Meditative Prose
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Photo by DJMcCrady
Tonight on an impulse I went on eBay and bought a t-shirt with a picture of three aliens and the phrase “I Believe” written across the top. At first this might sound like a joke, but it’s not: I believe in aliens.
I have actually been wanting a shirt like this for a few months now, ever since I watched the first episode of Carl Sagan’s PBS series “Cosmos.” In it, Sagan famously declares that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Now think about just one small beach that you’ve visited, and try, if you can, to fathom the number of grains of sand it contains. Once your headache subsides, check out this essay where an astronomer puts Sagan’s statement to the test and ultimately agrees with him.
I used to be skeptical. After all, the universe is so vast, so cold, so dead. Our instruments and techniques are just now becoming precise enough to detect Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. We can’t even see them, but we know they are there by the way the planet’s gravitational pull makes the star wobble ever so slightly. We are just starting to scratch the surface of this question, but there are an estimated 50,000 billion billion stars out there. With odds like that, I just can’t believe that ours is the only one with a planet that supports life. We are not alone.
How many planets are there like ours in the vast universe? How many are just the right distance from their star? How many have liquid water but no life? How many have life but no water? How many organisms are there that would shatter our idea of what an organism is, if only we knew about them? Are there any beings out there that can play physics like Yo Yo Ma plays the cello? How many alien civilizations have made the same mistakes we are making? How many have attained ecological enlightenment and become benevolent stewards of their world? How many would be awed by us, by our way of living, our music and art, if they could only meet us? How many would fear us?
Yeah, I believe in aliens. We may never meet them — the distances are so vast, and the worlds potentially so different from ours — but they are out there, I have no doubt. Then again, maybe we will meet them. Maybe it’s just a matter of time, and all we have to do is keep playing the game, if we can, and wait to be contacted. Maybe they are watching right now, dumbfounded, as we consciously cause the biodiversity of our planet to decrease, wondering if we’ll make it. Maybe all they want is to teach us the advanced lessons of the universe (“Lesson 41: Space, Time, and Other Illusions”), but we can’t master the easy stuff (“Lesson 1: Keep Your Planet Habitable.”) And so they wait, patiently, for humanity to mature.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Cottonwoods & Lake Champlain
Wednesday afternoon I got out of work two and a half hours early, and rode my bike to a stand of young cottonwood trees that overlook the lake. I have gone past these trees many times, but never noticed them until Nick, Will, Sarah and I stopped there one beautiful afternoon in May on our way south to Oakledge Park. Now that spot is almost sacred to me. The trees have slender trunks, furrowed gray bark, and elegant spade-shaped leaves. When I first saw them, strings of pea-sized green pods were dangling from their branches like pearls. Between then and now, those pearls burst open and released their cargo of cottony seeds into the wind, and the now-brown, dried hemispheres fell and mingled with the grass. They were everywhere Thursday afternoon, some with bits of weathered cotton still clinging to them, as I sat looking at the lake and thinking of old friends and adventures to come.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
The Storm Rolls In
Last week I started reading The Hobbit again, after finishing it (and the three books of The Lord of the Rings) not more than six months ago. Sometimes I feel bad about re-reading books when there are so many good ones out there waiting to be discovered — but I just can’t resist returning to books I’ve enjoyed in the past. There is a kind of comfort there, particularly with Tolkien’s books, that is an excellent remedy for the malaise that sneaks up on me now and again from dealing with our insane culture. It is such a breath of fresh air to meet characters who are fully engaged with the land they live on and travel over. However unrealistic elves, dwarves, hobbits, and wizards may be, at least they have an honest relationship with their world. I keep coming back to The Hobbit because the characters seem so much saner than the people I see every day.
The universe is truly awe inspiring to those who pay attention — and I include myself in that group only as a beginner. I am almost twenty-four years old. In another time, another culture, I would be a man by now, wise in the ways of the Earth and confident in my place here. As it is, I am still a child in that respect, and my learning has just begun — but I am comforted that I am at least aware of my deficiency and taking corrective measures. Sadly, very few people seem to think it is a problem if they don’t know the names of the trees they see, or where their food comes from, or which direction is north, or any constellations aside from the Big Dipper. How did this happen?
If I had to guess, I’d say that the emergence of the industrial economy made it unnecessary for people to know these things to survive. So we forgot. Now, food comes from the supermarket. North is an arrow on Google Maps. And constellations? Why look up when you can look at the TV?
I think we can all be forgiven for falling into the trap of the industrial economy. Even the folks who dreamed up this nightmare were merely seduced by their own greed — a common enough problem in any society. But now that we see what this system has done to us, what it is doing to the planet, we cannot be forgiven if we don’t try to reverse course. This way of life has turned us from wonder-filled beings, inhabitants of a magical world, into interchangeable, replaceable cogs in a machine designed to make rich people richer. It has turned the planet itself into a farm for “natural resources,” where nothing has value unless it can be sold. If we continue on this path (or is it a ten-lane highway?), we forget what it means to be human. We may even forfeit our right to exist.
Humanity is in its wild teenage years and, despite our youthful indiscretions, we could have a bright future ahead of us. Thanks to the exquisite human mind, we can understand and interact with our world in ways that other animals cannot (yet). Maturity for our species will mean using that power to master the art of living in harmony with the land, and protecting our common habitat for future generations of human and non-human life. The first step on that path is a bottom-up movement to resist the control structures that have been imposed on us and define our own destiny. It is already starting.
We have been looking up for a hundred thousand years or more. Why stop now?
