Light vs. Darkness

Today we were supposed to talk about why Wayne Gretzky may be the Anti-Christ, however a more pressing issue has come up: this story in Friday’s Washington Post. Wayne will have to wait.

To sum up, residents in the Washington, D.C. exurbs are arguing over light and darkness. The longtime residents have lived their lives without artificial light at night and would like to keep it that way. New arrivals can’t understand why anyone would want to live without blazing street lights and security lamps, and are intent on installing them.

The Indignant Citizen grew up in the sticks. There were no streetlights and on many a night with a full moon the Indignant Citizen would kill the headlights on his Mustang and cruise by the milky light from above, which gave a bluish hue to hills, trees, anything dark, while turning fields and gravel roads silver. You may say, “Why, he was a damn fool!” And you may be right. But not because I drove by moonlight.

But the Indignant Citizen digresses. We were talking about the D.C. hinterlands. Better yet, let’s let 63-year-old John Eney talk about them. Here he is quoted in the Post story. “I think this county needs to join the 21st Century. It’s ridiculous that people have to fumble around in the dark under starlight.”

If Mr. Eney sounds a little bitter it’s because he is. According to the story, he spent two-and-a-half hours one winter night driving around on Maryland back country roads because an accident closed the only way home he knew and diverted traffic. “I found it easier to navigate the California desert than make my way through the pathetically dark roads of Calvert County,” he told the Post.

Even though the Indignant Citizen knew what this story was about when he started reading, it was at this point his blood reached the boiling point. Hey John, it’s not the darkness’ fault you don’t know where the fuck you live. And didn’t you notice the fucking roads were dark WHEN YOU MOVED THERE? Did you think they’d magically install lighting throughout the county JUST FOR YOU? Whether or not he expected a personalized array of rural route sodium vapor lamps when he moved (the Post doesn’t say when that unfortunate event occurred) he expects it now. As do others in the story who find it unfathomable that these back roads haven’t been lit up like downtown Washington since their arrival.

Twenty-eight year-old Melissa Harris, transplanted from somewhere near Annapolis, offered this original analysis: “It was so dark you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. These people [longtime residents who don't mind the dark and haven't for decades] will push for darkness until their car gets broke into or their house gets vandalized. Then they’ll change their story.” Damnant quod non intellegunt.

You see Melissa, believe it or not there are people who don’t need street lights—or giant security lamps illuminating their homes at all hours—to get around. And the only reason longtime residents would have to fear a car break-in or vandalism is because transient self-important landsuckers like you keep moving farther into rural areas. It’ll be your kids conducting the break-ins and the vandalism, no doubt, because they will have been subjected to soulless suburban childhoods filled with endless TV, video games and babysitters; they will have been conditioned to fear the dark and to believe that owning and piloting a car is some kind of Right. The cheapness of their surroundings will have taught them that nothing has lasting value and that everything is expendable.

And by the way, Mel, who exactly to you fear? Roaming gangs feeling their way through the country darkness in the hope of finding a car to TP or a house to burgle? Don’t forget, without lights it’s kind of hard to see where you’re going … or maybe you should ask John about that. Anyway if you’re so afraid of the dark, move into the Indignant Citizen’s old apartment in Brooklyn, where the streetlight shone in the window all night and yet, failed to prevent several car break-ins and home burglaries on that very same street. If light were the answer, wouldn’t cities be safe? Lack of light isn’t the problem. Crime is, and crimes are committed by individuals.

This story is fascinating. Here we have people contentedly living in the country, without street lights, or lights of any kind save the ones in their houses. And now here come the land speculators, with their SUVs and their “pro growth” agenda, which is basically a reinforcing loop economic system whereby homes and businesses get built and then more homes and businesses are required to sustain this new hinterland economy. These are the same people who build cabins in the forest and then complain the government isn’t doing enough to protect them from forest fires, or move to homes near airports and complain about the jet noise.

The Indignant Citizen has a simple retort: Either move to the country and embrace the darkness, or move to the city and leave the darkness to those who understand it and can move easily in it. Either way, just please shut the fuck up.