envy such speed.
Anyway... if the eye moves at such a speed, you might think we wouldn’t
be able to clearly perceive the world around us.
As an example: try to view your hand while shaking
it in front of you.
It will look blurry.
But we don’t notice this when our eyes move.
As I mentioned before, this is where your brain comes into play.
When the eye moves and the saccade occurs, our brain turns off our
sight for a micro-moment.
And when the saccade finishes and the eye
comes to a stop, we begin to see again, as if nothing had ever
happened.
We literally go blind...over and over and over again...all day,
every day.
A similar thing happens when we blink.
But no one remembers these moments.
Let’s call it “sleight of the mind”: Our brain
hides these movements or blinks from us, smoothing together the before
and after images as if nothing had ever happened.
Simply put, our brains deceive us...but for our own good.
At the Berkeley campus of the University of California, researchers did a
really cool experiment when investigating this “refocusing or reframing”
that the brain does.
Test subjects were placed into a dark room, and a
white dot was projected onto the wall in front of them.
Then, precisely at the moment of a blink, when the participants
eyes were closed, the white dot was shifted ever so slightly to
the side.
After their blink finished, the group of subjects automatically
moved their focus to the new location.
The researchers continued to move the white point for a
total of 35 blinks.
Surprisingly, none of the participants ever noticed any
changes in the dot’s position, even after the 35th time.
Researcher Baptist Kaziot explains this by stating that
we have a system in our head specially evolved to convince us that no displacement
during a blink has occurred.
And most of the time this is true.
But not always, as the experiment showed.
You can check this yourself right now by performing the following
experiment: Start a stopwatch and remember the number of seconds.
Then look away and quickly back again at the clock.
You will see that the number of seconds has remained the same.
Congratulations, you have witnessed the work of your subjective visual
system.
Your brain is a
magician.
But it only manages to pull off these tricks because saccades
and blinking are only unconscious or semi-conscious processes.
So, what if we stretch ourselves and try to put
our blinking under conscious control?
There are several people in the world for whom not blinking for
a mere 30 seconds is the easiest thing ever.
The first ever record holder is an Australian named Fergal Fleming, who
was later nicknamed The Eye Sore.
He lasted an astounding 40 minutes and 59 seconds without
blinking!
But in 2015, a sailor in the Chinese Navy managed to stand
with his eyes open for 57 minutes and 24 seconds, that is, according to
The South China Morning Post.
At first, due to an eye infection, the Chinese mariner could not even stand 40 seconds
with his eyelids open.
However, he trained hard, day and night, for a month straight: he stood
in the wind on deck, or looked into the bright sky, all without blinking.
And now this guy isn’t just a regular sailor, but the King of the
Peepers...the staring champion of the world!
So, what is the trick?
Apparently, there exists not just a physical reason, but also a
psychological reason for blinking.
Japanese scientists have put forward a fairly strong hypothesis: subconsciously,
we begin to blink when we need a mental rest.
So, for a short time our entire visual stimulus system
is turned off, allowing us to take a micro-breather.
To further investigate this theory, a group of 10 people were examined
in an MRI machine.
Oddly enough, during the test they watched the fantastic and loveable
Mr. Bean.
The final analysis showed that when the viewers blinked, their mental activity
increased for a short time in areas related to the brain’s passive, non-
active mode.
For a split second, we seem to be transported to our own
personal secluded island - a place where we can reboot ourselves a tiny
bit, allowing us to deal with the coming ocean of incoming fresh visual
stimuli with renewed vigor.
Some of us need this kind of mini rest a little more, and some of us a little less...that’s
why some of us blink more or less frequently than others.
15 years ago, it seemed as if everybody and their brother was trying to
unravel the secret of a single pair of eyes.
In 2004, there was a rumor in
the USA regarding a man who supposedly never blinked his eyes.
This speculation was concerning a retired US Army
General named Wesley Clark.
He was that year participating in the primary race for the US Democratic Party presidential
nomination, and so he was on TV a lot.
Real discussions broke out around his candidacy, the reason of which was the burning question:
“Why doesn’t the guy blink?”
According to rough calculations, Clark blinks only between 2 to 4
times a minute, about once every 15 to 30 seconds.
And let me remind you that the average person blinks every 2
to 3 seconds, so this was really strange.
In fact, the difference is rather astonishing!
Behavioral analyst Lilian Glass shared her observation
that people who rarely blink, and has a cold, steady stares, are often liars...or
at least, this is a technique that practiced liars use.
But does Clark always lie?
This is by no means the truth.
Just because liars stare, doesn’t mean all stare-ers
lie.
The director of the US based Center for Non-verbal Studies, who is
also an anthropologist, one David Givens, managed to finally solve the
mystery of the Wesley Clark’s nearly unblinking eyes.
The fact is - he says - General Clarks autonomic nervous system
operates at a lower level or frequency than that of most other
people.
In contrast to the record holders, Clarks rare blinking is more
a congenital feature rather than an acquired skill.
Nevertheless, both cases confirm the ability of a
human being not necessarily having to blink for quite a long time.
But could we manage a whole 30 days without blinking?
There is a disease called lagophthalmos, where a person
is not able to close their eyes completely, or in the worst cases, at
all.
The facial nerves in sufferers of this ailment don’t work as
well in others, and therefore are not able to convey the correct signals from
the brain, that normally command the eyelids to close.
They could actually accomplish this task.
But what about a completely conscious and voluntary decision to keep
one’s eyes open?
At first, it might seem to you that this quite doable, and
that you would only suffer from some kind of minor fatigue.
But if you try this then you will see: your suffering will
increase in intensity.
The strain will increase in strength.
Growing ever greater as time goes by.
The
need - no, the absolute necessity - to close your eyelids will increase to
an unbearable level.
Your eyes will start to burn, and then suddenly fill
with tears.
Soon the entire struggle of just not blinking will become an
intolerable and unendurable nightmare...
If you tried to continue this for a month, your corneas would dry up.
The lens would become dim, losing all focus and sharpness.
Your eyesight would begin to fade, like a wilting
flower under the hot desert sun.
The gray veil of cataracts would envelop your eyes, after which would come an irreversible
blindness...
I think after hearing this, you are probably going
to blink more often.
I know I am!
And thats the smart, safe thing to do.
Because if you go blind, you can’t watch Ridddle.
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