As incredibly complex as is the human brain there are some species which have capabilities we humans lack. For many insects the visible spectrum exceeds our own. Some are able to see ultra-violet light. For them seeing ultra-violet light and distinguishing it from the other colors of the spectrum is no more unusual than for us seeing and distinguishing between blue and orange.
Sometimes things happen and some of us are born with what we call color blindness, the inability to distinguish between some colors, like blue and green. It is not that someone who suffers from this condition does not experience the perception of green and blue, it is just that the two colors are not experienced as being different. Such a person may understand that there is a difference in terms of wave lengths of light, but understanding that distinction does not allow them to actually experience the difference any more than for the rest of us to understand the distinction between X-rays and ultra-violet allows us to actually experience the difference.
There are more serious conditions than color blindness. There are also those among us for whom right and wrong are just as indistinguishable. These people may have learned and may understand that the two are different and even how they differ on an intellectual level the way we lean that ultra-violet and x-rays are different, but they do not experience the perception of right and wrong the way most humans do. Even our legal system takes such mental defects into account and we do not hold such people responsible for wrongful acts which they truly do not comprehend as being wrong; we send them to mental hospitals in the hope of somehow curing what in many cases is incurable because there is something different about the way their brains are structured.
There is another condition which may also be just as much an inherent condition as color blindness. We have a name for it but we don’t put it into the same class as what we call “legal insanity.” We call it “compulsive lying.” Like the rest of us with our vision limitations, those who have this condition may be able to understand that there is a difference and even what the characteristics are that distinguish the two just as we can understand the distinction between ultra-violet and x-ray radiation but these people may be no more capable of experiencing the difference between truth and falsehood than we are of experiencing the difference between ultra-violet and x-ray radiation. Compulsive or “…pathological liars may slide easily from the notion that something could have happened to the conviction that it did. When pressed, many will admit what they are saying isn’t true.” (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200310/understanding-compulsive-liars.) But they may be only recognizing this on an intellectual level and not the way the rest of us do. The number of people who suffer from this condition may be very large or very small. It would be interesting to have someone do some research on this. It may be that these people deserve our sympathy or at the very least that we should hold back reacting to their lies with anger but it disturbs me that the Republican Party appears to have chosen as it’s nominees for President and Vice President two men who I hope “..know not what they do…” because if they do then we are in for a future far worse than anything we can imagine if they succeed in winning this election.
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