I rarely see any of that beautiful natural world, and if I do, I close my eyes and listen to it.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I'd pick both, so I can have a Hellen Keller thing going on, maybe write a few books.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

if you were deaf you would never be able to sit around and chat with your friends; no communication whatsoever. Yes, if you were blind you would be completely dependant on other people.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

But you can still communicate if you're deaf - just learn sign language.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

*yet

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I'd rather be deaf. If I was blind I'd have to have someone else drive me places. I'd have to take them shopping and have them tell me which apples were ripest, which shirt looked best on me, which packet of underwear was my size. I wouldn't be able to take a step without worrying that I was going to walk into a pole or trip on a crack in the sidewalk. I'd have to hook up a braille reader or a speech program to my computer to be able to continue using the internet, and even then I would only get text, no pictures. I wouldn't be able to play fetch with my dog or go rollerblading and I'd have a hell of a time searching for something like a lost earring. I wouldn't know if there was a huge spider sitting on something until I'd picked it up, and my living room could spontaneously combust and I wouldn't know it until the fire alarm went off. If I was deaf I'd have to wear a hearing aid, learn to lip read, and put on the subtitles on everything I watched. It's no contest.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

(I would actually rather be deaf too, but I like playing Devil's Advocate.) You would have to learn sign language. An entirely new way of communicating that would depend completely on your hands. You couldn't hold something and talk at the same time. If a thought suddenly occurred to you, you couldn't just blurt it out. You would have to put down and finish whatever you were doing. It would also be hard to get someone's attention, not to mention trying to participate in a group conversation with other deaf people. It's impossible to look everywhere at once, and the conversation would be very slow moving. With speech, you can interrupt people without having to make a big scene. As soon as they hear your voice, they would turn to you. When speaking with deaf people (or even non-deaf people) you need to visually get their attention. This also means that you can't have conversations with your eyes closed, or if someone is facing away from you. You can't whisper or be discreet about your conversations, you have to sign clearly enough for them to see, meaning others can see, also. You would have virtually no way to communicate with people who don't know sign language. Lip-reading is h...

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Lip reading is hard to do, is almost never accurate, and writing things down takes forever. Hearing aids don't work if you're completely deaf. As for subtitles? They work, yes, but you wouldn't be able to hear subtle nuances, sarcasm would be non-existent, and there are some things without subtitles, such as Youtube videos.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

But I wouldn't walk into walls. Losing any of the five senses would complicate my life and losing something as major as my hearing would most definitely be a major disability. However, it would suck significantly less than losing my sight. As your comment is worded, it sounds like you're trying to talk me out of voluntarily losing my hearing. Just saying.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Not all deaf people are mute, so you would be able to just blurt out your random thought. And you could also be able to get others attention by using voice too.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

You can feel the vibrations of talking, so it might be like an exclamation, not words, but thats how you get attention

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That's true, but if I had to lose one of the five experiential senses, it would be smell. I could definitely live without smell.

by Anonymous 12 years ago