Darkness has more than a double-meaning. In fact, it has at least 3 ensnarled meanings, to the point where I hardly know where to begin disentangling them.
“Who cares, Jim?”
Ah.
I hold that darkness is a primary idea in human culture, one of the key metaphors used to describe almost anything of great importance that is “ negative”. It is neither a casual word, nor does it refer us to trivial topics. Far from it. Representing a crucial set of ideas (as I will set forth below), it is likely to fall prey to human ignorance, vagueness and outright manipulation, inflicting its terminal vagueness on uncounted victims. The glam of one meaning, or interpretation, of the word, can (and does!) obscure the meaning we need actually apply in another context. As we are all potential martyrs of double-speak and nothing-speak, keeping the different uses of darkness clear and straight in our minds makes us less vulnerable to personal manipulation, societal propaganda—and confusion.
So, what we have is “darkness,” “darkness” and “darkness”—darknesses 1, 2 and 3.
DARKNESS #1: EVIL
Why not start with what has become the shallowest and most sensationalist definition, but also the most intense and pressing?
Evil is a highly contested concept. Exactly what acts or people or entities deserve the label is open to (highly partisan) interpretation, and—let’s face it—the debate is so hot-button divisive that it drives modern-day schisms worthy of Martin Luther vs the Catholic Church. It’s almost gotten to the point where one of the most meaningful and impactful concepts in our culture has been reduced, by means of petty infighting, to meaninglessness. “Evil,” in some contexts, might, quite trivially, mean “not what I want right now,” or it might be a slur that truly evil people apply to those who would resist the harm they love and live to do. And darkness, when it means evil, has been dragged into the friction-filled breach, along with related words such as shadow—one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s favorite synonyms for evil.
The idea that good is “light” and bad is “dark” is thoroughly embedded in our discourse. Perhaps this use of dark is built upon our instinctual identity as a diurnal animal. At night, a sabertooth tiger or cave lion might (much more easily) sneak into our camp and murder a member of the tribe, or swallow a child. While we sleep, nightmares may come, or dreams full of challenging situations and puzzling symbols—“I had this crazy dream!”. Night = dark = danger = fear = evil, is how that chain of associations goes.
“That psycho fucker is one dark, sick dude!”
“There is a darkness in that woman’s heart that could freeze a tropical jungle.”
“Luke, surrender to the Dark Side!”
The whole concept of “the Dark Side” might be attributed to Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian belief system said to be the consecration of dualism by way of positing two Creators—one good, and one evil. Controversy roils among modern Zoroastrian thinkers as to whether this is actually true or not, but in any case, Star Wars; and, well before it, the Lord of the Rings; and, well after that, the Harry Potter series—they all ran with this “dark side” business. Dark is evil, evil geniuses wear black, etc., etc.
I’m making a bold statement here: this is a huge mistake! At least, it’s a mistake that gets greater and greater, the farther you elevate it from the status of momentary metaphor into the exclusive, cloud-wrapped heights of sunshiney holiness vs. the deep-red fire and shadow of the infernal realm.
And why is it such a grave error? I would argue that it is because it identifies a shallow signal (“darkness”) while ignoring the true root of evil. The latter takes hold, not from literal darkness, not from a lack of light, but from any yin-yang-type imbalance between classical opposites (literal darkness vs literal light being only one of them)—as I explain in the next section.
DARKNESS #2: YIN, THE COMPLIMENTARY OPPOSITE OF LIGHT, OR YANG
Some truth exists in the dark = danger = evil chain of meaning, for sure. But night can, as well, be a time of spiritual trance-dance around the fire, or lovemaking, or dreams that are actually transformative—or, most simply, deep rest and rejuvenation. On most nights, even as cave dwellers, we simply sleep. Night is a needed reset after the efforts of the day. Furthermore, there’s no getting rid of it. Not only is darkness necessary, and potentially very beneficial, but overemphasis on “the light” can lead to an unhealthy demonization of darkness and its gifts, and, by extension, even our very humanity…which demonization is, in itself, an evil loss of balance, one might say.
Hormonally speaking, injecting artificial light into our nighttimes has grave effects. The rosy light of sundown (followed by darkness, of course) is the intended trigger for melatonin production. But the blue-imbued light of our screens, and the white light of our electric bulbs, sabotage the process. Not just our retinas and brains register the presence of light, but also chromatophores—light-sensing cells—circulating through our bloodstreams and picking up on any photons hitting the skin (especially blue-colored ones), then signal the system to power down melatonin, the sleep hormone, and gear up daytime neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine. Not good!..at least, not at night, when darkness ought to reign.
In a word, artificial light fucks up our sleep cycles—and sleep is everything. But melatonin also inhibits cancer, because it lowers body temperature, which, evidently, cancer hates. What’s more, when melatonin levels in the bloodstream are high, the stuff penetrates into the cells, and there it acts as a free-radical scavenger par excellence.
Let me explain: you’ve heard of antioxidants, well “oxidants,” or “free radicals” are a byproduct of cellular energy burning; they are the waste products, the exhaust smoke spewing out of the engine, converting to rust on the pistons. They impair biological molecules of all sorts, thereby damaging, and even killing, cells. So, in other words, fizzling your melatonin supply by soaking up light at night leads to cellular gunk clogging up the works, making your cellular energy systems less efficient even as, due to the damage and clogging, our energy needs are greater.
Via different mechanisms, all that excess light also triggers carbo-cravings, which in Nature would be fine because the long days of Summer light would photosynthesize fruit production, which is great because we would need to binge on berries in order to gain fat and, like bears, make it through the Winter (but without the hibernation). Year-‘round (artificial) light, plus a supply chain heavy with carby foods, mean year-‘round carbs, steady weight gain—and food for cancer cells, which, unlike healthy cells, subsist on a diet of pure glucose (carbs, from sugars and from starches)….So, diabetics and pre-diabetics, are we growing just a little sour on the idea of “dark = bad,” now?
Probably not, because your doctors do not educate you on the human body; they sell you drugs.
But I digress. Yes, for all sorts of reasons, staying up in the light instead of sleeping in total darkness might make you too tired to haul around all those tumors now cropping up in your body. This means that darkness—meaning a total absence of all light—is, at night, actually very, very good…protective…energizing…health inducing phenomenon. Night is bright with goodness, you might say; interrupting it with artificial daytime….not so much.
Of course, darkness during the day is just as bad as light at night: daytime neurotransmitters don’t fire up, compromising mental sharpness. The healthiest form of Vitamin D has no chance to form in the skin and take its rightful place in the over 300 biochemical reactions that D is an integral part of.
“ Vitamin D is important for our bodies in several ways. First, it helps our intestines to absorb calcium, helps keep our bones healthy, regulates the levels of insulin, which helps our cells to get the energy they need from sugar, and supports the functioning of the body’s immune system. Vitamin D is also known to help the body fight against cancer cells and to aid in the proper functioning of the heart and brain. Last, vitamin D also regulates blood pressure.”
I could go on about the ill effects of light at night and dark in the day—but you get the picture. Suffice it to say that substituting sunlight with a Vitamin-D pill is…not recommended by anyone except a dermatologist (who profits from skin disease).
This is where our reality gets really dark. Dermatologists have been keeping us in the dark for years about sunlight’s links to (skin) cancer. What you’ve been told is that “too much” sun exposure leads to the fatal kind of skin cancer—melanoma, and that you “need” to apply sunscreen to avoid melanoma. This is one lie folded into another: in truth, it is a lack of sunlight that is much more greatly associated with melanoma, and the artificial ingredients in sunscreen are so toxic as to be more dangerous than any form of light rays….But, you see, both melanoma, and sunscreen, are profitable. Which is why you’ve heard this lie over and over until it has morphed into gospel, pseudo-scientific ‘truth’. No, wise consumer, sun overexposure is linked to basal cell carcinoma, which sounds bad but kills almost no one…so, not a big moneymaker. Even so, it makes sense that D prevents cancer, thanks to its role as an outfitter of immune-system weaponry, and general tonic for efficient energy production, in the body.
We are starting to arrive at evil as a question of balance: too much light, or too much dark, at the wrong time, causes harm. Those who would confuse the light of God with the light of a computer screen popping out clickbait, or the glow of nighttime TV, will surely lead you astray: even reading Scripture online, or watching the greatest movies of all time, when it’s dark and you should be sleeping, could be missing the point. And to refer to evil as “darkness,” in this context, is entirely misleading. Darkness is what you need—is, in fact, the greatest good, at night, or when your imbalance is heavy on the lights and lean on real, good old-fashioned, black darkness.
And then there is the Tao, the nameless Force that results in, and results from, the balance of light and dark, Yin and Yang. This is emphatically not “the Force” that is a central feature of the “Star Wars” movies. Although Geoge Lucas did supply “the Force” with complimentary Light and Dark “Sides,” he portrays the Dark Side as evil.
No, no, no!
The Tao, in contrast, exists as the complimentary balance between—and transcendence of—apparent opposites: not just light and dark, but also masculine and feminine (meaning the penetrative and the receptive), hot and cold, leadership and empathy, action and perception, etc. Where the ‘opposites’ are balanced, we have the Tao: a unified, dynamic, balanced whole that is far greater than the sum of its opposing parts.
“Most people live pulled between opposites. We’re taught to choose a side and resist the other. But there is another path….one that doesn’t avoid the dark or cling to the light, but grows through both. You realize: You are not light. You are not dark. ‘You’ are the awareness that holds both.” (https://www.outofstress.com/yin-yang-meaning/ )
In conceiving of good as being “timely balance” rather than the absence of darkness, then the true definition of evil actually becomes “untimely imbalance”—or anyone or anything that promotes such an imbalance.
Let’s caricature imbalance by presenting the cancer-ridden, pale, sickly, caffeine-wired and overtired night owl: the human who stays up all night and sleeps all day. When he should be doing light, he’s doing dark; and vice-versa. They have a Yin (dark) imbalance during the day, and a Yang (light) imbalance at night. Perhaps such a person ends up addicted, or even psychotic and violent—or maybe they just live miserable and sickly, and die young, with lots of addictions and compulsions.
Similarly, the workaholic is always moving and acting (doing Yang [penetrative, energetic] actions), and never slows down to rest or just turn off his brain for a while (he doesn’t take Yin [receptive, characterized by stillness] breaks); he works harder, not smarter, and inspiration never comes because he doesn’t supply the time, silence, calm, and stillness (Yin elements) necessary to play host to the best ideas and healing rest. Stress ends up grinding down the workaholic, in the end, who, too early, collapses under the weight of their many stress-related maladies.
The “evil,” in these cases, comes from, in the case of the night owl, soaking up literal light when they should be imbibing the dark (and vice-versa); for the workaholic, being active when it would be more effective to balance the activity off with quiet reflection or meditation (not to mention rest)…Considering the graphic below, Yang being the active principle, and Yin being the receptive one, then both the night owl and the workaholic are over-engaged in Yang; in the case of the former, he does practice Yin—sleep—but at the wrong time.
You could take an opposing example, of someone who sleeps and meditates all the time, say, in the middle of summer, when people are supposed to be the most active. They manage, despite all the down time, to never feel energetic or refreshed, and certainly never accomplish anything. Their muscles become flaccid and flat, their equilibrium is teetery, etc. This person’s symbol would be the opposite of the “sick” one, above: instead of a big, fat, white, Yang dominating the equation, it would be a big, fat, black Yin.
If you take “darkness” as a synonym of “evil,” then the concept evil can, confusingly, refer to a condition in which a person has way too much “light,” or brightness, going on(!).*
These examples seem not so much evil as unhealthy—but who’s to say that “evil” isn’t simply an inevitable outgrowth of such health-erosive imbalances? In any case, the sadist, the bully, and the tyrant, who are overactive, in a sense; as well as their passive victims, who have surrendered too much of their active power, can all be protrayed as having some untimely imbalance of either Yin or Yang.
*Actually, this particular light-heavy, dark-poor imbalance, in my view, accurately describes the so-called “Dark Lord” of Harry Potter fame. The “Dark Lord” is “dark” precisely because he spends too much time in the “light”. In fact, a more workaholic night owl I could hardly imagine than Voldemort. Turn off the lights, Tom! He could do with some nice, quiet Yin time: sleeping at night, introspection, clearing of the mind, allowing insights and old feelings of trauma to arise and work their way through him—instead of, 24/7, trying to actively dominate the entire world, like some crazed war profiteer or petty billionaire.
To sum up, Yin, Yang, and Tao are most excellent ways of viewing, identifying and understanding “evil”—MUCH better than “light = good/dark = bad”. So, in my view, we ought to dispense entirely with the latter, as being of little use or worth.
DARKNESS #3 = BELOW CONSCIOUS AWARENESS
So, we have “darkness” meaning evil, a limited concept, and “darkness” meaning Yin (which includes literal darkness, coolness, receptivity, openness…), which leads us to much more fruitful questions of balance.
Now, here is where “darkness” is a truly decent metaphor. To be “in the dark” about something is to be ignorant or unaware of it. Having eyes that work best in the daytime, humans see less well in the dark, so…it works. I have no idea what metaphor cats or owls would use. But here we are talking about “darkness” in the sense of “outside of conscious awareness”.
“Keep your dark side on radar” is a phrase that, in spite of its crucial importance for living and relationships, could be miscontrued, given the first meaning we’ve looked at (darkness = evil).
In fact, the two meanings are related due to lack of self-awareness’s being a primary causal mechanism that may lead to “evil”. This association may even be another source of the habit of identifying evil with “darkness”. Intuitively, I feel this to be so. Nevertheless, I would insist that the darkness that describes the contents of the unconscious mind is actually a whole ‘nother Yin-Yang problem. But more on that, to follow:
Meet the human Shadow. The “Shadow” is the part of us of which we are, blissfully or no, unaware. It is composed of all the parts of ourselves that we have a problem with—we may be ashamed of them, feel ourselves—perhaps rightfully so—unequipped to understand them, or they may present challenges that we simply do not want to face. Memories of sexual abuse, to take an extreme if all-too-common example, would, in a person who is in denial of them, spend most of their time in the Shadow. Visions or dreams, which may be crucial steps in our journey to selfhood, but that seem crazy and pointless to the conscious mind, may be swimming around down there. Spiritual figures from the ‘wrong’ cultures might reside in the Shadow, who would insist—were you to allow them up for air—that you follow a certain path that you yourself, and others, might find a foreign, disturbing waste of time. Inconvenient religious conversions reside in the Shadow, as does all the evidence of just how petty, vindictive, and sadistic a human being can be. Principles as innocuous, and even universally considered to be very beneficial, like hope, faith, and unshakable determination, might very well be buried in the Shadow if the ego finds them to be too threatening for some reason (“Expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed,” my father used to say)….The point is, what resides in the Shadow lives there, not because it’s objectively good or bad, but rather that, for whatever reason, the person is uncomfortable with that stuff—and so stuffs that stuff, keeps it inside.
In theory, the contents of the Shadow are morally neutral—but feared enough to lead you to actively repress them (or perhaps you are willing, even eager, to access mysterious spiritual contents, or hidden talents, but simply don’t know how to do so).
Where morals and behavior get twisted is in the act of rejecting and repressing the contents of the Shadow—not in the contents themselves. Even murderous aggression, when repressed, only gets worse.
To go back to the Yin-Yang-Tao Symbol, as promised: Yin and Yang both function alongside of each other, and each interpenetrates the other. Fluid motion and exchange of energies is built in; both Yin and Yang, despite being ‘opposites,’ exist within the circle of Tao, in a sort of marriage that both includes and transcends the black and white partners. In the same way, the conscious (Yang) and unconscious (Yin) minds, ideally, exist in interchange and harmony—and one certainly does not repress the other, though each will cyclically ebb and flow. “Repression breeds obsession,” some say, and obsession leads to the kind of unhealthy behavior—evil, perhaps—seen in stalkers and serial killers.
More mundanely, people who go around blaming and smearing others, without ever getting around to a decent critique of their own personality and behavior, are also repressing the Shadow and becoming obsessed. You might call that a kind of evil, not as extreme as murder or assault—but of the same, spirit of self-aggrandizement spilling over into malice.
Why do repressives become obsessives? Turns out you can’t keep the contents of the Shadow pushed down forever—or even for a week. It’s akin to trying to hold a buoy under water. This is doable, for a time, but they can be slimy, and in any case a floating object is not something you can hold underwater indefinitely. At some point, you lose your grip on that buoy and it POPS! up out of the water—possibly cracking you in the chin as it does so.
Not to mention that the resurfacing of that buoy, far from being evil, is a very, very healthy thing. If the contents of the Shadow are painful and scary, as in the case of a history of being abused, or being abusive, or both—then they need to be dealt with, somehow. If certain nasty and self-sabotaging defects of character are the issue, then they, too, need to be revealed and dealt with. If what’s in the Shadow is some talent that you fear to develop, then going ahead and learning to hone that talent usually leads to greater satisfaction and happiness. If what’s down in there is a mystical feeling of bliss and oneness with the Universe—well, wouldn’t it be awesome to trade that in for the usual stress, anxiety and fear? Even so, people keep that lid tightly on.
Why do repressives become fatigued and burned out? Because they have one foot on the gas, and one on the brakes. That’s why. Because they hate themselves; an organism that hates and thwarts its own self is inefficient, if not inherently self-sabotaging.
So it’s easy to see why the “darkness” and “shadow” generated by a simple lack of self-awareness can lead to all sorts of twisted thoughts, behaviors and conditions—even to the extreme that we refer to as “evil”. In that sense, and that sense only, it’s not crazy to recognize the relationship between “darkness” and “evil”. What is crazy is literally, universally, absolutely and unqualifiedly equating the two. It is not a literal lack of photons, nor even its metaphorical equivalent, but rather the act of keeping important issues and elements hidden in the darkness of ignorance, which leads to “evil”. Some very good things—Gods, even, Messiahs—are probably down in the dark dungeons of the fear-based brain, waiting for a chance to incarnate as concrete actions—or even habits. Neglected and abused children may be down there, needing love and compassion, as they always have.
The Shadow has been conceived of as “the long bag we drag behind us”. That bag has to be (carefully) unloaded. If we do so, our steps will be lighter. Obviously.
The rap tune “Shadow Rap” captures the essence of the fight to become conscious of what was once unconscious (in this case, the idea of unpacking distasteful character traits is in the spotlight):
SHADOW RAP
I been born— twice
—two times
Double birth now I come back
Down to Earth
Rippin-rappin—how could this happen?
Face to face with the ragged roots of my worth
C'mon now: feel the ugly Hag
—the Devil in drag—
(Biting down on my neck!)
Check it—
I bite you back!
--What's in the sack?
(Is it everything that I wrecked?)
Collect, dissect, blood-flecked—
Where do I intersect—with—trash?
OK, a bit—Oh, shit!
(Where the hell is my stash?)
CRASH!
I hit the wall,
I take the fall,
I wear it like a rash!
[DYSHARMONIC BREAK—CHAOS—HITTING BOTTOM]
Yo! You know it's time to go
'Cause where I ended
Ain't my kinda jam
SCRAM!
I'm on the lam!
Watch my back while I drag my sack
—That's my dinner, Jack!
It's about what I am,
And it ain't—no—Christ—mas—HAM!
FINAL, DARK THOUGHTS
We could do without darkness as a metaphor for evil, I think. That use of the word is loosely based on some associations that only seem evil when regarded in an imbalanced way. I get that light = good; dark = bad are only metaphors, and not meant to be taken too literally—but the fact is, people do become metaphorical fundamentalists in the same way they take the metaphors of a given scripture literally. How many of us tell ourselves, after the sun has gone down, as we bathe in the blue light of our giant screens, that we are “creatures of the Light”…or, less dramatically, “this artificial light is good because it allows us to see; if it were truly dark, we’d stub our toes on the furniture. We are not cats, or owls!”
Added to this, much of what is beneficial about dark Yin is minimized in this culture of light-emitting electrical devices and active overwork. We are not, on the whole, meditators. Americans, compared to Europeans, don’t even get much vacation, if any at all. Few of us sleep in total darkness, free of blinking lights and beeping alerts. The Great Mother Goddess, identified with the planet and its health, and its holy cycles of night and day, winter and summer, has been slandered and supplanted by a patriarchal sky god who spurs people to eat and stay active on into the night, as well as all Winter long. In so doing, He goads us on to strip irreplaceable resources at high speed—because we need fuels and infrastructure, for billions of us, to light up the night. Fuck that! Be a warrior, sure—but be one for Yang and Yin.
This demonization of the dark—fully half of our humanity—has led, I would argue, to a collective breaking of the human spirit. Body-based, Yin elements like sexuality and sensuality are shamed or overemphasized, our assertive-aggressive impulses are punished and repressed rather than channeled. The predictably chaotic results of such imbalanced policies justify further autocratic brutality rather than enacting our cherished principles of democracy and self determination…In light of this, yeah, we should stop calling “darkness” evil. It wouldn’t be much of a loss for the language or the culture. “The Dark Side” of the Force is not dark at all, but rather a distortion of the proportional weighting of dark and light, in defiance of their cyclical rhythms. Darth Vader needs to chill, and kick back into light-hearted compassion….which is exactly what he does, in the process killing the Emperor of the Dark Side, who wishes to reify his imbalance.
I would, again, really and truly, rather emphasize the other meanings of darkness, and their own connections to evil and happiness:
For one, it seems much more crucial, and timely, to fully embrace the dark-light, Yin-Yang balance of the Tao. This will simply lead to healthier, happier people and societies.
As a subset of that balance and harmony, our thriving, not to mention our survival, depend on our collectively integrating the explosive contents of the human Shadow. Like a buoy held entirely under water, they will never remain there. If we do not own and develop/tame them, the Shadow may, fed up with its own secret shame and undeveloped talents, like a scared-little-boy Satan, decide to push the buttons that end its suffering in a traumatically final way, (along with all life on Earth, if the repressed person in question knows the Codes). Not to mention that certain people will never, ever find out that they have a good singing voice, or really enjoy playing basketball, or can derive, and share, inspiration from writing poetry or music, or might actually be able to understand life.
To keep either our badness, or our goodness, “in the dark” always leads to more tragedy than comedy. So let’s not.
