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Color Comes in Early
Early in life you learn language by practicing words like “mama” and “dada”, developing the foundational communication muscles. Soon after this, you begin to learn colors. It is simple enough to show a leaf and say, “this is green” then a stop sign “this is red”. Where we fail is understanding the potential flaw in this process. The inability to communicate color objectively (without examples) leads us to a curious question: Is my blue your yellow?
Let Me Explain
While it is possible to say “yellow is a calm color” that is subjective and hard to understand. Communication and understanding of emotions would be a whole other article to write. Take a moment to think about how you would communicate with someone who doesn’t understand color. What color is and how does it work? This is challenging if not impossible. If you believe you think you have a good explanation, imagine using that explanation in a conversation with someone completely color blind. Would they be able to understand what you were talking about?
Is Your Blue My Yellow?
Due to the lack of communicability mentioned above, we have little way to verify that we interpret and see the world through the same lens. When I look up in the sky, I may see yellow while you see blue. Early on as I child, I was shown an ocean and told “this is blue” and because I hadn’t seen it before, I now understand that hue to be blue even though it might look like your yellow instead. We can agree that the sky is called blue, because we were told that term refers to the sky, but it is challenging to know if we experience the same color, if our blues look the same.
How Do You Know We See Different Colors?
I don’t! Any time there is an inability to communicate something, it leads to this issue of not understanding if we have the same experience. Just because we cannot communicate something does not mean that it is different for us, it is simply a possibility. In fact, I think it is rather unlikely that most of the population have significant variances in how color is interpreted since our brains are like one another’s. There certainly are some people who experience different colors than the average human, and they might not even know it. They might not know it because of the inability to communicate the experience of color. This phenomenon can also be seen in other animals.
So What?
We can’t prove this with modern science and there doesn’t seem to be major issues associated, so why do we care? This topic is less about seeing different colors and more about issues with language/communication and the possibilities of different experiences amongst peers. There are major gaps in language and communication that lead to assumptions that limit our ability to comprehend the world. We need to continue to evolve our language, to put words to concepts. This is a requirement to the mental evolution humans. While that may be a large task for any individual, one thing we can all do is understand that we all have different perceptions on the world, and it may not be due to any inherent variation in values.
There are likely many sensations in this world that are experienced vastly differently amongst different people, leading to altered views and values. Understand that and take the time to listen to others and your perception of the world can expand to amazing lengths. This article is an adaptation of something I wrote in middle school, yet it stuck with me through today. I hope that for some of you reading, this concept may have opened a window in your mind that allows you to see others’ perceptions in a different light as it did mine.
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