Wednesday, 22 October 2008

Location, Location, Lights, Camera!

What colour are your dreams?  Apparently if you dream in black and white you're likely to be in a specific age group that was exposed to B&W TV and film programs a lot.  The fact is that either side of the B&W film and TV era, most people dreamed in colour.  It kind of makes sense, too.

Before the advent of B&W, the only monochrome experience people were likely to have was the odd charcoal or pencil sketch - and they hardly have much impact, generally.  And afterwards, TV and films were in colour.  Actually, I can kind of prove it.  The people who were in their formative years in that era, were people as young as my age, and upward.  Luckily for me, there was a brief encounter with B&W TV in the early Sixties when I was still quite young, then I had no access to TV again until I was about 13 - 14.  (Because we lived in rural Australia in the late 60's and early 70's when TV coverage was still mainly confined to cities.  My parents didn't remove TV privileges, they removed us from the TV...)

And my dreams are in glorious colour.  I'm sure had I been exposed to mono telly and films I would also be having drab dreams.

Which leads to a bit of an understanding of how environment affects and shapes us:  Suppose you lived in a drab place with little colour other than the greys whites and blacks of permafrost - you're 25% likely to have monochrome dreams.  Actually - since B&W TV would only have taken a few hours a day of your life while living in permafrost is - permanent - I'd say you would find that people in such environments are 50% or more likely to dream in monochrome.

These people were the drivers of technology and modern life.  They had to be, because the land was inhospitable.  And maybe it's easier to think logically in B&W.  Whatever - I've just noticed and drawn your attention to what may well be an important correlation:  People who lie in drab colourless environments invent things.  And people who live in wonderfully friendly environments with a riot of colours (think jungles and tropics) were more content to adapt to life rather than adapt life to them.

Who knows if that's true, it certainly makes sense and explains the wide spread of stages of technological development of the different races.  All it took was location...


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3 comments:

Katisha Honi said...

Hi Ted

Interesting concept、never thought of it like that before. I was informed the whole colour / b&w dreaming was down to how creative you are. Creative people are more likely to dream in colour. Which does add to your theory.

Personally mine are in technicolour, I'm getting the surround sound installed next week. :)

Bye
Katisha from 2L

teddlesruss said...

Well apparently now the sentiment is that it's environmental. All else is my own conjecture and could as easily be totally wrong. It's just an observation I made long ago about how local foods shaped personality, and now, it seems that the whole environment must be doing that shaping.

Also, we have a lot of people in the world who have changed environments at some stage of their development and who are now products of two or more formative environments - what will such people achieve?

Wolfie! said...

OK, I was born in 1965 and colour tv didn't come out till around 1975 [we had ours fairly early on].

I remember how surprised I was to find that Cookie Monster was blue and not dark grey.

I never dreamt in black and white, except for one night when I did.

People had been talking about dreaming in black and white or colour at some point and that was the first I'd heard about it.

Heh, Katisha dreams in a patented colour system. ;)

Wolfie! [who got his blabbing abilities back today]