The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Embracing Darkness and Integrating the Shadow
The moral case for embracing the darkness within you while not giving in to evil.
Darkness is something we all struggle with from time to time.
The tendency among some people to give in to their darker urges. To want things we know we shouldn't or do things we don't think would be good for us. It's something we learn to deal with over time but that doesn't mean these needs go away. We simply come to understand that acting on them can have negative consequences for us and the people around us. As a result we suppress these urges in order to function within a group of some kind. Otherwise it ends badly.
What's important though is to understand the distinction between darkness and evil. The two aren't necessarily directly connected. You can have dark thoughts and urges without necessarily being evil. Being able to tell the difference is part of the process of coming to terms with it. This doesn't mean that it's easy. Coming to terms with how to separate the two can end up badly if you're not careful. Because while they are different, seeing the darkness in yourself or other people can lead to embracing them and giving into these dark thoughts.
Doing so can lead you into a seriously dark place that can ultimately become evil. Not doing so can also create its own problems. Denial of these urges only allows them to grow in size and consume you. These parts of yourself are hard to wrap your head around, so it's understandable that people don't like to do it sometimes. Which means the only reasonable thing to do is find a certain amount of balance. Allow the dark parts of yourself to manifest without letting them take you over. You have to like the parts of you which are dark.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a great example of how to go about this process. Sabrina herself looks to find a balance between the dark parts she's been raised to embrace and the lighter aspects she was born with. The thing which makes this exploration so interesting is how it flips the usual concept around the embracing of darkness.
Traditionally, when exploring the concept of darkness, stories begin from the premise that people are inherently good. That they have a fundamentally good nature. It's only through personal experience that they discover what darkness lies within them. They become corrupted over time. Sabrina on the other hand looks at someone who was born into what people mostly would consider darkness. What she has to do is embrace the light.
It gives you a good insight into your assumptions about what makes something good and what makes them bad. And it reveals the potential of people to see the darkness within themselves. Explore those ideas without necessarily giving into it. Gives people the safety of knowing these parts of their inner lives.
I highly recommend checking it out and understanding darkness along with Sabrina.
You can check it out on Netflix everywhere.
Yes, darkness and evil are not one and the same, but one can lead to the other, especially if the person experiencing it stands on a shaky foundation of self-understanding and lacks skills to transform the darkness into growth. Also, worthy to note, the brighter the light in the front, the darker the shadow in the back... Hance, so many fallen gurus, and disgraced celebrities.