Humanity’s Masterpiece of Delusion
He has never seen the curve of a single hill, the fullness of a flower, or the fiery descent of the sun as it melts into the horizon over the ocean. He does not know what “color” truly means.
And yet — he is a painter.
Brush in hand, standing before an empty canvas, he paints with confidence. Each stroke claims to represent the world as he perceives it. Sometimes he is exhilarated by his creation. Sometimes, he is frustrated. But he never stops.
He imagines. He must.
But even imagination must draw from somewhere, some reservoir of memory or experience.
Where is that coming from?
He senses the breeze and the warmth of the sun on his skin, the scent of flowers, and the stench of decay. He has felt the softness of a rose petal, and heard the distant chirping of birds when they announce the return of the day. These fragments — tactile, audible, olfactory — form his palette.
Unless the painter has never even heard of sight, he is doomed to be tormented. Traumatized. Claustrophobic.
He reaches into the reservoir of memory, not of sight but of sensation, and from it he draws what it takes to paint. To create.
Darkness comes with silence — and sometimes with the screams of prey and predator, laced with a primordial fear.
It must be dark.
Unless the painter has never even heard of sight, he is doomed to be tormented. Traumatized. Claustrophobic.
Eventually, he must choose: to remain still and do nothing, or to continue painting, despite his blindness.
He is condemned to paint.
Yet if he is told about sight — about this thing called seeing — how could he ever fathom it? Whatever he imagines must be far from what it truly is.
And who told him about sight?
How was it described to him?
Even more important: does he believe the story?
If he accepts the narrative of this missing sense, he must also accept that his work will never be perfect, perhaps not even remotely. This could lead him to despair and abandon his work entirely. Or, it could lead him to a kind of peace — a choice to settle for what he can do, for what he can reach: the imperfect.
The light exists. The sunset is majestic. Colors are real. The beauty of sight is real.
But denial—denial is easier.
To deny the existence of sight is to remain blissfully ignorant. To live an oblivious life, pretending at perfection.
Pretending to be whole.
Pretending to be real.
Blindness passes down a quiet inheritance: limitation.
Every stroke, every structure, every system the painter creates emerges from that limitation.
The light exists. The sunset is majestic. Colors are real. The beauty of sight is real.
From imperfection, perfection cannot arise.
Such is the state of humanity — born into the world with imperfection, not of his choosing.
The world is not necessarily to blame, nor is man entirely forsaken.
But the faculties to perceive it are dim, undeveloped, or buried beneath distraction, waiting to be awakened through deeper contemplation.
Humanity is heir to a flaw that no hand can mend, and knowledge of it is the trauma of existence.
Yet it is through suffering that man begins to feel the shape of his blindness.
For pain, unlike pleasure, does not comfort — it unsettles. It reveals the abyss and brings us face to face with fear. Fear of the unknown, or better unrecognized.
From imperfection, perfection cannot arise.
In the ache of what Humanity cannot complete, in the sorrow of what always falls short, Humanity begins to sense — however faintly — that there is something more worth yearning for.
And in that sensing, suffering gives birth to hope.
And hope is the essence of yearning.
Hope — fragile but persistent — gives rise to faith.
Not faith in certainty, but faith as the quiet trust that there is something greater than what the senses alone can show.
And it is faith that paves the way for awakening.
Faith is the courage to walk without seeing, and to paint courageously without seeing the full image.
And it is faith that paves the way for awakening.
Awakening is not the gaining of sight, but the recognition of its absence.
It is the moment when man, still blind, becomes aware of the light.
Humanity is heir to a flaw that no hand can mend, and knowledge of it is the trauma of existence.
He does not see it, but he knows it is there.
This is the blissful cycle:
Suffering stirs hope.
Hope gives birth to faith.
Faith prepares the soul for awakening.
And awakening begins not with sight, but with humility and acceptance.
Awakening is always pregnant with the same suffering that first stirred hope.
In this rhythm, humanity lives — not whole, not finished, but oriented toward wholeness.
Blind, perhaps — but not lost.
Imperfect — but not without purpose.
Yearning — and slowly, faithfully — reaching toward perfection.
Just as with our blind painter — who struggles not only with his blindness but with the very idea of sight — humanity has long been in the grip of doubt.
It is easy to dismiss what one cannot see. But the moment a person dares to consider the possibility of something more, the demand for proof arises.
Awakening is not the gaining of sight, but the recognition of its absence.
Questions flood the mind. Pros and cons. Arguments and counterarguments. The mind, noble as it is, is still bound by its own inherent flaw — it cannot reach beyond logic and reason, and measurables.
Sight, when there is no organ to receive it, cannot be given to the eyes of the head. Those eyes are absent or incapable.
That is when the heart must begin to see — for it is the heart that holds both hope and faith and becomes the new eye.
The eye that sees without seeing.
The eye that knows without knowing.
The eye that feels the presence of the light and dares to believe, even in darkness.
Human history stands as witness to our denial of inadequacy.
We have been the blind painter — not just painting in darkness but proudly declaring the painting complete.
We have fallen — again and again — only to rise, not wiser, but more certain. And then, to fall once more.
We have stumbled through the ages, pausing only during times of deep suffering — pauses that might have become moments of reflection, of humility.
But instead, they were too often wasted. Opportunities lost. Moments meant for awakening turned into excuses to double down on illusion.
We have insisted that we can see the full picture — that we understand, that we control, that we are sufficient.
We have been the blind painter — not just painting in darkness but proudly declaring the painting complete.
In our arrogance, we have built visions of utopia on foundations of blindness, and clung to them with desperate tenacity.
And yet…
The cracks remain.
The colors are absent, and our painting is dark and hopeless.
And the image never quite reflects the world we claim to know.
And when we are on the verge of reaching for meaning in life, we replace man with machine.
We shift our hope from the soul to the circuit — from the mystery of being to the illusion of control.
We place our faith in what we have made, forgetting that it was made by us, and that we are flawed.
Our inventions, born of brilliance, are still built upon the same imperfect hands, the same blind eyes, the same restless minds.
In doing so, we do not soothe the soul — we distract it.
We do not transcend the limits of our being — we decorate them.
Instead of standing in awe before nature, we begin to challenge it — in a hopeless attempt to master what we do not even understand.
We try to fill the emptiness not of the soul, but of our frail and limited physical existence — hoping that noise might drown out the silence, and machinery might mask the absence of light.
The blind painter chooses the wide road of denial and dismissal — and paints in the absence of sight. The blind painter seems satisfied with the work of his hands — with the masterpiece of his delusions.
Perhaps he paints not out of vision, but out of need.
We do not transcend the limits of our being — we decorate them.
Perhaps each stroke is a defense against silence, and to cover what he dares not face.
Perhaps he paints to distract himself from the aching sense that there is more — that there is light, beauty, perfection — just beyond his reach.
And still, he paints.
Not because he sees, but out of arrogance and hopelessness.
It is in this space — between blindness and longing — that humanity, in its traumatized existence, continues its work.
Still in the dark.
Still groping without grasping.
Still painting.
And perhaps, one day, the brush will tremble — not from fear, but from awe.