Daylight: The Light We Should Live In: Observations on the Impact of Electric Light

By Cedric Egeli

Human history is punctuated with important discoveries that bring about significant societal change. One of the most significant benchmarks so far has been our harnessing of electricity, bringing with it the widespread use of electric light. Everyone can appreciate the benefits electric light has provided: w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Egeli Studios
• Release date: Aug 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578966618

Book preview

introduction

It is late January, and I am sitting on my back porch in the warm sunlight and soaking up all this enjoyment that I can. It is unusually warm for this time of the year. It has been very cold.

Today, however, is a beautiful sunny day. It is still winter, but one can sense spring is on the way, and I am filled with good feelings. Soon, the daffodils will emerge. Nature is coming to life, and the sunlight is the messenger telling all life, everywhere, what is happening. However, there is a subset of life that is not getting sunlight’s message, a vast segment of the population that exists mostly under electric light.

When I go into a bank, a store, or a medical building, I often notice that the modern architect has given no deference to daylight. It seems as if windows are treated as decorations or are only for high-ranking employees. The time and brightness of the day are no longer significant; electric light is replacing the daylight, extending the day, and eliminating the night. Around the world, people are no longer receiving the natural messages that sunlight is designed to transmit. They are working at night or working in windowless office buildings; their children are attending windowless schools. Airline pilots and flight attendants are working through the night, and workers are up all night serving the multinational corporations. People are replacing the sunlight’s natural messages with electric light to control the production of eggs, milk, beef, and greenhouse plants. How did it come to this?

It began with good intentions. The world is now industrialized to a far greater degree than at any other point in history. With refrigeration, food is now readily available in most of the world. There are multi-story buildings everywhere, there is a comprehensive system of roads for cars that can cruise at over 80 miles per hour, and there is air transportation available to anywhere you need to go. Knowledge and education abound, and computers practically run the world. We are living in the most developed civilization the world ever experienced, and electricity has significantly aided us in this development. Yet it may be the aid that, in the end, will destroy us.

Climate change is bringing dramatic change to the earth’s environment. In the last year, we have seen changes in the power of hurricanes, rising sea levels, and the great fires in California and Australia. Scientists studying the mountain peaks from ten thousand to twenty thousand feet have taken note of their warming trends. The scientists and politicians who worked to create the Paris Climate Accord agree that something must be done. However, universally, the recommendations have been to reduce carbon emissions by developing cleaner energy sources. That is a prolonged process and may not be fast enough to rescue us from the impending climate change.

But there is something we can do immediately. We can open all the curtains around the world and shut off the lights during the daytime. Yes, those rooms will be a little darker, but the eye will soon adjust, and there will be a feeling of peace as we all become more in touch with nature. And it is not only a daytime change that is needed; night lighting also needs to be adjusted. Our use of electric light has changed nature’s order. At night, towns are lit up like Christmas trees. There is no darkness. In many neighborhoods, people leave their outside lights on all night. Those lights seep through the windows and destroy the darkness in their neighbors’ homes.

Recently, while sleeping in a motel, I could hear the lone sound of trucks on the highway all night. When I rose early and started to drive in the dark, the businesses and parking lots I passed were lit nearly as bright as day by bluish LED lights. Electric light stimulates activity around the clock. Industry has tried to create two days where there should only be one. People are being activated like bugs against a night light. Not only does it require energy to power that light, but people require energy to process the events caused by the overstimulation of electric light.

In Florida, lights are not allowed near the beach because those lights will upset the turtle population. Herpetologists tell us that lizards, if they do not have a certain type of type of light, will simply die. However, there seems to be little concern about how all this affects the welfare of humans. Epidemiological studies have already shown how bad night light is for our health, and electric light used during the daytime can be even more unhealthy, because we spend more time in it. The constancy of electric light can cause a host of problems, not the least of which is the deregulation of our light-based circadian clock.

When I first began to write this paper, my main goal was to show that reading under electric light causes myopia to develop in students. There is much scientific evidence available and many experiments that show how this happens. But over the years, I realized that the overall harmful effect of electric light was much more significant than just causing myopia. In the following pages, I will discuss some other effects electric light can have, including poor eyesight, early onset of puberty and menopause, over-growth and weight gain, unusual sexual development, and breast and prostate cancer. The unchecked use of electric light impacts our health and development in many negative ways, but the ultimate payment for our aberrant use of electric light is cancer.

Electric light can be extremely useful, and it is not harmful when used with knowledge. However, it must be used discriminately. When it used without understanding, electric light can lead to significant adverse health consequences. This paper will discuss real and imaginary events to demonstrate how we are deleteriously affected by electric light. Existing studies and experiments with animals can already provide concrete examples that parallel what may happen to people. Examining studies is useful, but imagination is also a valuable tool, as it gives us a creative vision into the future. Observation does not always have to be scientifically proven to be of use to us. In the words of Albert Einstein, I'm enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination, which I think is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

So, this paper is not about science, but it is about observation and the analysis of what we see. Science often seems to be about microscopic examination, and not about gross observations, and scientists sometimes fail to see the obvious while they are looking through their microscopes. Many things that happen in the world