Did you see the report of a SUV falling into a 30 feet deep sinkhole in Milwaukee? A number of months ago, I think a few weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, something similar, but bigger happened in Texas. I read a bit about sinkholes and learned that they’ve been around forever and are sometimes “man-made.” Well, I’m not going to let the facts get in the way of my thesis. It certainly seems like we are on an upswing in terms of catastrophic events — natural ones, “man-made” ones, and some where clearly an interactive effect between the two seems evident.
The Earth seems to be cracking, and shriveling. Even if you don’t believe in global warming, the history of the Earth tells that it has always been moving, forming, shifting. And I guess the next thought applies to believers and non-believers on global warming...the idea that the world could find some perfect homeostasis and simply stay there forever really doesn’t make much sense. To think that way presumes that the order of things at a universal level, well beyond but also inclusive of our little Earth level, will remain the same. And surely we can’t believe that the only potential tipping point even within galaxy — and certainly within the universe measured in infinite terms — would be what we do here on Earth.
I say this as a proponent for global warming interventions, but let’s be real. Two problems with the Earth as we usually think of it (and we usually think of it 99.9% of the time as the only place, that is forever, and that will have a stock exchange opening every weekday except certain Holidays). First, the Earth is living, and dying. Regarding the latter, some of us might acknowledge the dying part in some very faint academic way (like, of course the Earth will return to some ice age, or become overrun with water, or burn up...billions of years from now), but the very vast majority of us, if we think in these terms at all, worry ourselves only in increments like our children’s projected lifetimes or perhaps our children’s children’s lifetimes.
Truthfully, we have no idea whether we are still in the early phase on an inhabitable Earth, or in the late stages. And of course we have no idea whether being in the late stages might still mean that we have billions of years to go, or just millions, or just 50 or so. Only the latter would really freak people out. So the Earth is a living and dying thing, and it’s fragile, at least in the really big picture. The second problem is that the Earth is really very, very small, and our Earth-centric orientation is soooooooo out of proportion to Reality. It’s like a kid in Appalachia who’s never been more than two counties over in any direction. That “world” is the world as he knows it, and he literally has no idea how small his world is. And we’re tricked a bit on Earth because we keep learning so much, and developing and developing, and opening new “worlds” with even smaller things like DNA.
Now let’s put on our special existential “google earth” toggle glasses, the ones that can zoom in, and out. Come on, try them out. Give them a spin. Zoom around and out, get the whole family in the shot, and then get a view that includes your family and the scene “across the tracks.” Zoom out further and pan over the vast beauty of Wyoming or Utah, and come back and zoom in on your 3rd grade best friend’s house in Decatur, Alabama. Hell, zoom in on yourself, because let’s be honest, that’s the view we all like the most. Fun, right?
Let’s put the existential toggle on turbo-charge and go on a little trip....into space...intergalactic space. OK, we’ve got a view of the Earth like the astronauts and satellites send us. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Now keep going....and going, until the Earth is but a speck. Now turn your head in any direction an inch. You can’t get it back. You’ll never find that speck again...never find all the little things — wars, arguments about what your particular god demands, economies crashing (or booming), rituals, youth soccer games, proms, MSNBC and Fox — all gone. I can’t even attempt to describe the experience from there, but you get the point. There are perspectives that make the Earth and its activities very, very irrelevant.
Which leads to a few questions?
Should astronomy be required in schools as much as English or Math (and I don’t mean just the Earth as the centerpiece of a perfectly organized and harmonious nine planet system nested comfortably in a maternal Milky Way)? Are there common threads among astronomers in terms of politics, values and religious beliefs? Do they have a way of thinking about Earthly things that is radically different than the rest of us? Do they default like the rest of us to believing the Earth is the center of everything, and maybe a God-centric everything at that?
Or — gulp — default to the even more profound and self-serving delusion that the United States of America less than 250 years old is the ultimate key to unlocking the Da Vinci code of the universe?