In Praise of Darkness (Jackpot January ‘26 #2)

Last week, my friend turned to me and said, “Electric lights are designed to keep us under control.” From there, he went on to talk about how, these days, we’re assaulted by sterile office lighting, blue light from our screens, and cold, fluorescent neutrality; a far cry from the warm natural fires, oil lanterns, and candles that warmed and guided us for most of history. I think he’s onto something.

I pictured bonfire night, friends huddled round a monumental fire, backs to the cold, fireworks bursting across the sky. Sparklers and nut roasts and Catherine wheels. Each of these provide warmth in their own right, but beyond that merely looking at or thinking of fire kindles something in us. It’s hypnotic because it’s natural; hence, we speak of the fire in our soul, fire of our loins, feeling fired up, or going under fire.

In this infernal spirit, here are a few brief thoughts about darkness.

Our affection for natural light is an enduring feature of human history. Fire has long been elemental, sacred, or totemic. Think of the nine candles of the menorah, the fire Prometheus stole from the gods, a church’s holy candles, paths of light during Diwali, the Olympic torch. We may use LEDs on our Christmas trees, TikTok strip lights to decorate our rooms, electric flashlights to get through a power cut, but these are not worshipped. Why have they received no sacralisation?

In his 1956 essay Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley wrote of the London skyline, ‘Neon is everywhere and, being everywhere, has no effect upon us, except perhaps to make us pine nostalgically for primeval night.’ Why would we pine for night? Because, he claims, we are exhausted by seeing so clearly, sick from the eradication of mystery and ‘phantasmagoria’ by rationalised systems. As he says, ‘Familiarity breeds indifference.’ Therefore, fire is not merely sacred because it is warm and bright. It is sacred because of its scarcity, its precarity, and its ultimate endurance against the totality of night.

The phrase ‘Dark Ages’ has fallen out of fashion, yet the idea of a historical movement from darkness to ‘Enlightenment’ still lives on. In the 17^th Century, Western Europe began its love affair with empiricism, scepticism, and the scientific method. Christianity still had a tight grip on culture, but the burgeoning interest in secular and humanist thought emerged at this time, a period we call ‘the Enlightenment.’ Since then, we have become infatuated with science, our wellspring of truth, the answer to all practical problems. Yet there is an emptiness in today’s culture. Our hyper-rationalised technocratic ethos, its blinding, artificial light, leaves no room for mystery, art, or the unknown. Perhaps the phrase ‘Dark Ages’ is not such an insult after all.

In the late 2010s, the ‘classical liberals’ of the alt-right found new spokesmen in the so-called ‘Dark Enlightenment.’ They were a group of public intellectuals with reactionary views, all loosely associated with ‘race realists’ (i.e. racists), ‘white supremacists’ (i.e. racists), and ‘gender critical activists’ (i.e. queerphobic misogynists). The label is just branding. They bear no relation to the original Enlightenment thinkers; it’s just shallow, edgy sleight-of-hand from a bunch of insecure quacks struggling to deal with the irrelevance and inaccuracy of their ideas.

It’s significant, though, that they emphasise their relationship to ‘enlightenment’ above darkness. They are the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, not the ‘Enlightening Darkness.’ It’s not enough for them to be brave men with bold, controversial ideas; they have to piggyback off the prestige of ‘the Enlightenment’ to appear legitimate. In other words, they have to be right. Darkness, real darkness, means uncertainty, confusion, living with the knowledge that you could be wrong.

As I write this, Big Thief’s song ‘Change’ is playing. Adrienne Lenker is about to sing, ‘Would you walk forever in the light,/ To never learn the secret of a quiet night?’ It’s a beautiful expression of an age-old idea. From Huxley to the ‘Dark Ages’ to Greek myth, we’ve been fascinated by the power of the dark. This preoccupation speaks to the best part of us, the part that seeks out danger or risk as a path to growth. We reassure ourselves that the dark is okay, friendly even. We can’t live in it but we know we need it.

Darkness is apolitical. Our violent global history of racial inequality and class conflict have laced the word with negative connotations, but the dark itself is universal and ineffable. Nature reminds us that not only do we not need to know everything, but that total certainty would, in fact, harm us. Mystery is sustenance. A torch burning in the dark is a small raft of certainty in a sea of total possibility.

My flat can get very cold sometimes due to the shitty boiler. Since November, I’ve had a small electric heater running nearly every day. My room also has a fireplace, but last year I never used it; surely, I thought, the chimney’s blocked. Then on New Years Day, my housemate came in and showed me how to turn it on. He twisted a knob and up came a twitchy, dancing fire.

Every time I turn it on, a small flame bursts through the base and licks the knob. I pull back a sooty hand with a flame-blushed finger. I can see the fire now, hear the hissing breath of the gas, and I feel it’s not just heat, it’s home. It’s more efficient than the electric heater, but more than that it brings the room to life. Yesterday, before I slept I sat before it, my eyes closed, my head bowed, my fringe an inch from the fireguard. Tomorrow I will buy some vegan marshmallows and toast them under the fire.