Why hearing people ‘see’ supremacy
This might seem quite an obtuse title, but in a sense it has already been answered in some ways on Deaf21. To be hearing is to be at the top tier of the heirachy scale. For Black people it would be white people, but for Deaf people it would be hearing people, and since almost the entire world consists of hearing people, then, yes, there must indeed be a supremacy, the top-most of all which deems that humans must simply hear and speak – anything less has no contribution to make.
Sadly for any supremacists, even those who are in the 99.9% of this massive hearing/speaking dominance, there are things they do not even know of including the ways and means hearing people are rooted in the world. In other words they cannot see how this supremacy exists but they can argue against other supremacies. Not only that its the violent quest humanity has conducted against the animal world which has given rise to this sheer supremacy – and when Deaf people had become a quite substantial chimera in the umwelt of hearing people, hearing people then sought to vilify and even exterminate living beings because they could not communicate.
As opposed to the animal world, Deaf people these days fortunately have some protections against the might of the hearing world by way of human rights and legislative acts. Sadly the animal kingdom does not. Its why, for example, humanity continues to massively develop factory farming and other insidious practices because its communication that is a ‘god-given right’ and something these unfortunate animals do not have. If animals could speak, they would rise up against humanity simply for the numerous and ongoing abject evils that are being conducted. And whatever endeavours are undertaken these are described as ‘humane.’ What a huge f**king lie!
It means there’s no democratic handshake with any animal that exists – thus humans can process, fatten, inject antibiotics, experiment upon, and murder cows, sheep, chickens en masse (to the tune of billions every week) for the purpose of meat. Not only that, its all about putting drops in the eyes of rabbits, the act of shooting pigs to test the effectiveness of weapons and place electrical probes into the brains of primates to see where pain might exist. Humans simply know no bounds.
Many once thought the Deaf were animals too and deserved neither democracy or rights. There’s so much in history that aligns human belief with the notion that the Deaf were not human and had more in common with the animal world. Its one of the constructs the hearing world has now backtracked upon – nevertheless there are still some who deem considerable hurt must continue upon the Deaf world.
Hearing people love to think their way of the world is the only one and its simply how things work. But that is a problematic notion in this day and age. Let’s take the start of a lecture which eventually led to how life for the Deaf could be improved by way of hepatic devices such as vests and wrist devices. Its a 2015 TED talk by David Eagleman.
We are built out of very small stuff, and we are embedded in a very large cosmos, and the fact is we are not very good at understanding reality at either of those scales… But it gets strange, because even at that slice of reality that we call home, we’re not seeing most of the action that’s going on. So take the colours of our world. This is light waves, electromagnetic radiation that bounces off objects and it hits specialized receptors in the back of our eyes. But we’re not seeing all the waves out there. In fact, what we see is less than a 10 trillionth of what’s out there… There are thousands of cell phone conversations passing through you right now, and you’re utterly blind to it. Now, it’s not that these things are inherently unseeable. Snakes include some infrared in their reality, and honeybees include ultraviolet in their view of the world, and of course we build machines in the dashboards of our cars to pick up on signals in the radio frequency range, and we built machines in hospitals to pick up on the X-ray range. But you can’t sense any of those by yourself… because you don’t come equipped with the proper sensors.
It seems even hearing people are trapped by what can only be biological limitations too! They had once thought the Deaf were biological limitations too – for they had called us idiot savants!
In 2026 David Eagleman once again turns to the subject of the blind, the Deaf – and how the brain represents reality. Eagleman tells us the brain that endeavours this very competitiveness – in fact its the dreaming each hearing/speaking person each night has which elevates this very supremacy! This surprise comes from the Star Talk Podcast of 29 August 2026 – Neil de Grasse Tyson, Chuck, Nice and Gary O’Reilly are interviewing David Eagleman. This discussion starts at 3 minutes 50 seconds for around ten minutes.
David Eagleman explains how the brain is locked away in the head and does not have direct access to the outside world so it merely interprets a number of incoming signals as vision, sounds, smell etc. The four then discuss what is known as umwelt. This means various species live in the world in different ways so they see it differently. Bats for example use radar to navigate the world and there are many examples of different types of animal that does this sort of thing. They also talk about Beethoven who, despite being Deaf, was able to compose and hear music.
Basically it means is hearing people are firmly settled into their umwelt. They are stuck in a world that celebrates the biology of what can be said to be a normal human being. Thus they do not understand the Deaf world. Its why hearing people have tried to force the Deaf to speak, besides banning sign language, and prohibit them from teaching, from marrying. And the solution? The Deaf must fit into the hearing world’s umwelt.
Later in the Star Talk discussion, Eagleman explains those who are undoubtedly hearing and speaking people. He says in terms of dreams one of the most important aspects is the need to hear and to speak. In dreaming the brain is reinforcing its interpretation of the world largely based upon those parameters. What we are being told is humans who hear and speak have those ‘assets’ considerably amplified during their dreams.
Eagleman suggests the senses attempt to take over others when dreaming – and its likely why speech and hearing are hugely dominant. When a person is isolated (eg solitary confinement) the brain fights back with more vivid use of hearing and speech. This is discussed in the Star Talk podcast from 22 mins onward:
So if you plug your ears denying any auditory signals from entering your brain, that’s a part of your brain that’s now not being used. Would you have more auditory dreams as opposed to visual ones under those conditions? So this is exactly what happens when people go into let’s say solitary confinement. Uh for example, at Alcatraz, I interviewed some people who had been in in the hole locked up in Alcatraz. And exactly what happens. you have auditory and visual hallucinations because your brain is fighting back and saying wait a minute I’m used to getting these signals and now I’m not getting any of this information so it starts generating it on its own. I’ve also hypothesized that tinnitus which is ringing in the ears is another expression of this what I call the defensive activation theory which is your brain is used to getting all these frequencies that it’s hearing but when people’s the cells and their inner ear die off in some range, their brain says, ‘Wait a minute. I’m not hearing that frequency anymore.’ So, it starts generating it on its own. Starts making its own version of it. And that’s what the ringing in the ears is.
Essentially its why hearing is massively dominant. One might think that seeing would win in this case but remember, no-one is ‘seeing’ in their dreams – they are imagining rather. There’s no doubt speech and hearing form the main basis of dreams – thus hearing/speaking people maintain a sense of dominance which translates into the actual world. Its one way in how humanity gets to see both non-communicative animals and the Deaf as far lesser mortals.
