Colors

                                                             http://i.ytimg.com/vi/evQsOFQju08/0

From the time we take our first gasps of air, opening our bleary eyes to the foreign world, we are met with color. Light shines off of minuscule particles that reflect the pigments they cannot absorb; we, because of the construction of our eyes, can perceive these rejected hues – love them and hate them as we so choose.

 Few of us really stop to ponder these preferences further than face value, but, when contemplating this partiality, greater questions have a habit of revealing themselves. For example: are all colors universal to all people?

Colorblindness is the decreased ability, or complete inability, to perceive color or to distinguish between variances in color. Reds can appear green; blues can appear red; everything can become another shade of grey, black, or white. There have even been reports that ‘colorblind’ individuals can differentiate pigments those with ‘normal’ color vision cannot.

In short, the sheer variety of ways it is known that color can be perceived, in other humans and in animals (cats are believed to see in blues and greys and fish can see in ultraviolet), means that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of seeing the world.

And even if two beings can gesture to the same color and call it the same thing, it may truly not appear the same to the both of them.

                That apple is red. A banana is yellow. Your dog is brown. Though most humans have the power to perceive color, it is impossible to explain colors to one who has never seen them; all children learned color through first-hand experience and guidance. Who’s to say that each and every perception of color is the same? Is his brown her orange? Is her green his purple?

People may very well have similar ranges of color perception (regarding the number of colors they can see and the severity of their dissimilarities) but may observe different colors in general. Regardless, they would all call their colors the same thing: his purple and her green could very well end up with the title of ‘red.’ This ‘red,’ no matter how it was seen by the individual, would have the exact same psychological influence on everyone; the wavelength attained by the cones in our eyes would determine the effect on the brain.

                Color is not the only thing that incites similar contemplation. Taste, touch, sound, and smell: these capabilities could very well be just as unique. They are sensations that the mind translates from the physical world for the individual experience. In this way, we are very much alone in our own heads. We should realize that not everything should be taken for granted.

Even topics that are seemingly fundamental have layers upon layers of mystery surrounding them. The trick is to dig deep enough to discover them. The goal is to make them a mystery no longer. The key is to realize how much we really do not know.