I have often wondered what it feels like to be color blind, and what kind of life a person with color blindness leads. We often take for granted the fact that we can see color. What exactly does color do for us? Looking at everyday life, we need color as much as we need anything else to live. Traffic signals are color coded, what we wear, what we look like, what we eat, everything has a color to it. Now imagine a world that was just black and white. It would be the most boring and painfully simple world to live in. There would be nothing to distinguish us from another person... a red dress from a black one, and in this day and age, it could prove to be potentially dangerous. looking at it from a biological stand point, even our bodies are naturally color coded, from the inside and out. animals use camaflouge to protect themselves from danger, why would they need that if everything was black and white. for me color is very important, and it explains a lot about behavior. Without the use of color, behavior would have to be looked at from a different stand point, a much simpler one. Color adds complexity to ourlives and in a sense almost gives it a way to organize our lives...internally and externally.

See Oliver Sachs Anthropologist on Mars for a wonderful essay on a painter who lost color vision. Yes, an important part of our "reality", no less so for being "made up". PG