Tuesday

When a Green Light is Blue

In Japan, they say that the green traffic light is actually blue.
Is it blue? Is it green?
Is it a matter of perception or simply a matter of discourse?

In high school, I met a guy named Chris Varga who had presented me with an interesting idea about the discernment of color. He believed that we do not dream in color, but only in black and white. He claimed that when we awake and recall our dream, we just associate color with the objects in our dream; for example, if you dreamt of an apple, you would remember the apple as being red because that is the color you associate with apples.

Do your eyes perceive things differently than mine? Does your mind perceive things differently, as well? Does your culture, environment, genetic dispostion, religious beliefs or the lingering effects of the night before affect the way you see the world around you and around me?

Whether a traffic light is blue or green does not really matter, but I can't stop from wondering...what do YOU see?

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