When I first read question 2, the thought of past intimate moments with boyfriends and crushes immediately came to mind. I thought about how my stomach would turn and how I could get light headed from the mere brushing of my crush’s arm against mine. I thought about how the whisper of my boyfriend against my neck could send tingling sensations up my spine. Just the thought of these romantic moments puts a sappy grin on my face, fills my body with warmth and fullness, and makes me want to frolic through a meadow of flowers. No other relationship can cause more passionate and intense feelings than the one between two lovers. Our sense of light touch is at the center of this passion and intensity. Without the ability to feel the lightest touch, we would be deprived of this sensation that brings so many couples closer together. Romantic situations would be missing a crucial component.
Once I stopped thinking about the light touches of romantic partners and wiped the silly grin off my face, I began to think about other ways in which our world would be affected by a loss of light touch. If we only felt “heavy” touches, we would probably only feel stimuli if it caused us pain. Would this not make us more irritable? If all we could feel was pain, I do not think there would be very happy people among us.
Also, on a more practical level, our loss of light touch would result in the inability to determine the textures of objects and the temperature of objects unless they were on the extreme end of a continuum. For example, we could not tell if something was hot unless it was piping hot. On the flip side, we would not be able to tell if it’s cold unless it’s freezing cold. We could not even begin to tell if something was silky or prickly unless it was painful prickliness.
