It’s fascinating that our entire human existence is spent inside our minds. Yes, we use our bodies to interact with the world and other people, but there is a buffer zone between our brains and the world. That buffer zone is what we call “the senses.” Thanks to vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, it is pretty easy for us to interpret and understand our surroundings. But what about other people’s minds? It’s easy, since there are two buffer zones between my mind and yours, to assume that we both observe, interpret, and think in the same way. I certainly assumed everyone else thought in similar ways to me up until recently.
I have something called aphantasia. It’s a condition that makes it impossible for me to imagine visuals in my mind. When most people close their eyes, they can voluntarily visualize images, to varying degrees. Some can see anything they fancy in stunning clarity; others lean more toward blurry approximations. When I close my eyes, I see nothing at all—darkness, black, void. And until my philosophy professor asked the class to picture a triangle in their minds, I thought everyone else saw darkness too. Since then I’ve discovered and informed both my parents and my sister that they have aphantasia as well (clearly, there’s a genetic aspect). Interestingly, my mother also can’t recognize faces. I can’t see people’s faces in my mind, but my mother can’t see faces at all. She uses other hints like body language or the sound of a person’s voice to recognize people. And wouldn’t you know it? She thought everyone else did too.
Those of you who are visualization-heavy are probably wondering how I think and process information. Well, like most people, I have an internal monologue. I like to think that because of aphantasia, I have a stronger than average inner voice. I think in words and sentences all day, every day, pretty much non-stop. Sometimes I think in abstract concepts, but I immediately try to formulate that idea into sentences.
Some people don’t have an inner voice at all. Think about how you think, and ask someone if they think differently from you. It’s crucial that we recognize our diversity at this most fundamental level, because it’s understanding our differences that will ultimately bring us closer together.