Reality – and the Deaf

Are humanity knowledge and traditions real even? What is true and what’s not? A recent video from Star Talk is interesting because it concerns the amount of fakery or possible untruths in society, the Internet and so on. So we can hit the road full on with the claim that both oralism (the Deaf community’s nightmare enemy) and time, are for example fake. Even in quantum physics its acknowledged time does not exist therefore to abide by it or even wear a watch amounts to subscribing to fakery. The video just released on what is fake and what is truth is here at Star Talk. Another talk he gave was two weeks ago about deepfakes and scams and this can be seen at Star Talk.

The notion that society has been nothing more than a construct has certainly existed for a long time. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was one of the earliest to suggest constructs in terms of humanity. Thus we can see at a time that social constructs were being recognised, at the other scale of things, those such as Samuel Heinicke (1727-1790) and others were undertaking the art of imposing their own self-built social constructs upon the Deaf. This is the doctrine of oralism. Essentially the Deaf did not fit into the hearing persons’ notion of how the world was built and they remained rather, as products of the animal kingdom. It gave oralists and deaf haters, more of a reason to vilify and abuse the Deaf.

‘Construction’ became popular in the sixties when Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann published their ‘Social Construction of Reality.’ Its a quite complicated work, however in the context of today’s societies and the increased frequency which many say humanity is basically a construct, Berger and Luckmann’s book certainly has even more relevancy and can be better understood. Another term for the subject is reification – or the fallacy of treating an abstract concept or model as if it were a concrete, tangible, and physical thing. Reification was also made popular by earlier contemporaries such as Karl Marx.

In the late 1950s when it came to understanding the effects of gravity upon humans, the subjects chosen were found to be too critically affected because of motion sickness – and their senses could not work properly. That is because they were hearing. In desperation, NASA turned to the idea of using Deaf people – whose senses were not affected by the powerful effects of gravity or motion. If the Deaf had been fully assimilated as the oralists had desired, its quite possible NASA would have found more difficulty in attempting to understand the effects of a natural phenomenon upon humans. There’s no doubt Being Deaf does enable those to manage specific constructed conditions far better than hearing people! In April 2026 this story was published as a book called The Gallaudet Eleven: The Story of NASA’s Deaf Bioastronauts.

The Gallaudet Eleven. The title on the cover of the newly published book about NASA’s Deaf Bioastronauts.

The ‘Bioastronauts’ were no doubt a boon because they proved valuable to NASA for an entire decade in order to work out the effects of gravity. As for ‘gravity’ itself, well thats a misnomer too. Its like how we interpret the Sun rising from the horizon and then setting in the evening amongst a red sky. That’s not what the Sun does but its our perspective that ‘builds’ that. In terms of gravity its what’s deemed a part of the fabric of space-time rather than being an actual force. The question there is whether relativity actually depends on a constructed notion of time? Time does not exist according to quantum physics. However time quite possibly because of our very own constructs – in other words that being how we evaluate and measure things. There’s no such thing in nature as a meter, a mile or any certain measurement of any sort. We build these. Hence the formulation of time came with the advent of the railways. There was a desire to ensure a common time was used in order to ensure trains ran on time everywhere. Additionally it was a measure to ensure safety especially in terms of pathing and where single track was used and trains needed to pass each other at the right moment. None of it is anything that nature desires but rather its humans that wanted this. And then some, including Einstein, noticed some quirks in this newly conceived construct of time – and how it relates to the speed of light and so on. In terms of dimensionality it may be these are properties humans are simply attributing through a self-bias – and they may not even be what really are the constitutes of the universe itself. In all, there’s really no way to be completely sure of reality due to humanity’s biases.

Even matters besides oralism and audism also involve things such as racism because there’s assumption plus pseudoscience that attempts to give misinformation and a tool for others to bash the perceived wrong-doers. Its how the history of the Deaf and how they are viewed in the hearing world has been managed – and it still continues. The bad guys (including oralists) want everyone to believe their perspective – hence some sort of fakery, or construct, must be purveyed in order to achieve such negativity and acquire a power over the marginalised. Sign language was bad and speech was good and we know how that got propelled by Milan 1880. Many thought signing wasn’t even a real thing yet speech was. Its an idea that still permeates these days even though we are now beginning to see and understand just how speech may be at best a massively fake system because few speakers even understand their own waffle!

Image has text which says 'Star Talk Radio Show.' Its not only a radio show but a Youtube show too.

Star Talk -the radio/Youtube show hosted by Neil de Grasse Tyson.

Neil de Grasse is right that we should question a lot of things, not just the Internet. Importantly in his other videos he has also explained time is not a thing either! And this despite the fact he wears a watch! But its ‘necessary’ because the whole world depends on synchronised, atomic, time – something that’s not even reached the great age of two hundred years of existence yet! ‘Time’ is such a deep element of the human consciousness that everyone must synch their lives around everything else being synched in similar ways.

Its certainly sobering stuff because, as a Deaf person I have an interest in the issue of fakery. The oralists (and audists) seem to think the Deaf ought to speak, but in essence all they are doing is dictating that we follow a constructed notion, something that essentially amounts to a parasitic system. Oralism involves the Deaf acceding to what is substantially a fake system. Certainly there isn’t the dictation as such that that goes on today – but its still there and there are indeed organisations and scientific institutions that are dedicated to the elimination of the Deaf – as well as ensure Deaf people become ‘hearing’. For example I went for hearing tests recently and the first thing the audiologist said was “You need to have cochlear implants”. The audiologist evidently had no sense of understanding that some Deaf simply don’t want this contrived hearing shit. But the hearing expert no doubt thinks the Deaf simply must be ‘converted’ – and the more that are, the better it is for hearing society.

There’s every indication sign language isn’t a parasitic system like speech so it must be more tangible and real. Anyone can reasonably figure that out. In any event, language of any sort depends on what’s real and what isn’t for all languages are to an extent constructs. In 2025 there’s agreement among a number of noted academics that the very nature of language, including the spoken variation, allows a lot of problems to develop and endure like an iron grip. What I wish to devolve here is there’s increasingly a recognition that human language is a construct and in many ways its essentially a ‘life form’ (memetic perhaps) that needs to replicate and formulate an iron grip upon people. There are numerous problems that have arisen as a result of communication – including violence and war.

Image has text: What our students say. "I would highly recommend the UCL Ear Institute. It gives you the best structure to proper you for work in the real world."

UCL students training to be audiologists deem there is a ‘real world’ out there – implicitly its that which the Deaf will need to assimilate.

Hearing people have no doubt thought the Deaf could be converted by coercion and even force. First the modus would be to ensure the Deaf were made to feel they were total failures. “Look, you’re not getting a job or any sort of social status until you learn to speak and be like others.” In other words Deaf people were told they had to be absolutely ‘normal.’ In a sense this is what audiology is about when people from that doctrine discuss the ‘real world’. They do that indeed and that because the ‘shop windows’ at the UCL, by way of information boards giving the views of audiologists, assert there is a ‘real world’ out there. It is evidently, by decree of those statements, that it is the audiologist’s task to ensure people fit into that world. The early oralists were even worse no doubt. They were demagogues whose ideals are still revered. Their view was the Deaf were beyond contempt unless they converted to a hearing person. If the Deaf did not comply, there were punishments. Writing lines. Standing in the corner. Having to sit with their hands on the seats under their bottoms, being caned, whipped or smacked with a ruler in the hand.“Your hand is NOT a means of communication!”

Pamphlet cover of a Mao era person and the title "Exploring the secrets of treating deaf-mutes."

The Deaf-Mute as incurable. This 1972 Chinese book extols the ‘secrets’ of enabling the Deaf-Mute to hear and speak. Image found on Ebay.

One can see the means by which those who desired assimilation or conversion tempted to turn the tables about. The reality for a Deaf person – clearly dependent on a concrete form of communication, has was to be brutally challenged by the various ways and means the oralists had in their portfolio. The simple way of understanding it was, “if you Deaf strive to learn the hearing lingo, especially those intonations, those difficult to pronounce sounds, and not attempt to use sign language at all, it would be so much easier for us. But since you Deaf don’t want to, we must impose coercion, punishment, and apply pain where necessary.” To the Deaf that was a scary reality and the pain enforced upon their hands or their backsides was enough to show the hearing masters had command of a distorted ‘reality’. In short the Deaf were regularly treated as a far lesser life form who had to be forcibly assimilated.

In terms of ‘life form’ well no-one has any idea what that totally constitutes anyway. Do rocks have life? Is the Sun alive? Do flowers think? But hearing people, especially the oralists, seem to think they have an idea what that means. Most of everything indeed has a life form so humans are evidently not unique as they think they are. Humans define themselves by the notion of consciousness. But what is that even? Where does it reside? Is it even real? Yet humans are extremely adept at abusing other forms of consciousness because humans deem most other life forms don’t have it.

Despite all that hearing people regularly insist that gestures are an important part of speech. WHAT THE F**K? They lunge at the Deaf and castigate them for using what is an advanced form of gestures but then the hearing claim it as also a part of their linguistic make-up. These endeavours are humanity’s stupidity no doubt – and because of that humans are indeed stupid a thousand times over.

Another youth, a deaf mute - after some felicitous words of personal courtesy, wrote: "In our own land, at the beginning of this century, deaf 'mutes were ranked with idiots in the eye of the law. Only a few years ago, in the face of all their wonderful progress, a prominent member of Congress declared that a deaf mute was but half a inan. Some six or seven years ago a deaf mute was shot in Germany. The murderer was arrested and tried, but at last was discharged, because the lawyer for the defense argued that a deaf mute was a mere animal, and that it was no more wicked to kill a deaf mute than it would be to kill a brute.

The hearing world once viewed the Deaf as animals. Learn to speak – or be killed! Google Books.

In short what is real is basically what hasn’t been amplified beyond the boundaries of which nature had intended. So animals live in a real world and their lives, sounds, gestures, communication and food acquisition skills amount to what has been naturally ‘designed’ (this includes the early humans) because there was nothing else in terms of existence beyond those parameters. When the first humans encountered those ‘monoliths’ (or whatever it had been that prompted these humans to look beyond their ‘caves’) in order to think of ways of alternatively pursuing a power or a supremacy, such as using bones for weapons, rocks for projectiles and the rest of it. The whole endeavour involved – a move to managed farming, basic housing, and it soon morphed into towns and cities and industries and transport systems that were needed to keep these new realities on the move.

There is no doubt for millennia humanity have departed from reality – and everything since has been an idea, a concept, a notion that life must be entirely repurposed in some way or other. The only crime of the Deaf was to retain a semblance of the ‘old world’ (gestures etc) and not embrace the ‘new’ (speech, long distance communication etc). That too was a fate that befell other minorities – such as the American Indians and the African natives. Basically the newly ‘developed’ world went to war with the rest of it.

The stuff purveyed in war and conflict is fake but the underlying ‘importance’ is that one side must win, the other must lose. Yet so many believe the fakery that emanates. Its why there’s insidious rhetoric and lies that regularly gets purveyed. Both sides invariably up the ante with even more fakery in order to mislead the believers/supporters/objectors. Its why we have MAD – mutually assured destruction – because some very stupid humans have devolved that nuclear weapons are a way to keep peace. Not mere sitting down, talking, discussing, coming to understandings, but rather threaten the whole world with destruction – and that is a massive fakery. Its a whole constructed world that knows no bounds!

Apes in Kubrick's 2001 fight off others armed with bones.

Weapons are such fun! When do we get to use nukes? Screencap from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.

In a sense war (and violence) is a translative version of verbalisation – including speech and communication. If someone orders another to ‘do this’ and the other resist or refuses, the next step is to impose this very reality. That would be weapon or a punishment tool of some sort. A gun butt shoved in one’s backside or a whip used against the person’s body. Maybe even a kick against the person’s head. Or tether their hands behind their back and that causes pain. This is then demonstrated to the person in question, who are told ‘if you do not comply we will bear upon you even harder…’ Up to that point what has occurred has been largely a construct, a reality that does not even exist (in the human mind it does because humanity has a big problem with what’s real and what’s not). And if the endeavour has so far not worked, well that’s when the oppressors (or whomever) decide things must come to a crunch. This is how torture evolved – being the desire to impose a new sort of reality.

Its massively dangerous too because nuclear annihilation is unfortunately something that is real. Much human endeavour is a fakery – except for the violence and forcible coercion, oppression etc. Real because it hurts. In other words it disables, it clips people’s natural abilities, it decimates and removes opponents and the rest of it. In short, a group of minorities, who have different views but want to do well, fairly, and contribute to society, have their wings clipped because the main body of society does not agree (or even another opposing minority that does not agree with the first for that matter) and then push the first group out of the equation, there has to be violence, which is almost invariably directed by initial bouts of speech, or chicanery, or political rhetoric, or even social action such as rumours, attempting to bedevil the group etc).

Often what are initial moves obviously don’t confer a ‘reality impressor’ upon the group in question, so that is then changed into a REAL reality by way of violent acts being undertaken. In terms of colonialism the whites came in peace but things soon turned to violence because the natives did not want change. It was a means to force others to adapt to a differing realism by way of coercion, violence etc, or even getting rid of the problem – eg genocide. This is these days what can be deemed a sort of schism between what’s not real and what is real. Human society is no doubt a construct thus most things, from religion to politics to beliefs to social customs to economics to how people interact (for example women must marry and produce children – a things that’s a property of yet another of the many eminently fake constructs that pervade this planet – patriarchy). Thus its difficult to determine reality in whatever sense humans exist.

The issue of defence of countries or lands are no doubt due to imaginary borders, these being boundaries that have no basis in reality. Unless of course one puts up a fence and says that’s my side and this is yours. Even so, that’s still a construct because the fence is not really doing anything beyond being a mere demarcation. The Berlin Wall came down remember? Walls hurt but people can negate those and some do adapt by for example, being allowed to visit people on the other side of the way by way of special checkpoints etc. Its a sort of open prison in fact and its operated by those who desire the mass surveillance of others. Some countries have indeed been created by drawing a line through the map and saying to one side, ‘that bit’s yours’ and to the others, ‘this other bit is yours.‘ And these do not respect what were previous realities.

Studios can replicate near enough reality in other formats - including the Moon! Scene from 2001 A Space Odyssey where astronauts can see spacecraft landing and the Earth in the distance.

Apollo, Artemis? We can create ‘better realism’ about the moon in the studio! Screencap from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.

What about the moon landings being faked or the assertion the world is flat? Some think the moon landings were filmed in a studio – and Kubrick had a hand in this because the scenes in 2001 a Space Odyssey were so realistic people are convinced it’s possible to fully fake the moon in absentia on Planet Earth! Others think the world is flat and they use various arguments and evidence to press their viewpoint fully. Even so, one can go to the Old Bedford Level River in Cambridgeshire and with a bit of determination and proper analysis, they can deduct the Earth as being round. But hey! One doesn’t have go to all that hassle. Millions take to the skies each year by flying and there’s no doubt millions of people (including many flat-earthers) are seeing every day, and every hour and every minute of each day the fullest evidence the earth is round.

What is truth even? Do psychologists know what is real? I beg this particular question because at university it was one that was asked regularly. There’s this thing about not bringing bias to an experiment or project but the impossibility of it is no matter what, there is invariably going to be an influence, a subjective bias and the rest of it. Even the fact language and knowledge is constructed certainly ensures these experiments are invariably 100% constructed. Besides, when even organisations desire to do research on the Deaf for some project or other, they must no doubt be bringing their own bias to the whole research too! Its evident no matter what a human does that any true objectivity almost certainly is impossible.

How about the budget announced by the UK government a few days ago. (NOTE: This post was initially begun at the time of the last UK budget – this being at the end of November 2025! Yes some posts take a long time to complete!) That was a terrible budget wasn’t it? No matter what budget it is – they’re going to be terrible in any sense. Its because there’s a specialist system at play that essentially satisfies what is just a small cohort of humans. Monkeys would never understand what money is yet despite that they don’t suffer the consequences – and don’t even go to war over it! Economic systems, they’re binding many to a level of unacceptable subsistence – and that because everyone – the whole human system in fact, sees money as a gold to be exchanged for value etc and it has to be earned initially in order to enjoy those riches.

The red case that regularly 'attends' the UK's budget announcements. The case is merely a symbolism for another set of perceived realities.

The present incumbent delivers her November 2025 budget to the UK Parliament. Politico.

Energy prices in this country are a fucking joke just as is food prices and rent and transport and the rest of it. Or maybe its actually fabulous and the country is going to prosper greatly and everyone is going to be richer? In fact it depends on what side one sits on. What is no doubt is ‘the truth’ is how the whole thing, this being the chancellor’s budget, worships the gods of money. Save money here, spend money there, avoid certain deficits and so on. Its a system that has been built for humans yet the ADVANTAGE of money is it serves certain humans very well – such as shareholders, money lenders, and those who want to see humans in a no-win trap where they spend their lives owing more money than they had borrowed. There’s no doubt some of those use a certain degree of language, in the form of advertising or other means to snare their victims!

If there is any concern the Internet is producing fakery, its nothing new. Humanity has employed fakery ever since time immemorial. Thousands of years ago, humans used fakery to trap animals. For example build a hole, cover it with reeds and leaves and in due course an animal falls into it, perhaps on to stakes, thus it impales itself. Or perhaps instead humans hide behind a tree, having first perhaps dirtied their faces or even their body to afford camouflage. An animal struts pass unaware there is a human present. Too late. A blow is dealt to the animal’s head and its killed. For the humans who had afforded the capture, the animal is now a mere delicacy. The reality for the animal was, in a very brief moment, to feel the hunting weapon bear upon it, or to fall into the trap and then feel the knives directed into its body. In a sense, true reality is in a lot of cases all too brief and it is invariably too late when that realisation does arrive.

There’s all sorts of other things besides such examples that were used to trap animals. The problem is humanity got greedy so better methods were pursued. Hence weapons for a start. Even to fight other humans better and better methods of fakery and deception had to be employed. Even in war there’s no doubt fakery continues so what’s there to complain about?

Then there’s ocean trawling factory farming and so on. The intensive methods used to trap and ensnare animals are no longer effective. The money men must make $$$$$$$$ (and further squeeze the worker too in the process) thus the ‘snaring’ of animals becomes even more intensive. In any event its not even about snaring or trapping any longer. Animals are instead bred in a factory and as soon as they reach a perfect state of being (this being one that is a human prerequisite), they are sent along chutes to a part of the factory where their heads get chopped off and a process ensues in order to make the body parts into ‘delicious’ things such as ‘steak’, ‘wings’, ‘venison’, ‘scampi’, spam, sausages, burgers whatever. Animals are no doubt trapped in a vicious circle of realities humanity has decreed as being purposeful for its own selfish ends.

Close up of the eye. This is the moment the eye flickers into reality. In 2001 A Space Odyssey this is when the astronaut Dave finds he has entered a totally different reality compared to that he had been used to.

Things become very evident! Clarity arises when ‘real reality’ pervades the human mind. Screencap from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Deaf people are unfortunately trapped in all this too. The hearing world, the need to speak, the need to embrace everything hearing based. The Deaf are pursued, adjusted, operated upon, given hi tech, and even experimented upon in order to ensure they fit the reality that hearing people desire. In past terms, its exactly the same as the American Indians who were forced to give up their cultures and sign languages – and to speak, dress and to all purposes and extents look like the white man. This was often done with a brutality that was far greater than the Deaf had ever known. It was perhaps the Deaf person’s inability to organise and mobilise armies against the hearing that the conversion wasn’t so embroiled like that for the American Indians and other indigenous groups.

At the end of the day, all humanity is involved in some sort of fake endeavour whether intentional or not and even whether its good, bad, altruistic or malicious. Undoubtedly, humanity is very clearly a risk, not just to itself, but also to the planet, its environment, ecology and its huge variety of species. In many ways, humanity simply does not learn but rather it gets more adept at ensuring such processes resonate throughout the human world. It cannot understand that fall out from these very processes (whether they are rules, economics, weaponry, politics, whatever) invariably makes many things worse. Those very properties, being substantially what are pseudo realties, are the real dangers the world has to face. But humans have yet to understand that.