The Bleaching of the World

An Observation on the Loss of Color in Life

There was a time when color meant something. It was not an afterthought, a marketing trick, nor a vulgar embarrassment to be bumped off polite society. It was, in the deepest sense, a manifestation of spirit. The indigo of a Persian miniature, the vermilion of a Byzantine robe, the lapis lazuli skies of a Giotto fresco—these were no casualties. They were statements. And yet, if one looks around today, one is met with a world gradually vanishing into a dull, joyless monochrome.

Perhaps you’ve noticed it yourself. The washed-out films, their lifeless color grades turning rich historical eras into halfhearted slurries of blue and gray. The storefronts drained of warmth, their signage reduced to black and white, lest they appear too foolish. The streets choked with cars in every possible shade of nothing. Black, silver, white, gray—almost 80% of all new vehicles fall within this achromatic spectrum today¹, as if the very idea of individual expression must be exorcised from the roads. Even children’s toys have been rebranded into plain palettes of beige and taupe², as if the play itself were something best conducted with all the enthusiasm of an insurance seminar.

I suppose, corporate interests have aligned with algorithmic determinism to further flatten aesthetic diversity. And certainly, capitalism plays its part in the bleaching of the world. Neutrality is safe. It is versatile, adaptable. It is—most damningly—profitable. But there is something more in-depth at work, something older than advertising managers and brand strategists. It is a fear, a fundamental suspicion of color itself in Western thought.

Plato, ever skeptical about the senses, in The Republic, saw the world of sight as a kind of prison, a deceptive veil disguising the true, rational order of things. In this hierarchy, reason is elevated over sensation, abstraction over materiality. This dualism survives throughout Western philosophy, subtly influencing the perception of color as foolish, distracting, and untrustworthy.

Aristotle, too, viewed color as secondary, believing that form—pure, clean, factual—was the vessel of meaning. “A random distribution of the most attractive colors,” he wrote, “would never yield as much pleasure as a definite image without color.” It was not the gold leaf of an icon that made it divine, but the line, the form, the idea of the thing itself. And so, throughout history, color came to be seen as a kind of extravagance, a luxury for the lesser mind. Even Kant, so rigorously concerned with aesthetic judgment, in his Critique of Judgment, relegated color to the realm of the superficial. Drawing, he argued, was the true measure of artistic genius—color illustrated the form, but did not define it.

Historically, societies too have manipulated color to enforce social hierarchies. Colors like purple, red, and gold were historically reserved for royalty and religious elites. The difficulty of obtaining these pigments (e.g., Tyrian purple, extracted from sea snails) meant they became symbols of power. Monarchs limited their use through laws, ensuring that commoners could not access them.

In the colonial era, European powers often disregarded the dynamic aesthetics of the societies they conquered as "barbaric" or "degenerate." The European preference for muted tones was positioned as a sign of sophistication, while the bold colors of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cultures were framed as excessive and childlike. This ideological bias endures today again in Western design principles.

This, I suspect, is the root of our current dilemma. The creeping austerity of “modernity”, the obsession with minimalism, the rejection of ornamentation—it is all part of a long and joyless march toward a kind of aesthetic virginity. Adolf Loos, the modernist architect, famously stated that “ornament is a crime,” a relic of primitive cultures that must be purged in the name of progress. And purged it was. Today, we live in the shadows of this ideology, surrounded by copy-paste buildings of glass and steel, shuffling through airports and shopping malls that could belong to any city, anywhere, all of them the same dull shade of gray.

And yet, one might ask—why now? Why has the phenomenon accelerated in the past century?

The answer, perhaps, is entropy. Not the sheer thermodynamic decay of systems, but something deeper: civilizational fatigue. A culture that no longer believes in its own myths—that has lost faith in its past, its traditions, its sense of wonder—finds itself withdrawing from excess. It reduces itself, shaves off exaggeration, strips itself to the bone. Color is vibrancy, a riot of existence, the expression of something that believes itself alive. And what is “modernity”, if not a slow, quiet retreat into sterility?

One sees it everywhere. For instance, the music is reduced to sterile algorithmic repetition. As Adorno states, "The music industry, in its production of popular music, provides ready-made formulas for repetition, which are calculated in advance to satisfy the expectations of the listener. [...] The repetition itself is an industrialized process that makes the consumer passive and expects him or her to listen without being disturbed by any unfamiliar or challenging material."³ Its textures flattened for maximum streamability. In the architecture, cloned and characterless, designed not to inspire but to function. Even in the language itself, where words are simplified, meanings weakened, complexity considered unnecessary. Everything is being reduced to its most neutral, most commercial, most inoffensive form. And if history tells us anything, it is that societies that cease to take aesthetic risks, that turn away from beauty, that mistake sterility for sophistication—such societies are already in decline.

Well, the decline of color in life is not solely an economic phenomenon—it is also a control mechanism that promotes passivity, conformity, and the suppression of individual expression. Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary society, particularly as outlined in Discipline and Punish (1975), provides a powerful framework for understanding how modern urban aesthetics function as a mechanism of control. Foucault claimed that power in modernity works not through overt coercion but through subtle, pervasive structures that shape behavior and internalize discipline within individuals. His panopticism describes a system where visibility itself becomes a means of control. In a panoptic structure—like Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison—individuals modify their behavior because they are constantly subject to potential observation. This logic extends beyond prisons to modern urban design.

The dominance of glass-walled skyscrapers and transparent office buildings reflects an aesthetic of surveillance. Open, exposed, and highly visible, these environments subtly enforce unity by guaranteeing that individuals remain observable at all times. Employees in open-plan offices, for instance, are less likely to engage in “provocative” activities when they are aware of the fact that they are being observed.

Shopping malls, airports, and corporate communities exhibit a standardized sterility that discourages disorder. The predictability of their layouts, color schemes, and ambiance creates an environment where people move in controlled, regulated patterns. The absence of cultural specificity in these spaces makes them interchangeable and non-place-like, a concept explored by Marc Augé in Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (1992).

Just as the Panopticon conditions prisoners to self-regulate their behavior, the monotony of modern urban spaces conditions individuals to self-regulate their emotions and actions. In an environment where vibrancy is subdued, people are less likely to express strong emotions, rebel, or feel ownership over their surroundings.

Foucault’s broader concept of biopolitics—the governance of populations through modest regulation rather than overt force—explains why modern capitalism favors a neutral, homogenous aesthetic. Governments and corporations benefit from spaces that are predictable, easy to patrol, and do not provoke strong responses. The aesthetic of monotony is not just an accident of economic convenience but an ideological tool that fosters a manageable citizenry.

Then there is this digital world we bear. The digital age also has altered aesthetic choices from profoundly personal or culturally significant decisions into algorithm-driven trends dictated by mass consumption and engagement metrics. The result is a flattening of expression, where artistic diversity is sacrificed in favor of optimized, machine-curated uniformity.

Social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest play an influential role in dictating the visual language of contemporary culture. Their algorithms reward content that conforms to predefined aesthetic norms, leading to the rise of highly curated, desaturated, or pastel-toned imagery. The repetition of algorithmically successful color schemes creates a feedback loop. Most of the users subconsciously embrace the same aesthetic, not because of personal intention but because deviation leads to less engagement and visibility.

Historically, different cultures have embraced distinct palettes—think of the deep blues and reds of Ottoman tiles, the gold and saffron hues of Indian textiles, or the bold contrasts in African art. Algorithmic culture erases these distinctions in favor of a globally palatable, hushed uniformity. Research in color psychology suggests that vibrant hues can evoke creativity, while neutral palettes provoke a sense of calm or detachment. The algorithmic choice for desaturated visuals may reinforce passivity and a low-energy, consumption-oriented mindset.

But what is this worship of neutrality, if not a symptom of something larger? Of a civilization that has grown wary of beauty, that finds the richness of the sensory world a burden rather than a gift? To strip life of color is, in a sense, to strip it of joy—of distinction, of specificity, of soul. It is the triumph of utility over poetry.

And yet, history moves in cycles. The Baroque exploded from the austerity of the Reformation. The psychedelic hues of the 1960s exploded against the boring conformity of postwar modernism. The Romanticists defied the clinical rationalism of the Enlightenment. Perhaps we stand on the ridge of another such revolt. Perhaps this relentless tide of beige and slate will soon give way to something richer, stranger, alive.

One can only hope.

Or, better yet—one can rebel.

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1. Grayscale colors like white, black, gray and silver make up 80% of cars today, up from 60% in 2004, according to a recent analysis by iSeeCars.com.

2. Why do colors take up an important space in children's lives?

3. Theodor W. Adorno's essay "On Popular Music" (1941)