The Purity of Black Restored
Black habits
While outside our Chemistry lab, I made a joke about how Jesus revealed himself to the disciples after he was resurrected.
I echoed the same logic when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary before she gave Joseph the strange news.
I didn’t stop there.
I used the same idea to explain why Jesus saw the transfiguration in the garden when he went to pray with his three most trusted disciples.
I was a staunch catholic then. I knew all the mysteries of the Rosary by heart. Still do. But you might be wondering what the joke was.
It wasn’t a joke really, because I can swear I saw someone facepalm at my consistent logic.
The topic for that day was the flame of the various elements of the periodic table. We wanted to see the colour of the flame of magnesium. It was a bright white colour.
After the thrilling experiment, I immediately, concluded that those three scenes of reportedly brightly shining heroes in the bible happened because of magnesium. How else could they be brightly white, at night and in the absence of the modern-day fluorescent bulbs?
It had to be magnesium. Burning magnesium.
Don’t you agree?
Throughout life, we have always been taught that white is associated with purity.
When Jane Gloriana Villanueva was a teenager, her abuela gave her a white flower. A symbol of her virginity. Until the mistake at the hospital which made her pregnant, despite never engaging in coitus.
Her white flower was now tarnished.
It’s about time we changed the narrative.
Rapidly, happily, I look back on Afeni Shakur
Her son paved the way, now all eyes on me
’Cause I’m young, black, and gifted, Nina all eyes gon’ see
Newton’s disc
Newton developed a wheel inspired by the rainbow.
All seven colours feature in it.
When you break apart the white colour, you get the beautiful bow seen just or after the rains.
Similarly, when you spin Newton’s disc, it becomes difficult to make out the blurred edges of the distinct colours. The disc then changes from multiple distinct colours it displays to a white one.
White is not purity, white is a combination of, at the very least, all seven colours fused into one.
White can be broken into seven wavelengths of the same speed of light.
What of black?
Black is a lack of this admixture. It cannot be broken into distinct colours. The shades of grey seen when we add the white amalgam impurify the pure emptiness of black.
You might be wondering why I used the word empty. If black is empty, then shouldn’t white be full?
Well, not quite. There are other wavelengths of light we cannot see. White is just one of the wavelengths.
I could have switched it up and said black is full of emptiness, which is true, and white is full of visible light. It still makes the argument that black is pure and white isn’t, but I’ll risk sounding petty. I’m not a fan of pettiness.
There’s a purity in emptiness, just as one feels that a stain-free flower or garment is pure when no other substance tarnishes it.
Emptiness is purity de novo.
That says it all for black. It is not a colour, it is its absence.
The idea of a white lie is itself a white lie.
The figure of speech is bound to show something innocent. A lie that isn’t anything but innocent is the very opposite — black.
But how can purity de novo be worse than a constructive mishmash of visible colour?
But you won’t like to call a white lie black huh? Because black is how white colours get tarnished, huh?
Can’t you see the inconsistency? How can the absence of colour stain that which is full of colour?
Black, therefore, is cast as the bad colour, that distorts the white. In reality, all we see is a contrast of two visible extremes.
It’s about time we changed that narrative.
Writing
While typing this manuscript, black symbols appear on a white document.
Writing, we are made to believe, developed when man started drawing on cave walls. With the Agrarian Revolution, this gradually transformed for better record keeping. Papyrus reeds were used to make parchment and oils were used to make ink.
To the educated at the time, the contrast between the parchment and the calligraphic drawings by the oil made sense. It could be stored and used for future reference if needed.
Years later we’re now doing most of our writing through documents on tablets, computers, and laptops.
The default option is black on white. Emptiness on a white document. The contrast is necessary for understanding. As you read this, the symbols that make the letters, the words, and the sentences are black and the background is white.
Emptiness gives meaning when cast against visible light. It is the contrast between the two — between white and black.
There’s more to pure emptiness, than written words. It extends to numbers too, and the perfect example is the most mysterious number of them all.
The number zero
As an adult, we want more zeros to the right of our current paycheck.
Zeros on the left don’t make that big a difference in real life unless you’re a secret agent like 007.
The number is a mysterious one. It is the perfect representation of nothingness. First noted in Mesopotamia, it brought a tonne of sense to mathematics.
But as a representation of emptiness, it also brought meaning to numbers.
Consider these three arrangements of three digits:
- 028
- 208
- 280
The first one is akin to an adult’s age. The second one is difficult to get in liquid cash, with notes and coins, inside your wallet or purse. The third is easily used to tag services or goods in a store.
Our embodiment of emptiness has once more brought meaning to the three digits.
Drop the zero and what you’re left with is simply 28, 28, and 28. Fungible double digits.
Black and zero are synonymous in this sense. Through writing, emptiness births meaning. And through numbers, it allows us to know the orders of magnitude.
The number zero tells us more — that there is more to emptiness than the superficial acceptance of it. How can emptiness bring about meaning?
Well, our understanding of our shared universe is dependent on that.
Why there is something rather than nothing
Black, as we have so far established, is pure. Pure emptiness. At least at a formal level.
White, a combination of several colors in the spectrum of visible light. However, if you take red colour and add it to a white document, it doesn’t get whiter despite red being one of the components of white light.
Black is the absence of colour. Purity de novo. You can even say that it is nothing.
Now, consider this.
Nothing forbids the existence of something, including laws. Laws are something. In pure emptiness, such as black, there is nothing.
However, if there were no laws, then everything would be permitted. Why? Because there is no law preventing it from happening. Thus, from nothing, then, emerges something. From nothing, emerges everything.
Pure emptiness is mysterious. Almost magical.
You can’t get any purer than that now, can you?
As I close…
Black as the judge robe, when the case closed
Now your life on the black burner — D. Smoke
Black is often cast as an evil colour. White as the angelic and heavenly one. But these metaphors are inconsistent with the theories which define our existence as an advanced civilization.
Black was present at the beginning but got misused and misinterpreted along the way. But from emptiness, we developed a tonne of meaning. Emptiness, purity, substance.
Through this piece, I wasn’t restoring black’s glory.
I was reminding you.
The evidence is all around you.
Black magic, black excellence
Black habits, this black medicine, everything
Black Chucks, black tux, everything (everything)
Black hug, black love everything
Praise black Jesus, play black Moses,
Given ’em flowers while they still here, black roses, everything
Black tie, black ride, everything (everything)
Black pride, black lives, everything
PS: As the black man I am, I curate a weekly atomic newsletter aimed to edge you towards extreme value creation. Join the 55+ others.
