Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Its All in Black and White.
By: Karolyn Ellis

Many things have more than one side to them. Good and bad, black and white, light and dark; all of these shade two concepts that are both very different from each other.
Black has long been associated with the dark side of things, like a black sheep, or the dark side of the Force. It seems to have taken on the role of shouldering every bad thing human kind has to be afraid of. From the dark itself to the devil, black has represented its fair share of demons.
Ironically, however, black should be representing nothingness, not evil. Black is the shade that is devoid of color, of anything. In anything that had been labeled ‘black’, the black hole is the only thing to have been properly named, as it sucks in everything, yet has nothing. A black hole is thusly the perfect representation for black.
So why is black everything we fear? Is this association of fear and evil with black something to symbolically tell us that we have nothing to be afraid of? And if so, why have so many missed this point?
White has also been terribly misrepresented. White is purity, and cleanliness, and everything that is good. It is a clean sheet of paper with nothing on it, the perfect nothing to build something on. It is a clean slate to start over on.
But, white needs every color in the color spectrum, those we can see and those we can’t, to be white. White encompasses everything to hold its fair complexion. White is everything, the very embodiment of the balance between good and evil.
Therefore, if white is everything from color to good to evil, then how can it possibly be the spokesperson for nothing? Have the definitions for white and black been switched for such a long time that nobody really knows that they have them switched around? How did they possibly get to be switched in the first place?
There are some things that it’s hard to imagine without their opposites. Black and white can’t be black and white without both black and white. The Force can’t be without balancing opposing sides of good and evil. Cruella DeVille still needs the 101 Dalmatians to make her fur coats. In short, everything has to have an opposite.