Without the right balance of day and night, sunshine and rain, predator and prey, culture and nature, a landscape originally designed to support life turns into a desert, a dust bowl, an apocalyptic, postnuclear nightmare of desolation and alienation. In symbolic terms, daylight represents conscious awareness: what we can see and name, predict and command. Much of that “other 90 percent” operates subconsciously or unconsciously, moving stealthily through the night, resisting full explanation and domestication. Yet people don’t just shy away from darkness in favor of the light. Some odd quirk of human behavior forces each generation to relive the fall of Adam and Eve in all kinds of crafty, covert ways. Scientists and atheists are not immune. Practical modern minds tend to glorify what is “light” — that which is logical, socially acceptable, profitable, and/or controllable. Anything outside each person’s current worldview is shrouded in darkness — not just unknown, not just suspect, but damned.
