Biological Needs and Human Society

Many of humanity's most prized inventions, from plumbing to supermarkets, are intended to separate people
from their fundamental biological needs water, shelter, food, excretion, and other necessities However, in Blindness, as
an unexplained blindness known as "the white sickness" ravages an unnamed city, those in charge of society's intricate
systems cease to function, and everyone else must completely devote themselves to satisfying their fundamental
biological requirements. People from all walks of life, doctors, police officers, taxi drivers, prostitutes, children, and so
on, become simply "the blind" throughout the city. Their functions are undifferentiated and they are indistinguishable
from one another. However, Saramago's argument goes beyond merely demonstrating the fragility and complexity of
human society. Instead, Saramago demonstrates that people can never truly be free of these needs by erasing the
society that humans developed to meet their particular biological needs: Despite our sincere belief that we are the most
intelligent and rational animal on the planet, we are still animals.

The traffic light at the start of the book symbolizes how reliant on technology society is now. Blindness becomes
the norm, causing what can be compared to a transient change in human biology: human civilization is built around
sight, and without it, social norms and identities completely disintegrate. The traffic light represents a social order that,
while very complicated and developed, was only dependent on a chance quirk of human biology, the human eye.
Consequently, while the traffic light is originally a widely identifiable and authoritative sign, it gradually comes to
represent this. The protagonists briefly camp out in a store full of electric appliances that they complain cannot be eaten
or worn, and while people initially rob banks during the outbreak, money soon becomes useless, showing how human
society, while designed to meet people`s basic needs, actually frequently distracts from them. This does not imply that
technology developed by humans is entirely useless. Medicine is one type of technology in particular that has been
created with the express purpose of modifying and enhancing human biological resiliency.

When public services and social norms evaporate, Saramago shows how this biology takes over and people are
reduced to their animal nature. He does this not to shock readers, but rather to emphasize that people`s bodily
functions are one of the few constants in human life, which makes this biology more essential than people`s identities,
jobs, relationships, institutions, technology, and even vision, all of which can disappear without affecting people`s
fundamental nature. But notably, they do this outside the confines of traditional gender roles, for instance, the doctor`s
wife becomes a killer, breadwinner, and caregiver all at once, which suggests that such gender roles are just another
kind of contingent, fragile social distinction that falls apart under crisis. Once the blind internees leave the hospital and
start living out in the city, they realize that they have been living in the same circumstances as everybody else, people
have left their homes and started wandering around the city in groups, looking for food and sleeping wherever they
happen to find shelter. In other words, blindness has served as a great equalizer, and there is no longer any difference
between the people inside or outside the hospital, just as all people, regardless of status or identity, are united by the
same basic needs and biological functions.

In actuality, when civilization falls apart, blind individuals not only resemble all other humans but also other
animals. The blind often complains about feeling like animals while being housed in hospitals, and after they are
released into the city, they explore the area for anything they can eat alongside packs of dogs that also do the same
thing. When the doctor's wife becomes lost, a dog that licks up her tears and quickly adopts her into his family saves her
instead of a human. It is absolutely clear that Saramago rejects the idea that humans are naturally superior to or
designed to reign over the rest of the animal kingdom because the narrator refers to the "dog of tears" as an "animal of
the human kind." However, the ripple effects of blindness demonstrate that this biological nature is a product of
evolutionary history, which could have been different and could even change in the future, and that society is a product
of the peculiarities of human biology. Instead, humans are a particular kind of animal that have developed a certain kind
of society around our specific biological needs.