Light Is Nothing Without Darkness

Light Is Nothing Without Darkness

I see by the categories your question was intended to fit into that it’s about metaphysical light and darkness.

I hate metaphysics. It claims to be the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamentals of existence, but for some reason it disdains actually looking at reality very closely, preferring to focus on our fears of and hopes for what reality is. Then it steals terminology from other fields and severely abuses that terminology to mean something else, and constantly gets it wrong.

Stripping the “meta-” off and going with plain old plebian physics, it is obvious that darkness never has, does not now, and never will exist. What we pathetically sensory-limited humans call “light” is a narrow slice of the full spectrum of possible excitations of the electromagnetic field, and that fills all of space.

In other words there is no place in the Universe that ever was or ever can be dark.

Yes, there are places you and I can’t see- without night vision goggles but can with radar. On the other hand, step out of a well-lit house on a dark night and the sky is black… until your eyes adapt to see what’s there. Use a big enough telescope and the “darkness” between the visible stars is full of billions of galaxies, each comprising billions of brilliant stars.

Philosophers of old would attach such plebian labels to concepts they had no other words for, or to make them more familiar or palatable. This is how we got the associations of good with light and evil with darkness. There were things in the night that would eat you, things not visible by day because they were nocturnal.

Yet, those things are not evil in any moral sense, they were just trying to survive as per their natural characteristics. Hardly anyone calls lions, tiger, or bears “evil” these days because we’ve come to understand their essential places in the natural world.

Meanwhile philosophers have turned away from that kind of associating the presence or absence of light with morality, moving on to associating human behaviors with good and evil instead.

That way lies other confusion though- we have multiple cultures on the Earth each with their own moral codes of what is right and what is wrong, and those differing codes can blend seamlessly on some points while clashing violently on others.

Nevertheless we can find commonalities among all of them, beginning with under what conditions it is acceptable (“good”) or unacceptable (“evil”) to cause the death of another human. In almost all cultures human life is considered sacred by default which makes a lot of sense- if you don’t do that you can’t have a coherent culture at all because anybody can be killed at any time, even members essential to the continuance of the culture.

From there though, they break down according to local superstitions and customs, making certain behaviors seen as perfectly normal in one culture totally abhorrent in another. Wars have been fought over issues a lot less significant than when it is okay to kill someone, strangely enough.

So, how do we determine what is “light” and what is “dark” about a culture we didn’t grow up in? We seem to have two choices- to assume that morality is completely relative, or that there exists an overarching absolute morality against which all cultures and behaviors can be judged. Associating that absolute morality with the one we grew up in is… let’s say problematic. Humans have tried to tie morality to religion but that never really works since religions evolve, mutate, and split into different versions and then the adherents of those different versions typically go to war over the interpretation of a passage or even a single word in their mutual holy texts. Many cultures tie “goodness” to practical virtues like working and helping others but there are always limits on what kind of work one may perform when, and whom one may help or accept help from.

The bottom line in metaphysics is that you will find light where you see it, and darkness everywhere else.

I don’t find that very satisfying, but then I’m not you.