Why color has drained from our lives

French writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry recently posted a stunning statistic on his Substack: "In 1952, 3 cars out of 4 sold were either red, green, or blue. Today, 3 cars out of 4 sold are either white, grey, or black."

When I posted this on twitter, the post went viral. 2.2 million views. 2700 likes. 200+ replies. Here are some explanations people proposed:

Resale value: Cars in neutral tones retain more value at the point of resale. People are essentially buying not for themselves, but for the person they'll sell the car to.

The Policeman Explanation: Many traffic police departments around the world have quotas of tickets they're looking to hit. Why have a flashy red car that gets noticed, and fined, more often? Bland is good. It helps you stay lowkey.

But what if there's something deeper going on here? After all, it's not just cars but also our movies, home walls, and phone skins that are converging on some shade of grey.

Perhaps we have given up on color because we have given up on choice. It's aesthetic labor to pick between a thousand shades, why bother when you can just default to grey? The bland aesthetics of the modern world reflects its general non-committal cowardice.

People have no God, no standards, and no favorite color. Everything goes and nothing is better or worse. Tolerate everything. Risk nothing. Stick to grey, make everything minimalist, strip the world of personality. Era of nihilism Nietzsche warned about:

https://memod.com/jashdholani/nietzsche-fights-nihilism-6077

Nietzsche Fights Nihilism Nihilism is the Meta Problem. Nietzsche wrote this on the first page of his last

He who whitewashes his house betrays to me a whitewashed soul.

- Nietzsche.

FIN.