The Dark Stain of Enlightenment

Wonderful, stirring stuff from Nick’s talk yesterday. However, I do think that Nick writes overmuch about ‘Enlightenment’ values when they’re actually the cause of the problem. Fascism, in its many faces of Nazism, wife beating and animal experiments, Islamism, Rastafarianism, technological destruction of the biosphere—is the product of these values. For those of you who don’t know what we mean by talk of the ‘Enlightenment’ I’ll explain.

It all started in the 18th century with Sir Francis Bacon, who talked of science as the rape of nature, unveiling her and shining a big bright light on her poor naked features. He spoke of this approvingly, would you believe it!—and this set off the whole big mistaken crazy path to modern life. They call it the Enlightenment but it’s not to be confused with the Enlightenment of, say, Buddhism—an inner revelation. Ironically, it’s a huge shadow over history, a period of darkness through industrialisation, insane ‘rationalism’, consumerism, slavery, individualism, and pollution, ending in the death camps, battery farms, and shopping malls of the present day. Poet and mystic, Romantic William Blake, called it the ‘dark Satanic mills’—I’m sure you’ve heard those famous, poignantly angry lines about his beloved Jerusalem—that’s ‘England’s green and pleasant fields’, by the way.

And now those overcrowded green fields are threatened by permanent darkness. As the winds run down, rendered breathless by turbines, so scientists have found evidence of global darkening from the growing use of solar power, which is sapping the sun’s rays. Ironically, this stems from our greedy addiction to energy consumption. In some ways, we’re demanding too much light. You only have to look at the way we live now, with advertising blazing away throughout the night and giant illuminated Tescos catering to our false desires. Families, no longer bound by the cycles of nature, stay up all night with the cold flicker of the TV or video game flashing through their windows. We live in an age of light pollution where we can no longer look up at the stars for guidance. There is too much illumination. I firmly believe there is no alternative but to end the madness of development altogether—no technology is safe. Mother Earth cries out in pain with every act of human hubris, blinded by the light.