20 years ago I was injured in one eye. Without an operation it would have left me going slowly blind. The operation was invented maybe 20 years earlier.
Both my eyes had a cataract at a quite early age. Artificial lenses where invented AFAIK 50 years ago. The new lenses even correct my shortsightedness and astigmatism!
So if I had lived only 50 years earlier I would be blind on one eye and quite possibly without a lense or at least seeing really foggy on the other. Now I am sitting here with - 0.5/-1 and otherwise great eye sight.
There are no words how grateful I am for the wonders of modern eye medicine.
Natural selection hasn't really applied to humans for thousands of years. We beat nature when we created civilizations. Which is partly why some of these less than ideal genetic traits go unchecked now in the population.
Remember, your only job as far as natural selection is concerned is to have offspring and have them survive long enough to repeat the cycle. Old people with bad eyesight just have to be able to keep the kids and grandkids alive.
you know whats even weirder? Some dude somewhere realized that lenses were a thing, and realized that your eyes were also just a glorified lense. And that theoretically you could just put a lense over a lense to fix the bad lensing of the lense. And it fucking worked.
Some species members care for each other. Humans obviously (some anyways), even lions I think have been known to provide food when another has broken teeth or something.
I don't need it to be night to realise that. I have -13 on both eyes, near-sightedness (not sure about the correct terminology in English). I see clearly for about one centimetre right by the tip of my nose, everything closer or further than that is a blurry and fuzzy mess. To use my phone without glasses I have to press it against my nose and can only see about half of the screen width clearly.
I remember maybe a decade or more ago some enterprising gent made a glasses design with some kind of resin in the lens, so the wearer could adjust the lens thickness to fit their needs. Nobody would back his invention so he created a non-profit to fund these glasses for the developing world. I'd love to know what happened to it because its still something I care about supporting.
I like to tell my Republican father we'd both be classified legally blind and on the welfare he hates so much if optometry wasn't around. Helps put it in perspective for him how some people just "lose" the life lotto and need help to live in the same world as able-bodied folks.
As someone with bad sight, all my other senses are tingling. So, while blind people might've been unable to hunt, they would have made great night guards, which is a boon for social groups wary of nocturnal predators.
My eyesight went to shit from sitting at a desk and staring at a monitor all day. I wonder if my eyesight would've remained perfect well into adulthood without computers.
Being seriously evaluated for Sjogren's Syndrome currently. Went to a rheumatologist for joint pain and found out that my chronic eye pain and dry eyes is a big indicator of a problem. I thought it is because my eyesight is shit and I look at screens constantly
My eyesight is atrocious. One time I was out in a notable windstorm, I stumbled, and my glasses got ripped off my face. I would have been absolutely fuckered if I'd been alone. They'd gotten blown under a car and I never would have found them by myself.
Every time I have a migraine (or when I take my daily preventative. or whenever I notice the anti-migraine coating on my glasses) I consider how long it'll take someone to put me out of my misery once the apocalypse shows up. Can't say I'll be super useful whenever I'm forced to be in a dark/quiet room for a day or so before I can function again.
Pretty funny! But the reason so many people need glasses is because we spend all our time indoors, reading. People in the past were outside working all the time and they didn’t need glasses as a result.