What Came First?

Please name a food that is also a color. Most respond: “orange.” But what came first, the fruit or the color?

Before answering consider this history from the podcast Lexicon Valley. Way back, people only used black and white and the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. If someone saw a pumpkin they would describe it as being “red-yellow” because the word “orange” did not exist. Lexicon Valley also talks about other colors like salmon, lilac, and chocolate. When one hears that it makes sense that the food came before the color. 

There almost always is some kind of “origin” story (just look at some of the superhero movie franchises) and certain colors have an origin too. But what about various “Ages”  and their origin? The age of industry ( using one’s hands) began due to machine and mass production, then came the age of information  (using one’s brain) when technology advanced to make thinking and analytics more important. 

And now we’re entering into the Age of the Heart and the origins of our age are largely reactions to the way things have gone. There has been too much cruelty. Too much rejoicing in other’s misfortune. An excessive amount of glee in, not the defeat of opponents, but the utter humiliation of them. Society is tired of disrespect, attacks on individuals and institutions, and the vilification of those who are different. There are a lot of positives in this new age like love, tolerance, perspective taking, and more, but I’m afraid that part of what has ushered in this new age is negative. We can do better.