This is the Message Centre for Willem
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How to Do My Part?
Willem Started conversation Mar 24, 2010
Hi folks. I'm still getting used to not having my dad around. I think he's now in a good place, but its hard for me to still be down here and without him. He was my friend, guide, mentor, my 'life coach' in a way. I could ask him about any sort of thing I planned to do, and after having done a thing, I could ask him what he thought about it.
My problem is really that I need guidance about what to do. I don't understand other people on my own. What I want to do is to contribute my part to making the world a better place. I want to do things that will be appreciated. It's not that I seek appreciation. It's that I care about the world, and about people - though I don't understand them. I know people will never understand me, but that's not important either. I just want to do something that in some way will be valued, valuable, to make things better for somebody or something. I want to do something good.
How can I do that?
Through my art? I want to increase the beauty in the world. That's good is it not? By focusing on Nature - I want to show people the beauty of animals, plants, scenes from the natural world. If people can see that beauty and appreciate it, they might do more to protect Nature and species of animals and plants. And their lives will also be enriched. I really believe that an appreciation of the beauty of Nature enriches anybody who has it. Is that right?
Can I help by writing? I would love to teach people - again, more about Nature and animals and plants, as I try to do here with my entries about various things. Is that valuable? Is this online Guide a good place for doing that kind of thing?
How about other kinds of writing? I am into philosophy. Despite being 'crazy' I still think I have some insights that might be interesting or valuable. That is controversial though. I don't have much stomachs for fights or debates, especially with people who just cannot see what I'm trying to say, or who have myriads of misconceptions - as unfortunately lots of people do have.
And the points I would like to make are controversial. I'm not going to be saying the things everybody else is saying - what the heck is the need for that? Instead I want to say things pretty much nobody is saying, since there is a much greater need for such things to be said. When challenged, I will have to defend what I say - and quite vigorously, the more so the more controversial the points I want to make. But a vigorous defense can be perceived as an attack. My friendliness and goodwill can easily be misunderstood.
Do any of you think I have what it takes to write good philosophy? My father thought I did. In that he was my protector ... but a realistic protector. He might have said to me, 'you can write philosophy' - but he would also have been a fair critic of anything I might write.
Now I don't have his protection any more. Now, anybody and everybody - people who don't know me at all, have no idea of my abilities, my potential, my knowledge, can come along and say to me, 'don't write philosophy, nobody reads that, and you stink at it anyways', and what the hell can I do or say against that?
Or they can say to me 'you're a good philosopher, write your heart out' but they don't know, they're just being yes-folks and flatterers, they will not fairly criticise me for my mistakes and shortcomings.
And all the time there's this terrible nagging pain inside me telling me I have lots of interesting ideas other people can benefit from, and it's wrong to keep them all inside. But I don't know how to get them out and have them treated fairly by the outside world. I am protective of them. I don't want to throw pearls before swine, so to speak.
What the heck can I do?
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Mar 24, 2010
Oh, wow, Willem. You know, one of the best things anyone can say to me as a writer is, 'That's exactly the way I feel, and you expressed it for me.'
That's exactly the way I feel, and you've just expressed it for me.
I'm crazy, too, you know. I just never had a mentor who backed me up, so maybe - just maybe - I can help a tiny bit here.
I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to get into debates. And about wanting to say things that might be, er, controversial.
It's not easy. But I'd say this:
Write what's in your heart. Put it here - in your journal, in the AWW, in , wherever. And let the chips fall where they may.
Be prepared for some people to get overexcited about the wrong things. That happens. Try not to feel personally attacked by it - this is hard, but it can be done. (I have been accused of quite a few things in these virtual pages, and I care not a whit - people don't mean it, sometimes they just had a bad day, or they misunderstood, or they're just venting...)
I read something cool the other day - some writer or other pointed out that the feedback you get is valuable, though not in the way the critic intends. At least sometimes.
He said, when someone says something you wrote didn't work, that person is right. But the suggestion for 'fixing' it is almost always wrong.
That's a brilliant way to understand feedback.
Golly, I hope that helps.
By saying what you did, you surely helped me this morning.
'True wit is nature to advantage dressed, what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' - Alexander Pope
How to Do My Part?
AlsoRan80 Posted Mar 24, 2010
Geagte Willem,
I started reading your lovely.loving thoughts, then really could not see the letters any more.
I shall try early tomorrow morning afterI have had a sleep. but you just have to be you - a splendid, wonderful courageous person. You are making your #"imprint" in the country of our birth by living the life , lloving and learning about nature and her wild animals. That is anwill be your marvellou contribution. I am thinking of all the mavellous paintings which I hav eseen of yours.
I must now end
With a great deal of affection
#christiane
AR80
Wed. 24/III/2010 17.34 GNT
How to Do My Part?
Websailor Posted Mar 24, 2010
Willem, you may throw pearls before swine sometimes, but you may also be sowing seeds in people's minds without them realising it. How would you know in the public arena? How else do we become educated, if clever people like yourself say nothing?
I often thought I was wasting my time when I worked as a volunteer for WWF, because so many people seemed apathetic, but there were many, including children, who cared, and wanted to learn and all we can do is pass on our knowledge and our conclusions (right or wrong) and see what grows.
I understand you have lost your Mentor, as well as your father, but he has given you the knowledge and strength to pass his learning on, and your own too.
It is very early days yet. You can pass on your enthusiasm and knowledge to Christiaan so a new generation can benefit. Continue writing and continue painting and something will come of it I am sure. In the meantime you give a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and give us lesser mortals something deep to think about.
If you get the chance to exhibit your paintings in the future take it.
Websailor
How to Do My Part?
Ellen Posted Mar 25, 2010
Definitely continue with your art, Willem. You are such an excellent artist, AND your art is so consistent with your values and helping people appreciate wildlife. Your artwork shows both talent and hard work. (And as for Philosophy, I am not much of a Philosopher myself, so feel unqualified to advise you in this area.)
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Mar 26, 2010
Thanks very much for your replies, everybody.
Dmitri, I understand ... I was actually very fortunate in having someone like my father around, to give me advice and criticism. I realise many people don't have a mentor and guide like that.
I guess it’s that I was so dependent on his help. It was like steering a ship on an ocean, relying on a compass, and then the compass goes overboard. One then suddenly feels quite lost. One must then find a new way of navigating ...
In a world that's crazy, it's no good thing to be well-adjusted. One must be crazy in a way, too, relative to the society one's in, to see the truths that most people can't. Seeing things very differently from others can be very traumatic though.
I will try to take your advice relative to criticism or even outright attack. I guess I need more courage. It upsets me to be taken the wrong way, it upsets me if somebody is offended by something I said. My goal is not to offend ... I want to help, not harm. I will try to be careful about what I say and try to imagine the different ways it can be interpreted to try and minimise misunderstanding ... but I *will speak*. I will say what's in my heart. Really, it's just too hard keeping it in when it's trying to burst out.
I'm trying to take courage and go on. I WILL keep on painting, no fear about that! I am getting many opportunities for exhibiting my work, also. People ARE appreciating what I'm doing ... at least, my wildlife and nature art. Well, some people like my fantasy art too!
I will keep on writing too. My father asked me to promise that, when he’s gone, I would continue writing. Yesterday I went back to the novel I’m working on; I would say it’s about three-quarters finished. You know, I really enjoyed reading it, it kept me quite interested and I made it to page 130 within a single days’ reading! (And I did other things that day as well, I didn’t just read.) I really think it has potential.
My father didn’t want me to discuss my books with other people while I was still working on them … but I did discuss them with *him* a lot, and now he’s not here, and I still feel the need for discussing my writings as I’m working on them. I just dunno … I do not see the harm in it, though, so …
The thing is that I am thinking that writing *fiction* can actually be a great way to teach people. Many people would not read lots of non-fiction about science or philosophy, but would enjoy reading a story with sympathetic characters, intrigues, mysteries, excitement and adventure. The story I’m working on is a fantasy tale set in a magical world. But this magical world and the adventures my characters get themselves involved in, has a lot to say for *our* world! Well, that’s my goal, at least!
What is philosophy? My dictionary says it is ‘the branch of knowledge or academic study devoted to the systematic examination of basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality and freedom.’ Well, my story heavily goes into those things … my characters are continually forced to ponder those issues by the situations and challenges they get themselves into.
One thing I believe – my own philosophy if you will – is that philosophy is very largely context-dependent. What seems true for one society, may seem like nonsense for another … what is practical for one, may be useless for another. So the nice thing with made-up worlds, in a work of science fiction or fantasy, is you can present a great many different kinds of realities, contexts, to show how characters make sense of different situations in different ways. The way I see it, every society that can conceivably exist will face challenges in its understanding of those issues – truth, existence, reality, causality, freedom – and other philosophical matters also. Being forced to understand these things as they relate to one’s particular situation, and having to apply that understanding to meet one’s own problems – that is something universal.
I am very worried because present-day society … in ‘western’ culture … appears to be massively unaware of philosophy. The regular Joe of today will probably have very little knowledge about the history of western philosophy and at the same time think that philosophy is totally irrelevant to modern life. In some ways I blame the philosophers themselves because if one thing is true, it’s that philosophers are great at weaving huge theories and systems of thought that are incomprehensible to ‘ordinary’ people, and also, those theories of theirs are often ‘castles built in the sky’, based on premises resting on shaky foundations or no ‘real’ foundations at all apart. And philosophers are also great at using words nobody but themselves understands.
But still, from the days of the ancient Greeks, philosophers have managed to come up with some amazing ‘truths’, or concepts that can be beneficial for people, relevant to their lives. The more we think about things – well, potentially at least – the ‘deeper’ we become. Not just ‘cleverer’, but wiser. A society that doesn’t philosophize, is a shallow society. With increased understanding comes increased appreciation. In other words: heightened quality of life. And that just from thinking! But more than that – better thinking should also translate to better action, giving us a much better chance of solving our problems. Helping us pursue happiness – and more than that, actually *achieve* happiness. But we have to have an idea what happiness *is* - and that is fundamentally a philosophical question.
Now I would like to try and help ‘regular folks’ understand philosophy better in down-to-earth and practical terms. And while no great philosopher like Bertrand Russell, Immanuel Kant or René Descartes, I still think I have a fairly good ‘handle’ on basic concepts and truths … while understanding that my own understanding is not complete. I might even be able to teach some great (or at least ambitious) philosophers a thing or too about humility and not thinking one has all the answers.
OK. I will continue working on my books. I will keep on writing here as well - write more entries about nature and wildlife, and perhaps other topics too, and also - at least here in my journal - do the occasional 'philosophic' piece. In fact JEllen has given me an idea - an entry about 'the artist as philosopher'. Maybe I'll get round to that sometime today!
Thanks again folks. Any thoughts or advice from any of you, I would still appreciate tremendously.
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Mar 26, 2010
That is , Willem. Much to ponder here.
About philosophy...I'm a fan of the anglo-saxon school, that uses examples from 'Star Trek' to worry about time-travel paradoxes and ponders the colour problem...
I tend to agree with Einstein that 'a science without an epistemology is no science.'
And I think you're right about culture-based points of view. We are often simply epistemologically incompatible.
Somebody had a really good thread on another website I visit. They asked: What would God tweet?
One of the funniest answers was 'Richard Dawkins: LOL.' I liked that one.
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Mar 27, 2010
Hi there Dmitri! Thanks for the comment. What's the 'colour problem' you refer to? I'm not fully up to speed on Star Trek!
I'm going to write stuff about epistemology some time, I hope ... can be rather controversial!
Heh heh ... I wonder what God would really say about Dawkins? I may have a thing or two to say about him also ... but not now!
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Mar 27, 2010
The colour problem is the question of whether we see the same colours.
For example: You and I might agree that a certain frequency of light is called 'green'. But are we perceiving the colour the same way? How would we know? What does that tell us about Immanuel Kant?
Those guys love temporal paradoxes. Hence the fascination with 'Star Trek' - not the space opera part, the time-travel conundrums.
One of my favourite lines from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' (the only series I'm interested in):
Chief O'Brien: I HATE temporal mechanics.
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Mar 28, 2010
Oh so the colours problem doesn't refer to Star Trek! Heh heh I know the colours problem very well, though, I already pondered it when I was about nine or ten. Back then I had reasoned that there was no reliable way to find an answer to the question. Today, I believe that people generally *do perceive colours the same way*. Unless they are colour-perception handicapped. So, if you could somehow as a mind switch places with me and perceive things as I do, the colours would seem the same.
How is it possible to know that? As far as I know right now it *isn't* possible to do any sort of test or experiment to test that since we can't (yet) switch bodies and minds. For me the thing is, I've pondered this a lot and have the following *intuition*: that awareness is a 'unified' phenomenon, that the minds of all of us are built on the same 'foundation' so to speak. The 'elementary' units or concepts of perception all come from the same source: when it comes to visual perception there are three primary colours, and there can be no more. A colour-perception handicapped person may perceive *less*, but no-one could perceive *more*. (Yes I know folks who do mushrooms and LSD claim to see 'new' colours but I think this is a case of concepts and impressions getting mixed up, like synesthesia. I am not going to take risks with my own sanity, which is precarious as it is, by getting into psychedelics so as to either confirm or refute that.)
Primary colours needn't be defined as red, green and blue. Just like the three dimensions of space, the whole colour spectrum can be generated by choosing any three pure colours that lie on different 'axes' ... very hard to explain in words but I can demonstrate it to anyone using a computer graphics program.
The unity underlying colour perception may someday be proven. The day may come soon when human minds can be linked directly, a kind of internet connecting us directly brain to brain, so we can literally exchange experiences to see and feel what it's like to be someone else.
This may also come about as a result of creating artificial intelligences that are actually *aware*. The underlying foundational concepts and 'qualities' of experience, may be a necessity for any kind of awareness and people trying to engineer an artificial intelligence, may discover and work out the need for these.
Heh heh here's a quote about Kant from Wikipedia:
(quote) Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things which we sense. It is our mind, though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experienced objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous quotation, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." (/quote)
You see I am rather in agreement with Kant! Notice the words 'transcendental unity of apperception'. But I go one step further. The external world provides the things which we sense ... our mind processes the information and gives it order ... but the mind *itself* with all of its ways for perceiving things, for understanding things, is built on a foundation that comes from attributes of the 'external world', the Universe itself. The Universe we live in is one that makes awareness possible, and the essence of our awareness is already present as a potential - at the very least - in the greater, 'outer' Universe. I believe that there are basic 'elements of awareness' out of which our experience of things are built up. Three primary colours would be only three of these 'basic' elements of awareness. Then would come lots and lots of other things, like for instance the 'essence' of feelings like pain, joy, love, curiosity, anger etc; also basic units of thought, basic concepts ... these concepts may be found to not be unique features of human minds, but actually 'abstract things' that are 'out there' to be used by any kind of mind.
Now I'm quite aware of not having proven a thing! But I hope to have given some ideas. I deal with these things in my stories. The aim is just to get people thinking about things and seeing different possibilities. I'm no Kant ... heck I can't even make it through 'A Critique of Pure Reason'. But getting people thinking about these matters may lead to a new 'Young Kant' getting intrigued and coming up with some new theories or even proof!
Heh heh I quite like Star Trek ... we used to have a 'Science Fiction' channel on TV but it exists no more, and my mom and I are going to give up satellite TV to ease the burden on our finances.
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Mar 28, 2010
Who needs satellite tv when they have an imagination?
I'm not buying that solution to the colour problem because I'm not sure our apperceptions tap into the same 'collective unconscious'...I've been talking to a synaesthetic person, I think she might agree, I'll ask her...
But I do agree with the neo-Kantian Konrad Lorenz's theory of 'hypothetical realism'. In addition to being a Neo-Kantian professor at Koenigsberg, Lorenz was, of course, a biologist and the father of ethology. He said (in a section of his book 'Behind the Mirror' - 'Die Rueckseite des Spiegels') that hypothetical realism meant that there was light because we have eyes to see it. Not teleologically, just that if there weren't light, we wouldn't have eyes.
Of course, being a German, he said this at greater length. I think the section was called 'paralipomenische Prolegomena', or some such.
I think free will leads us to colour our perceptions somewhat. Otherwise, why would our friend Mala say she likes orange things in her room? Orange things in my room make me nervous. I can't stand modern German public spaces because of the colour schemes. Yes, I really like electric blue. It makes me deeply happy.
Maybe we see the same, but don't know it. Or maybe we see the same, and evaluate differently. But maybe we don't see the same, because we reinterpret the light before it gets to our brains.
Or something. (Sorry if that's incoherent. I'm not very dogmatic, so feel free to contradict.)
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Mar 29, 2010
Hi there again Dmitri! The way I see it, is that every person has a unique way of seeing things, of experiencing things. I do think *most* but not all of us see colours the same way, but there is never complete 'purity' of perception. Other elements get linked to the elements of colour - or any other aspect of visual perception. Synesthetic people only link a lot *more* between the different elements of perception.
I think these 'elements' are there for use by any kind of 'aware' species. There is no reason for colours to apply only to vision. A highly synesthetic person could hear, feel, taste, smell in colour, or even attach colours to emotions and concepts. And if we go out in space and find other species, we might find they have perceptual systems very different from ours ... but, and this is a prediction I'm making now, we might find great similarities as well. I'm predicting that we will find in another species the same thing we have, with three primary 'colours' out of which all other hues can be made. This alien species may perceive these 'colours' with different kinds of sensory organs from ours, though, and they may attach them all sorts of other associations. But the mere presence of this kind of 'three-primary-elements' system of perception would indicate that they've built it on the same foundation that was available to us. Or to put it differently, from the same great big cosmic box of building blocks from wich perceptions are made.
That box doesn't come with instructions or rules for *how* the blocks should be used. But certain blocks will prove to be more conventiently used for certain uses, than for others.
One of the key insights I made as a child was that colour is not the same thing as light and that in fact light doesn't even have the property of 'colour' in any way. Light has wavelength and extends from practically infinitely long, to infinitely short wavelengths. We only see a particular section of wavelengths out of all these. The wavelengths we see, simply go from longish (about 750 nm - that's billionths of a metre) to shortish, about 390 nm. There is absolutely nothing inherent in a matter/energy-wave with a smooth continuum of wavelengths, that corresponds to our subjective experience of 'colour'. 'Colour' is an aspect of perception that visual species have come to attach to their visual perception of light, and this has happened over the course of an evolutionary process taking hundreds of millions of years. This has happened though because the potential for it was there from the start. And the same 'potential' will exist on any other planet. So if we find another planet with life, with creatures that can perceive light, we might also see them having perceptions that they interpret as 'colours'.
That is because 'colour' is an extremely convenient element when linked to visual perception! A typical person can perceive about five different millions 'colours' ... I mean now every kind of hue and shade that can be distinguished. Consider a computer screen with a million pixels, each pixel having the potential of being any of five million colours. This makes it possible to process an absolutely staggering amount of visual information. The thing with vision is, it is processed (made intelligible to a mind) in a certain way. You can simultaneously see a large 'field' consisting of a great many small elements, but the eyes can distinguish those individual elements. This is different from hearing ... what we hear, come through a more narrow kind of 'channel', and the elements of sound are not so easily separated into small individual bits. So we attach to the perception of sound, different kinds of 'elements' than those of vision. With sound, the key 'element' is tone. Tones combine in a great variety of ways, but in ways that cannot be analysed into three different almost 'dimensional' elements like the three primary colours of visual perception. Then in sound, there's loudness - which corresponds to the visual distinction between dark and light, but subjectively *seems* to us like something quite different. Then there's duration as well, because with sound and hearing, *time* is involved in a different way than in vision.
I know less about the elements of sound than I know about the elements of vision, since I'm primarily a visual artist, but I'm working on it!
As an artist my big *challenge* is trying to make as wide a variety of different people, see what I want them to see! Taking into consideration that people often have different positive or negative reactions even to 'neutral' elements like colours - like you say about Mala and yourself! And our art teacher for instance dislikes the colour green! This makes it quite hard for an artist.
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Mar 29, 2010
That is incredibly well put, and I don't have much to add to that.
Except to say that it's a good point about our colour perception changing over time.
Someone said once - and I'm sorry that I don't have a reference for it, but it struck me at the time - that there was reason to believe that earlier people didn't see all the colours we see. That the ancient Greeks thought the sea was 'wine-dark' because they had other colour perceptions. Or a different palette. Like I said, I'm not sure of the source of this.
But that statement made such an impression on me that I have personally assumed (and, for the sake of fiction, will continue to assume, evidence or no evidence) that if you go back far enough, everyone saw in black and white.
If ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, as my biology professors drilled into me, I've got anecdotal evidence. My earliest memories are in black and white, and I didn't dream in colour until I was an adult. (I thought this was because of black-and-white tv, but hey...)
The first colour I could see was yellow. I know this, because my first memory with a colour in it involves fire. (Neighbour kid, toddler like me, July, firecracker...that kid was evil...)
And yes, I know Georgia O'Keefe could remember being a baby, on a brightly-coloured quilt. That's why she was a great artist, and I use words, because I'm auditory, tactile and olfactory oriented. (I think the visual cortex is taking up too much room, sometimes.)
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Apr 1, 2010
Hi there again Dmitri! Thanks for your comments.
I'm going to see about writing something about human visual perception, and its evolution.
(For the sake of your fiction, you may choose to ignore all of the following information! But I post it here because I find it extremely interesting and you may, too!)
The way I have it, colour perception actually evolved long before humans. Monkeys and apes, for instance, have colour perception. For a while it was believed that animals like dogs, cats, bulls and so on, could *not* see colour, but now, science has given indications that they can ... they only can't distinguish colours as well as we do.
The evolution of visual perception probably started with distinction between light and dark - in its most elementary form, black and white. (This may have happened more than a billion years ago.) From there, progressively better distinction of different levels of light and dark, i.e. shades of grey. Colour later was 'superimposed' on this.
Just when, was this - that is, when did animals start seeing in colour?
What we know of animals today, and the perceptual 'machinery' that they share, indicates that colour vision was already there 360 million years ago ... maybe earlier. In fact, the colour vision that existed back then, in primitive vertebrates, was a system with *four* primary colours, rather than three!
This of course is a challenge for my idea of the essence of three-primary-colour vision. The only sense I can make of it, is that the 'fourth' colour was an impression that wouldn't strictly correspond to a 'colour' as we experience it, but that can be *added* to a colour perception to augment it in a manner. (There can actually be even more than four 'primary' colours in a visual system ... see later.)
Four-primary-colour vision is still alive and well and with us: most birds have it, several fish, amphibian, and reptile species have it, and there are even invertebrates that have it: some insects and arachnids, and an amazing little creature called a mantis shrimp, that can actually analyse light into twelve different 'colour channels'. It has perhaps the most complex system of vision of any living animal.
Birds and bees can also see the polarisation of light. This is something we humans can't really conceive. I believe this is yet another thing that is somehow superimposed upon the perception of colours.
The fact that colour perception exists in vertebrates as well as invertebrates, might mean that its evolution actually predates the 'split' between vertebrates and invertebrates ... in other words it might have evolved around 600 million years ago. Or, it evolved *twice* (or even more times) ... in invertebrates, and independently in the vertebrates.
It is really funny to think that a primitive ancestral fish or fish-like thing living 360 million years ago, actually had *better* colour vision than its modern descendants! But that seems the case: it could distinguish four colour channels. Over the course of evolution many of its descendants lost the ability to distinguish all four channels. Our own ancestors - primitive mammals - experienced a degradation in colour perception, perhaps about 100-150 million years ago. So, that most mammals today, have only two-colour-channel vision. However, three-colour-channel vision re-evolved in a group of mammals ... the ancestors of monkeys and apes and therefore, us! This happened perhaps 30-40 million years ago. This was about the time of the split between old-world and new world monkeys, and it likely happened then, because *some* New World and *all* Old World monkeys see using three colour channels.
Colour blindness in humans seems to occur in less than 10% of people. It mostly manifests as red-green colour blindness. From what I've read about the phenomenon (and having spoken to one friend who is red-green "blind") it seems to me that this is more a decrease in sensitivity in distinguishing colours in a certain part of the spectrum, than a totall loss of perception of those colours. Also, a loss of sensitivity in one area, might be compensated by an increase in sensitivity in another. Wikipedia notes that red-green colour blind people can actually penetrate a 'colour disguise' better than people with 'normal' vision. Red-green blindness may therefore have been evolutionarily advantageous for animals having to see others 'in disguise' amidst vegetation ... maybe, giving up the ability to distinguish colours, resulted in higher ability to make out shapes and patterns. I don't exactly understand that yet, but I'll do more research. Interesting that most mammals are shades of brown or grey.
The day may not be far off when humans can be given enhanced colour-perception abilities. A tiny bit of genetic fiddling could give us four or five different kind of 'cones' in our eyes. Four cones - PLUS the mental machinery to process the information from them - means hypothetically raising the number of colours we can distinguish, from 1 million to 100 million. (I know a while earlier I mentioned that a human can distinguish about 5 million colours. The numbers I've seen range from 1 million to 10 million. Thus I use the conservative lower limit of 1 million.) Pentachromatic vision (five channels) would mean the distinction of 10 billion colours.
Now, what that would be 'like' is a great philosophical question!
Anyways, back to human colour vision, in the personal and subjective sphere. I remember seeing colours very early in my life, strangely, in my case it's the colour blue! I can remember a blue blanket, and blue icing on a cake, and that must be very early in my life.
It is also interesting to me that we still know very little about *how* a little baby develops its perceptual and conceptual systems ... we start out with basically *nothing* but by the age of one or two we can already make an enormous amount of sense of our world!
In my dreams, colour does often feature, but not always. It may seem strange seeing as I'm a very visually-oriented person, but much of what I dream is non-visual, rather, conceptual. It's almost impossible to describe.
Ontogeny doesn't *really* recapitulate phylogeny, you know! It's a rather old-fashioned idea, coming primarily from Ernst Haeckel, who even went as far as to fudge embrio drawings to prove his theory. It's been discredited ... I don't know when, I have some books that are several decades old, discrediting it, but I know it is still taught. The reality of embrionic development is much more subtle than merely 're-hashing' past stages. And evolution is enormously more complicated than is embrionic development. Here's a wikipedia page discussing it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontogeny_recapitulates_phylogeny\
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Apr 1, 2010
In my usual annoying fashion of 'last first, first last', I will comment first on ontogeny vs phylogeny.
My dearest friend and most beloved mentor was my elderly piano teacher, a lady who was a dedicated autodidact and former denizen of the 19th Century, oh temporally provincial computer users... She was also, to me, always and forever beautiful, this Swedish lady who spoke German and knew all the Irish immigrant jokes...well...
She told me that she had learned very little human physiology in school, but that what she remembered was 'The spleen has no known function.' I told her that in junior high, they were telling us that it had a function.
She beamed and clapped her hands. 'You see? Even that was wrong.'
So - after they drilled that sentence into us, it's not true? Aweel. Let's all learn from that and be less dogmatic in future. Remember: Everything you think you know may be wrong. (This might have daunted even Herrn Professor Kant.)
'Frankenstein' is still a great novel. And all of its 'science' is a lie...
What you say about colour is fascinating. I don't know if you read Terry Pratchett. He's on about inventing a colour in the spectrum. I suspect that's where he's getting it.
Sure, I believe you. (Although I suspect I might have been being ontogenic, I do know I used to see in black and white before I realised what I was doing......but I am mad as a hatter, anyway, and my relatives just look the other way...)
The business about seeing other colour frequencies sounds intuitively valid - which is not scientific, but I'm not a scientist, which gives me Narrenfreiheit@ here. There is at least one hootooer who can, in fact, see more than she is supposed to...
A question: I'm not sure, but I think I read a long time ago that the first colour we can distinguish at dawn is red. Is that so, or am I being weirder than usual?
I can remember as a child lying in semidarkness in the bedroom. When enough light came through the open doorway to see a bit of colour by, all I saw was the Confederate flag hanging on my bookcase.
All right, I have just admitted to having owned a Confederate flag...
______________________________________
@=roughly translated, 'The licence afforded a fool.' Not to be confused with 'Jagdschein', a hunting licence, which is what the Germans call being certifiably insane (because you cannot then be held responsible for, say, murder...) A Jagdschein is also what you need to hunt the Wolpertinger, but you have to do that on a dark night with a full moon.
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Apr 1, 2010
Isn't there a minimum legal blood alcohol level as well that's necessary for Wolpertinger hunting?
I would have to read Frankenstein some day. I mean, I've seen movies and so on. But not read the book. And yet, the idea of the 'Frankenstein Monster' is one that's very, very basic to a lot of my philosophy! The idea of creating a 'monster' that escapes from your control and destroys you.
Heh heh I had some nice arguments with school teachers about scientific matters! One of the hardest was to convince my biology teacher that there *were* mammals that lay eggs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme
To me it's very interesting that colour seems to be 'superimposed' on monochrome vision. Difficult to put in words but you get a sense of it if you use a graphics program and look at a colourful scene and then use the 'hue/saturation' feature to turn it by degrees into monochrome. Monochrome simply has the colour 'washed out' of it ... so colour seems to be monochrome with the colour 'washed in'!
I think the memory of seeing black and white first, could be accurate. I think there might be a great many different ways in which very young children 'build up' their conceptual and perceptual systems from essentially nothing, like I spoke of in the earlier posting.
I wonder if Terry Pratchett realises that a great many species of living animals have actually beat him to it by perhaps hundreds of millions of years!?
I neglected to mention in the previous posting that some animals can perceive ultraviolet and infrared radiation.
As for red being the first colour one can distinguish ... you know I think it might be so! In some way, red seems to be the 'strongest' of all the colours ... and it seems to be so for all people with 'normal' colour vision! This is one reason why I think most people see colour the same way. I'll try and read about it, try to confirm it. I might test it myself with some colour pictures today or tomorrow, I'll see.
By the way, over here the equivalent of the Confederate flag, is the 'Vierkleur' (four colours), the old flag of the Transvaal Republic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Transvaal
That flag was waved about by right-wingers back in the Apartheid days, I mean people who were more right-wing than the government.
Now, post-Apartheid, the old SA flag is considered reactionary enough to be a symbol of right-wingism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_South_Africa_1928-1994.svg
I mean, it's totally politically incorrect to have it or display it.
You needn't translate 'Narrenfreiheit' to me! Still something necessary in the times we live in. But what you say about 'Jagdschein' is interesting. Never before heard of the term used in quite that way!
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Apr 1, 2010
The translation is for the benefit of the s. (So we don't get modded for being worse than politically incorrect...that is, FOREIGN...) Mala and I are notorious for our elaborate footnotes in posts.
That Vierkleur is a pretty flag. I've never seen one quite like it.
The annoying thing about the old Confederate battle flag was its being stolen by bigots...we kids just used it as a joking reference to our collective past. (The one I had was given to me by schoolmates in Pittsburgh. They got to go on an outing and I didn't, so they brought me a souvenir from the amusement park. Since I was the Southerner, they bought a Rebel flag.)
You're right, I wonder whether Terry Pratchett realises that. About colour, I mean. I'm not surprised the fish have it - why else are there neon tetras?
The book Frankenstein is well worth a read. Prepare to be surprised.
I also recommend the Branagh film version, which is the only film version that follows Shelley's novel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpf-71KTflk
I suspect the minimum blood alcohol level for Wolpertiner hunting is about what you get after spending an evening with the Bavarian forestry service (personal experience).
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Apr 2, 2010
Hi there! I have seen Kenneth Branagh's version of Frankenstein! But I'm still going to try and read the book.
Over here it's also a case of the flags having been 'stolen' by bigots. The Old Transvaal flag was actually a symbol of Afrikaner pride after us having been defeated by the British in the Boer Wars. Today the old SA flag is used by people who think things were better in pre-1994 South Africa than they are today. This group ironically includes a lot of people who considered themselves quite liberal during the time of Apartheid.
These flags are just flags ... part of our history over here, too.
This history thing gets nasty over here. At the mo there's a court battle, trying to get songs and slogans from the 'struggle' period, banned. These slogans are ones like 'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer', and 'Shoot the Boers, they are rapists'. High-level politicians over here, sometimes use those slogans during rallies, and there are songs that include those phrases as well, that are sung by politicians as well as crowds. The problem being, there are people who literally go and kill white people on farms. Perhaps as many as 3000 people have been murdered on their farms in the past two decades. And apart from that, there are frequent extremely brutal attacks and murders of white people living in towns, too.
With the issue being in the courts, the stance of the ANC is that they do not condone attacks against any group of people in SA, but that these phrases and songs are part of the 'Struggle History', part of that tradition.
Well ... Afrikaners have had a historical struggle as well, against the British, and the Vierkleur is part of that history. But we're not singing, and I'm sure we never sang, that English people should be killed. Afrikaans and English people lived together in peace after the war. The Vierkleur itself also says nothing about killing or in any way harming people.
So what's worse, displaying a flag, or singing a song in which you effectively say, 'go out and kill some white people'?
I am feeling very scared sometimes. Well if you've read my Uspace you'll know I'm actually labelled as 'paranoid schizophrenic' and I have a very, very serious paranoid side, which I am working to suppress, but sometimes I wonder. Racial relations in this country seem to be getting worse ... we had some good times under Nelson Mandela and even under Thabo Mbeki for all his faults, but right now, there seems to be some serious polarisation going on. The guy who's worst of all is Julius Malema, the president of the African National Congress Youth League ... he seems to be going overboard to make himself unpleasant and to rile people up ... and this guy might one day become the president of our country! He has a serious support base even while making enemies not just of whites but of certain groups of blacks, too. If he ever gets elected president, we might have civil war or genocide.
How to Do My Part?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Apr 2, 2010
That's a terrible situation to be living in. It isn't paranoia at all to be more than a little worried about your neighbours when some demagogue is spreading hate and ignorance.
What people don'm think about is that miracles like 1787 in the US don't come along every century, and that building a country takes time, and patience, and restraint.
These arguments about history go in cycles, too. In the 1960s we just joked about the Civil War, but these days there's a more serious examination going on. There are historians who keep dissing my ancestors, but hey, they aren't around, it's not hurting them, and the record will get set straight.
Since I will be writing some of that history very soon, we'll see...
With partisanship, it's best to take a deep breath and not try to convert anybody, in my experience. But I share your concern about those songs - people without understanding could take them the wrong way.
The other day I was doing some research and ran across some old Stephen Foster songs. Now, Stephen Foster was from Pittsburgh, but he kept writing these terrible songs - he was the Barry Manilow of his day - about an idealised Southern plantation life, god help us.
When we were kids, they thought that stuff was all right. Now they know better. I couldn't even repeat some of the lyrice to "Uncle Ned", as they are racist.
The only thing we can do is to try to give every person we personally know his due, and follow the categorical imperative. Can't do better than that, I think.
(By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I've got the schizophrenia part, just not the paranoia. In the words of my former college students, "He's crazy, but basically harmless".)
How to Do My Part?
Willem Posted Apr 7, 2010
Hi there! You've read what happened ... difficult to *not* get really freaked out! But well there's no use in panicking.
Yeah I checked out some online lyrics of Stephen Foster's! Racist terms, yes, but not really intending harm as far as I can tell. Now, 'kill the boer' is something else.
I don't know a single Afrikaans song with racist lyrics. Our traditional songs are very positive, generally, celebrating our history and the beauty of our land. Love songs as well, that is to say popular songs about romance.
Thanks for your 'disclosure' ... thanks for confiding that in me. You know, I am somewhat suspicious of the medical perception of schizophrenia. It seems to be something that can vary enormously and in my own case I'm very atypical for a schizophrenic in being very highly functional. But I have many of the symptoms and have been profoundly delusional in the past. I think I have it under control now, but I do get periods of feelings of panic or horror or fear or despair or just feeling totally weird and disconnected from reality and from other people.
You seem to be doing very well too ...
In my case, it is not completely harmless, but the 'harm' is more towards myself than to others. I've attempted suicide three times already. But I think I'm past that stage now.
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How to Do My Part?
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