It started off with a brief thought today. We weren't doing anything in AP Biology, we were... Scratch that. We weren't doing anything that I was inclined to do at the moment in AP Biology, and, for some unknown reason, ideas were swarming my mind. It was irritating, the way that each thought led to another, led to another, led to another, led to another... And so on and so forth. I suppose it truly initiated when a boy stood up and walked towards the door to leave the classroom, but found that he could not due to the "pass" out of class being gone. Dismayed, he sat back down.
I wondered. I realized... The pass was nothing. It was an inanimate object. Nothing more than a symbol. But what was it a symbol of? Think about it. Why did the boy sit down? Why did he not simply continue on out the door, without so much as blinking at the concept that the pass was gone? Why? Why did he not leave to go to the bathroom, because that was what he needed to do? And then, it dawned on me that the school had conditioned everyone, yes- admittingly myself- to know that the slip of paper was the equivalent of having the right to leave the classroom during a class period. And I wondered if anyone else had wondered why this was so. I think, at that moment, I realized how painfully conditioned society was. Now, don't get me wrong- I'm not saying that conditioning is bad, per say, but I think that the reason it didn't occur to me sooner was because... It was just how things were. If things exist in a certain way, then it's very improbable for people to think about things in another way, because it's outside of the comfort zone, isn't it?
Granted, I'm not saying that every teacher uses a pass, or that every student necessarily abides by that restriction. But the concept of a hall pass... Is intriguing, if you break it all down. It's also fairly amusing that humans allow their bowel movements to be control by something as insignificant as a slip of *insert color here* paper that merely says the words in bold, "HALL PASS".
Let's continue.
Most people generally have a concept of good and evil. I won't go in to how this concept (generally universally depicted as a scale) was created, but I figure it's safe to say that everyone has a basic understanding of what is good and what is not (I'll also not debate on the concept of good and evil). When you think of evil, what color do you think of? Was it black? Red? For now, we'll go with red, but I'll touch on black later.
Red. Why is red a symbol of evil, when it is also said to be a symbol of love? That seems very contradictory to me, well, okay, unless you're quoting the "love your enemies" verse from the Bible. But red... Most people think of blood when they think of something red (or apples, or cherries, but for now, we'll stick with "evil" yields "red" yields "blood"), but at that point, I'd like to ask why blood is synonymous to evil, or even remotely associated? Yes. I know that blood typically is found in murder cases. It's a symbol of being wounded. But isn't blood what helps you be alive? So why would something that helps sustain the state of living be called evil? Erin brought up that red is associating with how you 'see red' when you're angry. Or how your face turns RED when you're angry... But isn't that because of blood? So that logic just circles back to my previous statement that the concept of red being related to evil is completely ludicrous. Another thing that was mentioned was that most games in the modern era display "blue" as nice and "red" as evil, which therefore, led to the theory that red was only being associated as bad due to America's hatred for Communism. I think that could be true, but it's very, very far-fetched. I'm certain that even the Communist countries have THEIR bad guys displayed as 'red' predominantly. Which, one would think that if it was a jab at Communism, the Communists would not take very well to such symbolism, and would probably ban the game (they like to do that a lot).
And so, I go on... Why black? Why is black the color of evil? Most people would say it is because it is the color of the night, and people immediately are more attracted to the day than to the night due to the fact that you can't necessarily see everything at night. People automatically hate and fear what they do not know and do not see. You see it in movies- the flicker of movement in the shadows and the paranoid girl walking from home jumping back in terror. What is unseen and unfamiliar is the biggest enemy of mankind- so our minds would love to tell us (fight or flight response?). But I digress... you can't see into many things. For instance, you cannot see what is inside of yourself, but you know there are things within yourself (you know, several different organ systems, fluids, what you ate for lunch, etc, etc.). So does that make you scary and evil? I don't think so. Maybe it's because we know what is in us.... So therefore, we have nothing to fear (and yet... the previous paragraph's argument could be put here). But at the same time, typically we know what is in the darkness- usually NOT a boogeyman or a werewolf or a vampire or whatever monster are in scary movies nowadays.
And water. Why do we find that water is tranquil? Water can crush. Make you drown. Even poison you if consumed in large amounts. So why do we find it tranquil and serene? Most people associate such tranquility to the ocean- a mass of constant tides rolling in and out from the vast beyond. Yet, the ocean claims lives. So why do we think it is tranquility when there are people who ride the waves each day and it's a battle for them?
Do you want to know my answer?
I think it is because it is.
As stated previously, humankind isn't liable to change their way of perceiving things because it feels uncomfortable, or completely wrong. What if you tried to associate yellow with depression? That seems VERY off, doesn't it? People always say that yellow is bright, yellow is happiness, yellow is synonymous to the Walmart smilie face guy. And if yellow were to equal depression since we could remember, it'd very well be as odd to try to associate it with happiness as it is to currently think of yellow as a sad color.
I also think that society is very, very odd and a very fickle, contradictory beast that doesn't quite understand its own hypocrisy. But that's a later discussion.
I hope that at least got people wondering why things are the way they are. Or that it entertained you for a few minutes. If not... Sorry, I'm not giving you those five minutes of your life back.
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