May the colors live

There exists a world with no concept of colors. The entire world is one huge blob of white... well, more or less. There’s all the light one would ever want, but everything there is white… When the average homo sapien ends up in this world on a clear day, let's say on a seashore, and looks at the horizon, here's approximately what he sees: a clear white sheet on top that's a more brilliant white in just one particular patch where the sun is, and a white of a rather different quality, more shimmering and alive with movement, at the bottom. Of course it is not absolutely true that there is just white, for, the absence of light would inevitably engender black, and the very existence of light, the existence of physical matter, and the interplay of light and matter entails the existence of shadows and shades, which quite naturally create a gray scale. But when ample contrast does not exist, we homo sapiens would grope like blind people. It is quite ironic. There's light, and lots of it, you have organs that can perceive and a brain that can comprehend images, but that does not help much... because there isn't enough input to help make a distinction of one thing from another.

I once got thrown into this world, and fascinating though it was, I was a fish out of water, until I came back here... to this world where we can not only live comfortably without knocking things around as we walk in broad (bright) daylight and know when to stop and when to go at a traffic light, but can also enjoy the sight of a rainbow on a pleasant day, enjoy the splash of paints on a blank canvas, and decorate our christmas trees with lights, ribbons, cotton and confetti.

When I came back to this world, I felt overwhlemed by the sight of colors, and following the same line of thought, of variety in the universe, because in a reductionist sense, it all came down to distinctions, and variety... so many shapes, patterns, sizes, behaviors, characteristics, moods. To me all these aspects were like colors! True, isn't it, that they add color to life? Not only does one thing being different from another give you two different points of view, it makes life more interesting, doesn't it? What a drudgery this whole existence would be without people of different physical characteristics, different personalities, different behaviors, traditions, customs, beliefs, langauges... ! We wouldn't have as many refreshing or new things to offer to those around us, would we?

With the changes in the world and our way of living, and technology and interconnectedness, is variety in people so to say, endangered? Are people becoming more and more homogeneous and alike? Just to cite an example, we, at least the urban lot, live much more similar lives than our ancestors in different regions in the world perhaps did, for the simple reason that some generations back, traditions and adhering to traditions was a priority so that different regions had different, and interesting cultural and social characteristics, and today adhering to traditions is perhaps not particularly a priority to us, either because our fast lives have taken over those customs that died in the process of natural selection, or because reason and logic is dominating our lives so much that we look for the "meaning" behind everything we do. Well, who has managed to figure the meaning of anything out, anyway? Today we, from different ethnic and geographic backgrounds, all sit in front of computers, play video games, drink, and eat fast food... Believe me, I have no complaints about this, but that's beside the point of this write-up, which is, variety. It is true though, that in the world when people in different parts of the world were drastically different, they were ignorant of what was outside their worlds, so they probably didn't see all the variety there was, anyway. But how nice it would be if we could preserve the diversity while we have the means to see it, in this world where people from different parts of the globe interact, and also learn oodles of trivia from the internet and such!

These thoughts lead me also, to the interesting subject of interracial marriages. "It's great for the genes, the variety helps in evolution"..... well, does it? At least it was what I believed in for the longest time, but I am not certain of that any more, after further reflection. Eons back, people of a certain region or a certain race tended to have certain distinctive qualities, because these qualities got stronger down the line, and also because, the progeny inherited the traits of the parents and ended up having those distinctive qualities. To give an example, Jews, at least it is believed, were (are?) excellent linguists. Another example is, France has produced some great artists like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who revolutionized the world of Impressionist art. Romanians and Indians, to name some, are good at Mathematics. These are examples of a certain group of people having developed certain strengths over generations, and having passed on these qualities down to their next generations. And we need people who are particularly good at specific things, don't we? That's where geniuses are born. Imagine a world after zillions of generations when there has been a complete jumble of gene pools, social charecteristics and ways of living. Would people be naturally good at a lot of things, or would everyone be a Jack of all, master of nothing? I am curious to find out. Also,what happens to languages? Do they die or do genetically different languages mix and evolve into something new? I know for a fact that in our generation in India, many Indian languages are on the verge of extinction, because people predominantly use English to communicate.

And what about the people in the world moving around and living in different parts of the globe? Would everyone's physical characteristics converge to one common set of characteristics? For instance, people living around the equator have dark skin because they are genetically adapted to the enormous amount of sunlight and direct exposure to the sun, that leads to their producing ample melanin. Now that people are moving all around the world, generations from now would these characteristics go away? Or take the shape of something totally new and something we can't imagine today?

Will the generations to come see the variety we see in the world today or a different sort, or perhaps much lesser variety? Are the colors fading away? Is this world on its way to becoming the white world I once saw? May be there are some "intrinsic" differences people have that are bound to stay, and no one would have any complaints because that's the world they'd know; they'd know none else... In any event, the upshot of all these thoughts was a strong feeling of enlightenment I had, just realizing how free and light it feels to view different customs, traditions and beliefs as elements of variety in the world, in a very detached sense, rather than analyzing what is meaningful in them. As long as people are not fanatical or going to the battlefields on grounds of differences, does it hurt to have variety in the world? Does it hurt to add a little poetry to our lives? Can't we enjoy these different colors on the rainbow of life?