Tiefschürfendes zu später Stunde
An interesting excerpt from an interview with Leigh Ann Henion about her new book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, in the Christian Science Monitor:
An idea that intrigued me was this notion that people ask bigger questions in the dark. Why is that?
Consider the conversations that take place at a campfire as opposed to conversations that take place at a conference under fluorescent lighting. Research indicates that we, as a species, have tended to fill [darkness] with more creative storytelling and music and artistic ways of interacting and communicating knowledge versus the more practical aspects of daylight conversations. Night gives us this palette. Light allows us to see, but then it creates boundaries. When you’re in darkness, the possibilities are infinite.
This is an interesting thought for sure, and the atmosphere at a campfire at night is certainly vastly different from a conference under artificial light. Whether I would posit a causal link to darkness as such is another question (and a campfire is a source of light anyway), but I think that this points to the fact that sitting at a campfire at night is something that is human nature. We've been doing that sort of thing for tens of thousands of years. It's likely literally in our genes. Conferences under fluorescent light where you talk to strangers about things that do not truly move you (you, the person!) is not our nature. No wonder, then, that the former feels right in ways that the latter doesn't, and fosters conversation the latter does not.
The book sounds interesting as well. Maybe I'll read it some time; for now I have Matt Haig's Midnight Library ahead of me, which was recommended to me last night and which sounded like something I should indeed read.