Those Who Won't Know

In those days, there was the Wind. It blew east to west across the playa, shaping the land and people. Civilizations had lived with the Wind, worshiped the Wind, cursed the Wind, and done whatever they could to coexist with it. As humanity advanced, they harnessed its power for transportation, farming, and trade, and the playa thrived. Eventually, people decided to assign a single person the job of managing this force. As technology advanced, the influence of this person, the Windman, grew. The first few Windmen were benevolent, and they each did everything possible to be generous and helpful. But as time rolled on and new generations of Windmen came to power, they figured out how to save a portion of the Wind for themselves. They diverted wind into private wind farms for their personal profit. They set up huge structures to amplify the force of the Wind, severely damaging the homes of playa citizens, but making their own turbines more efficient. Then came the dust, thrown into the wind. Developed by the Windman and his scientists, this sinister dust shrank the visible world to 10 colorless feet, hiding the corruption of the Windmen. The dust was fine, fine as the fog, fine enough to invade every corner and crevice, smothering the earth and obscuring the dunes. Soon, humanity forgot color altogether. It was commonly believed that human vision was supposed to be limited to 10 feet. “What is this?” asked the farmer, pointing at the white cloth in front of the shepherd’s house. “The other day, I moved my sheep to the barn after shaving them, and their wool grew back whiter than I’d ever seen. On the way back, it brushed against some flowers, and I saw some strange light, something richer than white and black and grey,” replied the shepherd. “That’s rubbish! The rice is white and the night is black, and everything else is in the middle. What else can there be?” “No, come to this side and see for yourself. There’s something in the wind that blocks this strange new … light.” “Oh come on, everyone knows the dust blocks something. What do they call it again? Oh right, color. It’s not like you can do anything about it, stop wasting your time and focus on your sheep.” The farmer grudgingly walked over to the shepherd anyway. “Look! Look at these flowers,” exclaimed the shepherd. “What is this? It hurts my eyes. Why would you be willing to hurt yourself for something of no use?” asked the farmer, indignantly. “Oh, it’s only the first time when it hurts. But it doesn’t hurt when you see it as what it is. It’s just another color, just like black or white but more real.” “What makes this flower color realer than black and white? Everything is much brighter when the dust is gone, I bet that your sheep wool wall biases the world towards bright colors.” “No, no. It’s removing the bias! My sheep can’t tell the color of apples from my gray shirt, so I guess everybody sees color a little differently, but the only way we can see what color really is is when we look together. Can’t you see? The dust is hiding things that we should know about! Not just color, look in the distance!” As the farmer looked, he saw huge monstrous towers looming in the east, with crooked, mean propellers spinning about, powered by hundreds of little gears. His entire life, he hadn’t seen beyond 10 feet before, so the towers looked a little blurry, like a mirage placed on the horizon. On the other end of the earth were huge windmills spinning rapidly in the air. “I’ve been observing them. I think those things are amplifying the wind. The Windmen are using them to blow powerful gales toward the windmills in the west!” continued the shepherd. “Who cares if the Windmen blow a little harder? I’m not going to let it affect me. Look, my life was fine before I knew about this stuff. I was happy,” said the farmer. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times. “You can’t let it not affect you! It affects every single one of us, and awareness is the only way to stop exploitation. Are you not tired of your roof being blown to bits every once in a while? Does this color not feel real? Do you not care about the fact that you are being lied to, and the truth is right here? Look, I’ll give you one of these things too. Maybe we can work together to change something.” “I don’t want to see any of this. I don’t think it’s really real. And I want to grow my potatoes and squash every day. I don’t want to do anything about it.” The farmer’s eyes had adjusted slightly during his brief exposure to color. A few days later he looked at the sky at sunset, like he had hundreds of times before, but this time, he thought he saw a little flicker of something rich and powerful like what the shepherd showed him, something perfectly wonderful. The farmer turned back to his potatoes. He will never truly see.