While I am on about the Sun (see previous post) and our attitude to it, I think that it might be interesting to consider how we view darkness and light. We have a general belief since time immemorial manifest in our legends, stories, songs, religions etc. right up to the modern day that darkness is to be avoided and light is what is desired.
Darkness Into Light as we say!
Darkness is associated with depression, misery, gloominess, unhappiness, fear, sometimes even suicide and everything that humans do not want for themselves. We generally don’t like walking alone in the dark. Little children are often afraid of the dark going to bed at night.
In the world of therapy there is a general belief that our shadow side is a negative trait of our personality that we need to bring into awareness. But as my colleague Peter Nevin alerted to me one day, our shadow can, equally, contain positive aspects that we are unaware of.
Our fear of the dark and the general negativity surrounding blackness and darkness manifests in our language i.e. a black day in our history, the black economy, the black death, we wear black when we are mourning, (in Ireland anyway), the black sheep of the family is the one that doesn’t fit in, or causes trouble, if we want to disparage someone we might blacken his name, and then there is the notorious black Mass which is supposed to call up the devil!
The Dark Ages were a period in history where (supposedly) there wasn’t much scientific discovery, and they were followed by The Enlightenment. And I remember in the halcyon days of the All Ireland Rugby League five Limerick teams lost on the same day and people that I knew called it Black Saturday!
Light, on the other hand, is associated with vision, forward-thinking, imagination, creativity, inspiration, goodness, hope, relief and similar traits. We have loads of sayings promoting the benefits of light to humanity. For example, we have the light-bulb moment, light will always conquer darkness, throw some light on the subject, the light at the end of the tunnel, see the light, that’s how the light gets in, and the one that really shows it, better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and hundreds more I’m sure if we looked hard enough! And light is also the word we use if something is easy to carry. (The only negative association that I could think of in respect of the word light is that if a play, film, book, event, programme, course of study etc. is not that substantial or deep it is said to be light).
And one that I was always confused about; the darkest hour is just before the dawn – is it – really? (Now that might be a very subjective one)!
But is darkness intrinsically bad? Maybe the principal reason that we find the dark frightening is that we can’t see properly in it – so we are not forewarned if we are in danger. And maybe the reason that we associate it with depression is that it lacks colour.
Even at dusk, the world becomes lacking in colour. The light of a bright moon is rarely strong enough to reflect colour either. As I sit here writing this at 11 p.m. it is dark outside but very bright inside because of electric light. But this has only been possible for a tiny, tiny fraction of human history. Humans have always tried to light up the darkness with artificial light from fires, candles, etc. but their light was never bright enough to match daylight until electric light was invented a mere 120 years ago.
It can be worthwhile pausing to explore what is good about something that we all feel is bad, or are afraid of, or associate with negativity – and vice versa, because there is beauty in darkness too.
In fact, far from being the absence of light, darkness has its own transcendent quality of rest, silence, and recuperation. Also, it is easier to have privacy and solitude. I often think that the air seems fresher at night. Unless we are at a night club or in a pub late at night, it is generally quieter at night than during the day, so we have less distraction. We may also have opportunities to think. (And perhaps the beauty of darkness inspired Paul Simon to write his lovely song, ‘The Sound Of Silence’ which begins with the line ‘hello darkness my old friend’).
And intimacy and romantic activity, including lovemaking (and therefore procreation of our very species) seems – for some reason – to favour the nighttime over bright light – though whether this is due to some learned puritanical inhibition about our bodies which seeped into us over many thousands of years due to some kind of civilising process (or not) I don’t know.
And, of course, vital to our health, darkness helps us to sleep and allows us the opportunity to recover from the busy-ness of the day. And it will also allow us to hide – perhaps contributing to our feelings of safety rather than making us feel unsafe – for example if we are on the run from the law.
But probably the greatest beauty of complete darkness, with no artificial light from towns or cities, (and it is very hard to find places like that nowadays – at least in the developed World), is observation of our night sky – the stars, moon and planets. It’s like the darkness highlights the light!
So in terms of cause and effect, the effects of both fear and safety can be caused by darkness.
Like the Sun, our attitude to it is dependent on our circumstances.
Before I finish, consider the oft-used expression Darkest Africa – so-called because it had to be enlightened by European civilisation. This places darkness firmly in the Continent where the vast majority of black people in the world come from.
I read some radical black literature once that proposed that black people are disadvantaged because blackness and darkness are associated with undesirable things. (Though this doesn’t, obviously, pertain to Ireland where our national drink is black – or the world of banking, where being in the black means having money).
At first reading this seemed to me to be an extreme version of the linking of the word left with sinister and gauche – which, being a citeog [1] I can obviously relate to, and if I wanted to make much of could feel a teeny little bit offended by – but maybe there’s something in it. (Here is Muhammad Ali being interviewed by Michael Parkinson on BBC in the 1970’s where Ali wittily – and very perceptively – explores this theme, as only he could).
And to finish this discussion on darkness, I said earlier that this website was a bit of a shot in the dark. I’m not sure where whatever I put out there will land, or what I’ll hit with it. In other words, it’s a bit of a risk – but exciting too – thanks to darkness!
[1]. Sinister (which means kind of evil or threatening) is the Latin word for left. Gauche (which means vulgar, clumsy or awkward), is the French word for left. Citeog is the Gaelic word for a left-handed person.