“Lights” essay Introduction

Our lights shape our understanding of the world by helping us see even in the darkness, but what if our overuse of them starts to erase darkness as a whole? It took several innovations and breakthroughs in human history to create the lights seen today, but the value of these lights has been long forgotten by human conscience. In day to day lives of people, forgetting to turn the lights off when not needed is not seen as a big issue, it is quite easy to ignore it. However, due to accessibility of lights increasing so much around the world, the impact of this forgetting increases to a much larger scale with hundreds of millions of people doing the same. Looking at the two artifacts above the gravity of this issue can be highlighted. The boy at the left is using a solar powered lamp which he charged during the day and is now using at night to do his assignment. This boy knows the value that this light has and wouldn’t miss use it. At the right is a world map at night. This map represents the general public around the world. The consumption of lights is so much that in India, Europe, and the Eastern coast of the US, it is as bright as the day. Are lights truly supposed to be used in such a manner? Or have we humans using mass production and constant innovations changed the norms of nature? To answer these questions one needs to dive into the history of how the lights we see nowadays came to be in order to fully absorb how difficult it was to get them, then dive into how electrification of lights led to the rise of a greener future and fight over sustainability, part of which this text argues for. Through a narration that follows this chronology a connection with the reader will be made through pathos in order to make the social movement that text tries to bring come to life.