Imagine This

[coberst]

Imagine This

 

Imagine that you and a thousand other people lived deep in the jungle of Africa. Imagine further that every one of you had been born colorblind and none had any idea what color was. Imagine further that you were an exercise nut and discovered, quite by accident, that if you performed a certain sequence of exercises you developed color perception.

 

What would you do?

 

If you tried to tell the others what would they do? Would you be able to convince any one of them to follow your example? How would you explain to them what you had accomplished? Would they eventually kill you like the Athenians did Socrates?

[Moontanman]

Imagine This

 

Imagine that you and a thousand other people lived deep in the jungle of Africa. Imagine further that every one of you had been born colorblind and none had any idea what color was. Imagine further that you were an exercise nut and discovered, quite by accident, that if you performed a certain sequence of exercises you developed color perception.

 

What would you do?

 

If you tried to tell the others what would they do? Would you be able to convince any one of them to follow your example? How would you explain to them what you had accomplished? Would they eventually kill you like the Athenians did Socrates?

 

Well judging from how our society reacts to this sort of thing I would say most likely that type of exercise would be made illegal and anyone who taught it to any one else would be arrested especially if they taught it to teens. So at the very least you would be put in jail for promoting hallucinogenic exercises. :shrug:

[HydrogenBond]

The first thing I would do is bounce the concept of color sight off people to get their reactions. One must understand, although color sight would be an extreme advancement, most people will freak out at the idea that the gray is not exactly right. You may need to make it hypothetical to see who can understand abstractly, who thinks you are crazy, who is afraid, and who will enforce the status quo of the well documented and proven gray scale. It all depends how that social reaction stacks up.

 

The color sight would be such a revolutionary change, it would be resisted and even ridiculed. It would be an uphill battle to give this gift since it might be a curse. For example, everyone may see one tone of gray in two close color situations. If you say these are blue and aqua, and try to explain that you can see two distinct things, where everyone else sees one, you are crazy or a con artist trying to confuse everyone. Not everyone will want this much notoriety and confusion. You would need to be tough skinned, since you will always be wrong even if you are right. You will be crazy, even though sane. One can only agree on black and white and the grays that are actually real in the colored world. After than the color blind mob rules.

 

If there is too much defensiveness, you would need to move cautiously, but continue to reach out to those who are not as biased by the traditions of gray scale and/or not as fearful of the consequences of this total change. But in the mean time, you would still be curious and make use of this color sight to explore the world, but always remembering others are still seeing in black, white and gray. This would get confusing.

 

The scientist wishes to forward to develop, regardless of the doubters, but the gray scale traditions may require you not go too far or else you will forget the gray scale distinctions. This memory will be replaced if you go to far and you will begin to make gray scale mistakes. You can't say blue and aqua anymore, but was that gray 3.4 or gray 4.3? A good memory bluff allows you to coexist and still continue to explore without friction.

 

If you end up the only one, who is willing to see color, in spite of the peer pressure, it can make you feel isolated. You are always wrong even when you are right and begin to question what is real since everyone else seems to agree. Is this just me being odd, and the world is really just black, white and gray? You may be tempted to stop the exercises and go backwards to gray scale just to fit in, or risk detaching and becoming the fool on the hill.