“From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “look at that, you son of a bitch.” – Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut
Five years ago, the eminent astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine to share what he considered to be his most astounding fact about the universe. In a moving response that would later go ‘viral’ via the magic of YouTube, Dr. Tyson elucidated a simple truth that fittingly, in a world of extremes, casts our species as both centrally important, and vitally insignificant, in the play of life. The most astounding fact, he said, is that the universe is quite literally within us, that the atoms that make up the human body can be traced to the very stars above. There is no need to feel disconnected, he summarized, because just by being alive, we are connected to everything there has ever been, and ever will be.
Perhaps it’s this knowledge that brings to light that for all of humanity’s advances, the way that we organize life on this planet is, at best, woefully inadequate and short-sighted. In a state of affairs almost as comical as it is painful, we have decided to reduce ourselves to participation in an (anything but) cosmic rat race that leaves us ultimately unfulfilled, confused, and disillusioned. Consider how much human potential has been wasted over the course of time. For every Newton or Edison, there are an incalculable many for whom greatness was impossible, simply due to the environment they were born into. Maybe they were oppressed, marginalized, even killed before their time – their names never known, and their stories never told. Read more
It was the great Irishman Oscar Wilde’s observation that in a universe of infinite possibilities, given the choice to exist or live, most of us would rather opt for the former. Extending this exist/live paradigm further, we could use it to evaluate if we are upholding, or challenging the status quo. Exactly why the status quo needs to be challenged should, by now, be fairly clear: aside from the widening gap between rich and poor, illegal wars, and secret kill lists (need I go on?), the history of our species tells us that those in power have a tendency to slide towards tyranny if their privilege is unchecked. Despite the idiotic and quite frankly, worrying proclamation made recently by the comedian Chris Rock that the President is “our boss…our Father,” the fact remains that in democratic societies, we must never forget that governments work for us, and not the other way around.
It may be a New Year, but age-old problems and issues still plague our Western societies. While there are many that gravitate to fire-and-brimstone negativity, rejoicing in the idea that a total planetary collapse is imminent and that they may get to observe it, what cannot be denied is the gradual and radical shift in consciousness that is happening all around us.
