On Darkness & Dichotomy
We humans really love our dualities, don’t we? Light/dark, good/evil, life/death. The problem is, we just don’t seem comfortable flying a middle path between them. We insist on flying to the sun or flailing in the ocean. We can be so uncomfortable with the nuance of the middle, with all that messy grey mucking up our beloved black and white, that we tend to cling to binaries. But in our clinging, we sometimes forget that the thing we cling to requires its opposite. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras wrote:
“If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, then heat; if height, depth also; if solid, then fluid; hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness; calm and tempest, prosperity and adversity, life and death.”1
There cannot be light unless there is dark because we wouldn’t have any metric by which to understand it. In literature, writers tend to get weak in the knees for the device of dichotomy because it creates tension. The word dichotomy is Greek and means dividing in two; it takes something whole and divides it into two equal and opposing parts. A famous example of literary dichotomy is Apollo and Dionysus: Apollo was the ancient Greek (and Roman) god of light; of reason; of order. Dionysus was the god of madness; of emotion; of chaos. While these two knuckleheads represent principles in direct opposition to each other, they’re also two sides of the same coin. You can think of them as photo negatives of each other; they’re really the same, but they each represent the other’s inverse. The two dichotomous halves create a balanced and harmonious whole. We can see their principles reflected in the real world at this time of year, when the northern hemisphere is literally at its darkest, being tilted as far from the sun as it can get. Meanwhile, the southern hemisphere is at its lightest, tilted as close as it can get. Northern winter equals southern summer and vice versa. There can’t be a tilting away if there isn’t also a tilting toward. Each half of the dichotomy creates the whole.
Light and dark are a congenital human dichotomy. We all have an intrinsic need to reach for the light, especially when we face our darkest times. The light we seek and the dark we face can be literal, as it is during the darkest days of winter, but of course it’s also figurative in our literature. William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is an example of these light/dark dichotomies, being at once one of Shakespeare’s most luminous comedies while also propagating the darkness of antisemitism. More than 400 hundred years after Shakespeare wrote it, we’re still grappling with how to reconcile his brilliance with its racism. And at the close of the play, Portia—one of Shakespeare’s all-time badass heroines—makes an intriguing comment about light. She says:
“That light we see is burning in my hall; How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”2 (5.1.89-91)
The light she sees on this dark night is literally coming from the candles lit within her home. Portia makes this exclamation to her loyal friend, Nerissa, upon their homecoming from secretly saving the life of her husband’s BFF (while of course pretending to be a male assistant-lawyer because, you know: Shakespearian-era patriarchy). Portia returns home after preventing unspeakable evil and just before she arrives home, Lorenzo comments:
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!” (5.1.54)
Lorenzo attributes the light source in their dark evening to the moon and this is an important distinction between the characters, delineating quite different worldviews. Lorenzo—who elopes with the notion that the problems his relationship faces will all somehow work themselves out—sees the world as essentially good. Portia sees the world as essentially evil (or naughty, in her words). Lorenzo believes that the world will be righted because of its essential goodness and sees light (or goodness) from on high (coming from the moon in this scene); otherworldly, benevolent and outside of human control. The light from the candles inside Portia’s home represents goodness coming from within the individual—only within human control—and she extols the power of a single person’s cultivated goodness. She believes that we must kindle the light within ourselves to keep evil at bay when she says, “so shines a good deed in a naughty world.” If she had sat around and hoped that goodness would somehow work itself out, Shylock’s darkness would certainly have given us a very different ending. Instead, she chose to ignite her own beam of light—with the actions she took in the courtroom—changing the course of the story from tragedy to comedy. Our very real lives much more closely align with Portia’s vision; there’s no deus ex machina miracle of goodness that will swoop in and save the day. It is up to us to not only choose goodness but to create it. Evil—darkness—cannot be vanquished by hoping and waiting for goodness and light to arrive on the scene.
I wish that there wasn’t darkness—evil—in the world. But the dichotomy of light and dark is a fact of our existence; we cannot have one without the other. We all yearn for the light—all of us. We see the direct evidence of this yearning in the winter holidays we celebrate all over the world. Chanukah is the Festival of Lights, central to which is the ritual of lighting the eight candles of the menorah, commemorating the miracle of how a single day’s worth of oil provided light for eight days. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, who said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”3 (John 8:12) There are the ancient Norse/Germanic traditions of Yuletide, a celebration of the winter solstice that is still observed today. From Yuletide, we inherited modern-day Christmas trees (which are traditionally decorated with light) and the yule log, which is a special log burned on the hearth. Kwanzaa includes a candle-lighting ceremony called Lifting Up the Light that Lasts. Lighting the candles is a symbol of a “season and celebration of bringing good into the world.”4 Diwali (celebrated during autumn) is another festival of lights in which Hindus “speak of the joy connected with the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and good over evil.”5 Muslims celebrate a month of fasting called Ramadan, which starts in the ninth lunar month (celebrated in the spring of 2017, so even though it’s not a winter holiday this year, it still incorporates major themes about light and dark) and ends with a celebration called Eid al-Fitr (celebrated on the first day of the tenth lunar month), during which time Muslims decorate their homes and buildings with light. A NASA-NOAA satellite observed significantly brighter nighttime skies during these Muslim observances, stating on their website, “Light use in Saudi Arabian cities, such as Riyadh and Jeddah, increased by 60 to 100 percent throughout the month of Ramadan.”6 These lights literally change the way we see the world!
The yearning for light is a human commonality, despite the differences in our faith traditions. Regardless of our specific beliefs, we can recognize that we’re all seeking light. Light—goodness—must be created and kindled; we must choose it when we’re confronted with darkness. Dumbledore reminds us of this in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”7
We are the choices we make. The problem is that real life is far messier than clever literary devices would comfort us into believing. We’re left to figure out how to deal with all the gradations separating our beloved dichotomies and often we have no idea how to go about it. But just because we struggle with flying that middle path doesn’t mean that it isn’t crucially important for us to try. If the first step is choosing light, the next must be using it. How do we choose to act on the light inside us, as Dumbledore would have us do? What is the best way to follow Portia’s example? How do we reconcile the polarities of Apollo and Dionysus? The answer? We must strive to do what Icarus couldn’t seem to manage but what Team Icarus must: we must enter the middle ground, that space between light and dark.
In our current political landscape, it’s no secret that people are feeling polarized and we see every day that people are not moved to compromise by facts. We choose our light because of our emotions; if you feel passionately that something is right or wrong, it’s because you feel passionately, not because you’ve analyzed the data. You developed your deeply-held beliefs because they’ve touched your heart in some way. So have the people that disagree with you. Shouting at each other and clinging to our side of the dichotomy is not working. It never has and it never will. The solution is to illuminate the darkness. And guess what? You can’t illuminate the darkness if you aren’t willing to approach it. Martin Luther King Jr. taught this lesson in a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in which he said:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.”8
I am not suggesting that we abandon our light and move to the dark. To be clear, we cannot not tolerate evil. But shouting into our own echo chambers and continuing to Other each other is not an effective way to drive out the darkness. The eradication of evil is far more difficult than that, and the first tool we have is listening to each other. We must try to understand the experiences that have shaped the darkness and Daryl Davis is a man showing us how to do this. Davis is a beacon for us all: he’s a black man who listens to the KKK. Davis meets with members—from leadership to rank-and-file—and asks them why they hate him. Then he listens to what they have to say. He withstands some withering vitriol, but he doesn’t debate, he doesn’t argue. Yet he has been remarkably successful:
Thirty years of these meetings has left him hopeful, not hateful. His closet is filled with dozens of KKK robes and memorabilia given to him by those whom he has inspired to leave the Klan. Not because he demanded it, cajoled or threatened them. But, he says, because they learned from him.9
Daryl Davis is a proud example of what Team Icarus can do. He brings light into some of the darkest hatred America knows. He’s been attacked and criticized by people from both sides of this dichotomy for his efforts. You may expect that he’d be attacked by the KKK, but he also encounters anger from people on his own side, who truly believe that the KKK represents the darkest evil. They become furious that he would engage with them, but he keeps doing his radical work. Davis is showing us that clinging to our own beliefs and ideas with such rigid rejection of the opposition is not the best way forward. I understand that impulse myself; this work is hard. It is so much easier to denigrate those whom we see as destroying our most deeply-felt values. But by continuing to cling, we disable one of our best human attributes: empathy. Davis is not validating the KKK point of view by talking to them; Davis has been successful in changing hearts and minds because he listens. He engages where everyone else refuses. And a closet full of retired KKK uniforms is a powerful testament to his methods for bringing light into darkness. You can read more about Daryl Davis here and here.
We humans love our dualities, and, yes, we all have light and dark within us. We need lightness in ourselves and in the world we encounter. Wherever you turn to seek light, turn there now. Fill yourself with light and let it shine for the rest of us. And as we work on filling ourselves with light, we must strive also to bring it forward, to seek the nuance of light in each other; to cultivate it. Darkness is an effective and potent reminder of our deep hunger for light and the holidays are an impetus to kindle it. I wish you peace and love and an abundance of light. And if you’re looking for inspiration to kindle your own light, I’ll leave you with the words of the poet, Ezra Pound:
“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”10
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Notes:
Photo by Myriams-Fotos is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons
1. Park, Edwards A. “Article V: Power in the Pulpit.” Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review Vol. IV. Wiley and Putnam, 1847. 107
2. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Penguin Books, 1971. 240
3. The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.
4. Karenga , Maulana. “The Founder's Annual Kwanzaa Message .” The Official Kwanzaa Web Site - Kwanzaa African American Celebration of Family, Community and Culture by Maulana Karenga, Dec. 2000, www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/index.shtml.
5. Heiligman, Deborah. Holidays Around the World: Celebrate Diwali: With Sweets, Lights, and Fireworks. National Geographic, 2008. 31.
6. “The Lights of Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr : Natural Hazards.” NASA, NASA, 31 Dec. 2014, earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=84923.
7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dir. David Yates. Perf. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. Warner Brothers, 11 July 2007.
8. King, Martin Luther. “‘Where Do We Go From Here?," Delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention.” "Where Do We Go From Here?," Delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, IPM/Warner Books, 16 Aug. 1967, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-delivered-11th-annual-sclc-convention.
9. Simon, Mallory, and Sara Sidner. “When a Klansman Met a Black Man in Charlottesville.” CNN, Cable News Network, 15 Dec. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/12/15/us/charlottesville-klansman-black-man-meeting/index.html
10. Pound, Ezra. “ZWECK or the AIM.” Guide to Kulchur. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1970. 55.