OddballGreg - The Necessity Of Contrast

Black and white are the most common contrasts you'll hear about. Ironically they just serve as the basis of the metaphor.

In a world filled with so many doubts, one might wonder why it is precisely that our world is so precariously based upon choice and options rather than definitive fact. Why can we die? Why do we live? Why is there dark and what is light? The answer is a strangely apt one: Contrast.

The other day, an interesting question cropped up from one of my friends on Facebook, in which he asked: "If the speed of light is c, what is the speed of dark?" While his reason for defining the speed of light as "c" remains unbeknownst to me, I had, of course, learned some interesting things about the way the universe works from my ever-mentioned favorite YouTube channel for all things Science or otherwise; Vsauce. 

The video I referenced is below, but essentially, I made the argument that "C < Dark". Which is to say, Dark is faster than the speed of light. Why? Consider for a moment that light moves at the speed of light, while dark is simply present wherever light is not. Switch off a flashlight in a dark room and the change of illumination is not gradual, but rather instantaneous as dark fills the room at a speed faster than we can perceive with our naked eye.

The reason for this is not that dark is faster than light per se, more a technicality in that it appears to fill space faster than light according to our perception of the situation. What is in fact happening is that once the light source is removed, there is simply nothing left to perceive and so we see darkness. Essentially, darkness is a lack of information, which is interesting since physics dictates that information cannot move faster than light; and light is technically information in the form of moving photons refracting off of surfaces and molecules to produce colours. So what happens when you switch your flashlight off is that you are simply eradicating the presence of information, and darkness fills the information-less zone that was lit up.

But, why then, you may ask, does darkness exist? Shouldn't everything be information, including the darkness itself? While that would be an interesting paradigm, it would be an unrealistic one. Consider the act of swimming. In order to do so, you need to in something that provides you with the buoyancy needed to move like that. A medium, much like the paints and canvas of an artist. Well, in similar vein, darkness is the medium in which light becomes apparent to us.

Which brings us to the axiom of this article's subject. The Necessity of Contrast.  Without a contrasting medium, something cannot be perceived due to it's lack of comparison. (Veritably incomprehensible, at least to the human mind.) Think about anything. Life, Air, Children, Fire, Evil... all of these things have a definable contrast which allows us to define them. Life and Death, Air and Space, Children and Adults, Fire and Ice, Good and Evil. These things all have some definable contrast that allows us to subject them to comparison and comprehension. They are each other's mediums against which they can be shown to the world.

Imagine a world without Evil: could any act be defined as good? Not really. Without a comparison, those acts would simply be acts, devoid of moral definition. A world without Death would be a world without life, and without Adults, children would simply be people, as we could not define them as anything else. Existence itself is not only based on contrast, but justified by it. We live, to die, and there is death so that we can live. People are cruel so that others can be kind, and fire burns so that ice can freeze. (Though those last two technically have more than a single contrast if you're into the whole earthly elements paradigm.)

In any case, I'm sure that this article has given you a very interesting new perspective on the world, or at least made you want to yell at me about your counterargument. If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Think carefully my friends.