Reclaiming Darkness
What is a suitable substitute for darkness as a metaphor of badness and evil?
In the English language, “darkness versus light” has been a central metaphor to describe the contrast between bad versus good, used by celebrated orators to pop culture mythos to political campaign declarations.
As we awaken the English language from its ingrained fallacies and legacies, we must also divorce the idea of bad and evil from darkness and blackness on account of race and discrimination. Because Black is beautiful, and because language matters, as symbols and flash points.
So what of a substitute? Scientifically, we should first recontextualize the idea of darkness and blackness as the absence of light. If anything, blackness invites and welcomes light, in the case of physical materials and pigments. Take for example the super-black feathers of the male birds-of-paradise, whose physical structures make it one of the most light-absorbent materials known. That is actually what makes “black” materials look black to our eyes — it absorbs and doesn’t reflect back visible light.
Of course, that’s “light” in terms of our visible spectrum — the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that most human eyes can detect. Imagine comparing notions of “darkness” with rattlesnakes and other pit vipers, which can distinguish infrared radiation, or with birds and spiders that see and behave in ultraviolet wavelengths. A world humans might deem “dark” would appear more dazzling and lively to these creatures.
Indeed, even our human notion of darkness is skewed and limited — our idea of “darkness” is just as much of a human construct as goodness and badness.
So then, if we must still borrow some scale and gradient from the natural world to describe in English this human construct of good versus bad, what should it be? I welcome your ideas.
