Imagine a group of researchers who are running a tightly controlled sensory experiment. They set up three identical rooms and place a standard, perfectly ripe banana on a pedestal in the exact center of each room.
They select nine test subjects. Unknown to the participants, several of them have varying degrees of color blindness. The subjects are divided into groups of three and led into their assigned rooms in total darkness. The researchers ensure that every single room contains at least one color-blind individual.
Suddenly, the overhead lights snap on, flooding each chamber with a different spectrum:
- Room 1 is flooded with pure, neutral white light.
- Room 2 is flooded with a heavy, saturated blue light.
- Room 3 is flooded with a deep, ultraviolet black light.
The rules are simple: each room must spend five minutes discussing what they see, and then collectively agree on the absolute color of the banana on the pedestal. If they cannot reach a consensus, they must each write down their individual conclusion.
Look inside the rooms as the timer ticks down:
- In Room 1 under white light, the two non-color-blind subjects swear the banana is yellow, but the color-blind subject believes it is a light grey banana.
- In Room 2 under a blue light, the two non-color-blind subjects see the banana is a deep, toxic green. The color-blind subject insists it looks black.
- In Room 3 under the black light, the banana appears a strange, glowing violet-white to the non-color-blind subjects, while the color-blind subject sees and a glowing gray.
In all the rooms, a consensus is completely impossible because the objective, shared-reality input and subjects’ physical defects has shattered perspective. The result of the experiment is that everyone is subjectively correct, and some are also objectively correct. Is there a third layer, a second objectivity, to this? We don’t know!
You don’t have to possess infinite, absolute cosmic knowledge to be a sovereign being. If you are angry, anxious, or defensive, you are standing in a room with colored lighting. Your emotion is tinting every piece of data that hits your eyes. Furthermore, your past baggage—your personal ‘color blindness’—filters that data even more.