Broken Pattern

Question 6

The single most important idea that I’ve picked up in the course this year is the whereabouts of life. We often forget in our busy lives that us “oh so simple” humans are the product of billions of years or minor variations coupled with sex and struggle. The worst part is that we can barely fathom what we’re talking about. The figures that we use to explain our world are often too large or too small to comprehend. We talk about billions of years of evolution, millions killed in war, or thousands dying overseas, but still, only when we talk about fifties or twenties can we actually picture what’s going on in our head.

It’s also amazing how far we’ve grown from nature after all these years. Only a few thousand years ago were we living on this planet like “normal” animals, picking berries and shrubs and making babies, sleeping in the trees and fighting the harshness of nature. In seeking out a more comfortable lifestyle, we’ve detached ourselves from the bosom that has fed us and every other living thing on Earth for billions of years: nature itself.

Despite our inability to really understand how far we’ve gone, the view from the sky allows us a minor glimpse of what we have done. Flying to and from Boston recently I’ve passed over many islands and land masses which were once plentiful with trees, plants, and wild animals. But now, during the day we see the buildings as little blocks on the circuit board cities that we’ve created; highways and streets acting like veins to keep this horrid body alive. At night, the Earth becomes a light show; neon signs flashing so bright that they can be seen from miles above; at times the words are even legible. Our super highways become a streamed traffic of red and yellow lights, moving back and forth like oxygenated and oxygen deprived blood cells.

But what are we missing out on? Last year I flew over the Arizona desert. Beautiful mountains, streaked with differing brushstrokes of red and yellows mark the evaporation of the great seas that once covered the Earth, and in their wake they leave a standard art that not even the greatest artists could hope to achieve. Similarly, flying at night recently next to the full moon allowed me to see the original flashlight of our planet. The moon’s reflection streaked across the ocean, lighting up uninhabited islands that would otherwise be completely overlooked. Is it any wonder that the early humans thought these great masses to be Gods?

In a way, they still are. Gods give life, take life, and alter life, just like our celestial bodies do. Can you imagine the volume of the sun, a constant sea of bubbling plasma that’s more that one million times the size of Earth? It’s magnetic strands pull strips of plasma (?) up and around so far that Jupiter could fit through it. The sun’s proximity allows for the optimal development of life on our planet, and in a few billion years it will consume Earth when it too decides to die. It will grow so large that it will consume Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth.

To assume such a mass as god would be far from farfetched, but keep in mind that there are much larger stars, thousands of galaxies and an infinite of space out there that hold even more secrets and wonders than we can find in our little milky backyard.