Recently, I learned that migratory birds have a sense called magnetoreception.
Scientists are not sure if all birds have it, but migratory birds can “see” patterns in the sky that show direction.
The world is one place, but each living creature sees it in a different way.
So maybe the world is one, but it exists as many layers.

I finished reading Human Specimen by Kanae Minato.

At first, I only felt, “This book is very heavy.”
I could not agree with the narrator at all.
But as the story continued, my feelings were changed again and again.
In the end, I felt that “no matter what happened, this ending could not be avoided.”
The author’s writing was very powerful, and it made me think deeply about “how we see the world.”

In the story, there are different points of view, an unreliable narrator, and a question about whether humans can understand the world that butterflies see through ultraviolet light.
These are not just story devices.
They connect to a deeper question: Do people really see the same world?

Humans usually have three types of cone cells in the eyes.
These cells decide how we see colors.
Some people may have a fourth type of cone cell, so they might see colors differently from others.

But humans can never see ultraviolet light like butterflies.
Even if we wore special glasses, our eyes would be damaged and we would lose our sight.
So humans cannot share the butterfly’s world.

This big difference also exists among humans.
The idea that “we all see the same world” is probably not true.

Even if we both say “red,” our brains may process the color differently.
And because we use language to name colors, the category of “red” is limited by the words we know.
There is no way to compare “my red” and “your red.”

We live as if we see the same world, but in reality, we do not.

Language shapes our thinking.
In the same way, how we see the world also shapes our thinking.
If we see the world differently, we feel and judge things differently.

So it is not strange that some people cannot be understood by the “common sense” of the majority.
That “common sense” is only the average of many people’s senses.

There are things that other people can do, but I find difficult. For example:

• giving most of my life to work
• getting angry or giving strong instructions
• having deep relationships with people
• staying calm in crowds or while shopping

I used to think I was “not a complete adult.”
But now I think I simply see the world in my own way, and I live according to that view.
There is no need to deny myself.

The idea that humans share the same world is probably an illusion.

In Human Specimen, the act of making human specimens is something that must not be allowed.
But I also think we cannot completely deny the world that person “saw.”

If the way we see the world is different, our values and judgments also change.
We seem to share the same world, but in truth, each of us lives in a different one.
If we accept this, we cannot simply say “I don’t understand that person” and stop thinking.

Nothing in this world can be perfectly understood by another.

By accepting the differences in how we see the world,
we may find a path not of denial, but of understanding.