In a private letter to a friend many years ago, I wrote “Contrast gives a clearer view.” In a literal sense, it is quite obvious. Contrast enhances visibility of a text or an object in a picture, or an object in visual reality.
Today I would take that a step further and say “Without contrast there is no view.” If there is no contrast, you will not distinguish anything. There might be something there, but you will not notice it. Not until contrast is introduced.
This is not limited to vision as the perceptional sense we usually call vision. It applies to everything, all senses and more than that - thus vision in the widest possible sense of the word. Contrast is fundamental for our ability to perceive our reality.
You don't know anything if you don't know its opposite or at least something different to relate it to. To a blind (-born) person who has never been able to perceive light, darkness is a meaningless concept, even though he or she lives in perpetual darkness. However, there is no chance for a blind person to understand what that darkness is.
Someone who hasn't looked death in the face can not fully appreciate life, can not even see life in all its beauty. We could express it even more drastically: If you haven't fought death, you don't know life. Indeed, if you have not faced death, if you are not very aware of it, you won't even notice life, and you would certainly not appreciate it fully. It would just be there, taken for granted, and it would just indifferently pass by.
In another, more everyday-based sense, we can say that familiarity breeds invisibility. What I mean is that we need contrast to what we are used to in order to notice it.
If you enjoy luxury all the time, it will not be luxury any longer. You will neither notice it nor enjoy it. What makes it luxury is that it is a temporary improvement from everyday life.
Pablo Picasso once described how he used to change the way his paintings were hanging, so they were not hanging straight. That, he claimed, made people, including himself, see them. But they must be changed now and then. As soon as they have been hanging in the same way for too long, one would not see them any longer. I think most of you have experienced how a new perspective makes you see old and familiar things anew. A new perspective contrasts to the old.
This goes for almost everything, and it is possible intentionally to introduce contrast in life with the purpose of experiencing it more consciously. It should not be overdone though, because that would lead to over-stimulation, a condition of stress, which would ultimately “blind” you instead of increasing your perception. We must never forget that familiarity-bred invisibility provides essential rest, which in turn serves as an important contrast and background to an active perception. We don't want consciously to perceive or notice everything. That would make us insane. Contrast should be used selectively and sometimes even sparingly.
Indeed, we cannot consciously perceive everything, the bandwidth of the consciousness is far too small. For more on this, see “Bandwidth Of Brain and Consciousness”, where I discuss and compare the bandwidth of the consciousness with that of the brain.
Finally, ponder this description of the creation, originally from the Jewish Torah, also in Genesis, the first book of the Christian Bible. From the third verse of the Book of Genesis, in the King James Bible, it says:
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
“...divided the light from the darkness.” Is this describing the creation of contrast?
Related articles:
COLOUR & NEGATIVE REALITY: Do we sometimes see what is not?
Bandwidth Of Brain and Consciousness
Copyright © 2014, 2021 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.
All my articles on Brain & Mind can be found here, on Philosophy here, and on Psychology here.
You find all my writings on Read.Cash, sorted by topic, here.
Also, please join my community: Mind, Perception & Thought (c7a5)
Absolutely,
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=