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Report of 5/28/2025

Where is the Green?

A perennial zen koan asks; "who is the master who makes the grass green?"

Perspective isn't reality, and the grass is still green.

Green is only a concept in the brain, and the grass is still green.

The excitation of the cone cells of the eye by light within the 510nm wavelength ballpark, and the following stimulation of nerve impulses conducted to and in the brain isn't green, and the grass is still green.

The grass might "really" be a sparse arrangement of atoms, with no "green" intrinsic to its own makeup, and the grass is still green.

If you wanted a real explanation, you might say where the grass is green is in the transaction between the light, the grass, and your physiology: the eyes, nervous system, and brain.

You may hear it said by those confused by this issue that maybe our subjective experience of green differs, but in my opinion there is good reason to believe this isn't so. As for each of us, all of the parts making up the transaction to produce the subjective experience we might label as green have meaningful overlap. Now, this doesn't exclude the notion that green may have differing associations but it does reject that "my green is different than yours." That view is a type of solipsism, the view that the world is only within one's mind.

Of course now, if you haven't realized yet: You are the master who makes the grass green.

For more insight into this and issues like it Robert Anton Wilson has a huge amount to offer.