memes

there's a neat theory about languages and color words, and "red" is universally the third color that a language will name, coming after "black/dark/cool" and "white/bright/warm," suggesting that our monkey brains place some kind of primordial weight on 'red'

it's the color word applied to lots of things like fire, blood, the sun, fruit and meat, i think the word i would use to describe all of these things is "vital," it's a color of life and the things that sustain or threaten it

"blue" comes much later after both "green," a color applied to other important natural things like plants and water, and after "yellow" is distinguished from "red." in nature it's almost a sort of background color from which other objects are distinguished and not often the color of an object in it's own right

Eh, I don't know about blue to the right TBH. To me, right-wing is more associated with black, white and maybe yellow. Blue is more neutral, "stately" I suppose. Maybe it is a bit "royal" and therefore right-wing, but less so than those other colors

As for the symbolism in colors, I think it highly depends on your culture and environment. E.g. in Russian, the red color is associated with beauty/youthful strength (maybe because young people tend to have pinker skin or something, I don't know for sure). In fact the association goes so far that the word "red" (красный) and "beautiful" (красивый) share the same root, and the former is considered an archaic but understandable synonym for the latter in certain contexts (красный молодец = "handsome lad", literally "red young guy")

I genuinely think the early soviet symbolism (and Chinese symbolism that was partially inherited from it) are so red because of this association. I know that the color red has been used for worker's/mass movements before (e.g by Jacobins) but I suspect it has been significantly bolstered by this.

I think there's a primal part of our monkey brains that equate reddish warm colours with ripeness and when a fruit is ready to eat.

I feel like if you put a red apple and a green apple in front of someone who has never seen or heard of an apple before, 8/10 will choose the red one.