The Red-Tinted Glass

Riley Draper

AP English

8/3/2013

            The “red-tinted glass” experiment in the Kant chapter was when Alberto had Sophie see the world through glasses that made everything a shade of red. The purpose of the experiment was to change the way you perceive the world by experiencing as different forms of the same color. Kant believed that certain things controlled our perspective of the world and color is just one example. There are multiple ways that this concept can still be applied to current everyday lives.

            Everyone has there own way of perceiving and evaluating certain things. For example, if you mentioned football to some people they would just see it as a simple pastime, but whenever someone mentions football to me I start to listen more and become more interested in the subject being discussed. I put a large amount of time, interest, and effort into football so it has become worth more to me than many of my other past experiences in life. If you brought up football to someone who has only played soccer their entire life they would likely rather discuss soccer or do soccer-related activities than football. So I believe past experiences definitely change everyone’s perspective on certain things and how much they care about them.

            Another way our perspective is change throughout daily life is through variety and uniqueness. Much like when Sophie looked through the red-tinted glasses in the “Kant” chapter I think everybody would look at everyday objects differently if they had different colors. If everything was the same color everything would seem less diverse and blander. Also, certain colors seem to be connected with certain actions in some scenarios. For example, when we think of a stop sign we usually think of the color red. So if the stop sign was green instead of red I would perceive it differently because I have become so used to stop signs generally being red.

            There are many different factors that have an effect on our perspective of the world around us. Our own personal thoughts and decisions decide how we see the world and no two people probably see the world exactly alike. Everyone has their own personal views on everything and that is what makes everyone themselves and gives them there unique personality.