Just a few more beautiful words from the book, “Orbital” (and photo I didn’t take!) –
“Before they came here there used to be a sense of the other side of the world, a far-away-and-out-of-reach. Now they see how the continents run onto each other like overgrown gardens – that Asia and Australia are not separate at all but are made continuous by the islands that trail between….. Continents and countries come one after the other and the earth feels – not small but endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses.”
This isn’t a small world. It’s huge. But there really is just a constant ever changing flow of Life on this planet, manifesting through diversity, relationships and an infinity of connections. We belong here. Together. We become here. Together.
In “Orbital”, by Samantha Harvey, she describes how the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are first entranced by the Earth at night. It’s when night falls over the surface of the planet that the presence of human beings becomes most obvious….the networks of streets, buildings, roads sparkling and shining so brightly you can easily see them from Space. Then as daylight comes they see the Earth as a planet where humans beings are invisible, see it as a living, whole organism with its oceans, clouds, weather systems, forests and deserts. But then they come to realise just how much of the Earth is the way it is exactly because of human choices and actions.
We change the planet just by living here. How it changes comes down to our collective choices and those of the corporations and individuals with the greatest power and wealth.
Normally I use my own photos to illustrate my posts but, having never been to the International Space Station, this time, I’m borrowing a couple of photos from the French astronaut and photographer, Thomas Pesquet. Look him up. Check out his photos. They are simply astonishing.
“They come to see the politics of want. The politics of growing and getting, a billion extrapolations of the urge for more……The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.” – from “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey.
This is the modern version of a very old philosophical exercise – taking the view from on high – to stand apart, above, and look out over the greater whole.
“The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.” – from “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey.
The mental capacities we humans have developed allow us to do incredible things, not least the ability to create a distance, and the ability to change our perspective. The ability to put a space, or a pause, between all the signals and stimuli entering our bodies, and carrying out an action, is the difference between reacting and responding. You know about the famous “knee jerk”, where a doctor hits a tendon in your knee and your legs jumps forward….this is an instant reaction carried out at the level of the spinal cord. It doesn’t require any thought, and it’s not possible to suppress or enhance it consciously. But when we act in life, we have the chance to put a gap into the stimulus-response loops which pass through our brains. We don’t need to act only on auto-pilot. We can “stand back”, consider, or reflect, and then choose what actions we want to take. This is responding instead of reacting…..an important skill in managing anxiety and learned loops of behaviour.
It’s this same “necessary distance” which enables us to have a sense of self, separate from the world in which we are living. Of course, that separation is a sort of delusion because we never step outwith the flow of all that exists. But it’s a useful skill.
The other skill, to change perspective, is a different way of creating a distance, of stepping off the treadmill, switching off the autopilot. We can do it by altering, or disrupting a habit. Walking a different route, shopping in a different store, visiting a different town or country. It’s a big part of why I decided to emigrate from Scotland to France when I retired….to force myself to experience a whole gamut of different perspectives….physical, cultural, social…..to learn to communicate and think in a different language.
In her book, Orbital, Samantha Harvey describes in detail these experiences of distance and perspective. In this passage I quoted above she prompts us to think about heaven and earth by flipping the normal perspective. Instead of standing on the surface of the earth gazing “towards the heavens”, she describes the astronauts on the International Space Station, gazing down towards the surface of the earth and finding it “heavenly”.
I often think this life, this planet, is heavenly. It is so improbable, so incredible, so amazing…..how did it come to be? How did Life come to exist, and the myriad of species evolve? How, despite all our seeking, and all our statistical beliefs, this planet we call Earth, we call Home, remains singular, unique, quite unlike any other in the entire universe.
When you stop to experience this planet, and take time to reflect, and to wonder, it’s not hard to experience it as heaven. There is so much beauty in this world. We should protect that, nourish that, care for that, value that, make it a goal to enable all human beings to experience this planet as heaven on earth.
“The Earth is a mother waiting for her children to return, full of stories and rapture and longing.”
“Orbital”, by Samantha Harvey, describes the experiences of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It’s a beautiful little book, which reads as a poetic meditation on The Earth, Nature, Life and Space exploration. One of the lines which struck me, early in the book, was the one above.
The idea of Earth as a mother is an ancient one, but one we’ve become distanced from. The truth is we are born on this planet, emerging from millions of years of flows and interactions between energies, molecules and information. We have evolved as a part of Nature, with the planet’s resources of air, water, and nutrients, supporting us, enabling us, and with the Earth’s atmosphere protecting us from harmful solar and cosmic rays. We couldn’t exist without her. Mother Earth. We only exist because of her. Mother Earth.
But our direction of travel over the last few hundred years has been to distance ourselves from her, to objectify her, to treat her as a resource to be plundered, a wildness to be tamed. We talk of Nature as if “it” is something not human, as if “it” is something “out there”, separate from us, apart from us. And I think we’ve lost a lot along the way.
In this sentence, Samantha Harvey describes the mother as “waiting for her children to return”. Shall we return? We should. We really should.
And we’ll find her waiting for us with our “stories and rapture and longing”. That’s what we humans excel at – stories – telling the stories which enable us to make sense of ourselves, of our lives, of others and of our universe.
What kinds of stories are we telling these days? I think we need more stories of “rapture and longing”. I love the French phrase, “l’emerveillement du quotidien”, the wonder of the everyday. That’s where rapture lies….if we slow down, pay attention and allow ourselves to be filled with the wonder and beauty of the everyday. If we pay a particular kind of attention….the attention of longing and loving. Not a longing to possess, to control, to hold onto. But a heart’s longing, a soul’s longing, of deep resonance with “the other”, a harmony, a connection, a loving, caring attention.
Shall we do that now? Shall we return to Mother Earth filled with our stories of rapture and longing? It would take a change of direction….and a healthy one, I believe. But let’s start today.
It seems like, however the government want to label it, the UK is about to enter into another phase of austerity…..because, apparently, they’ve “found a black hole” in the finances. This is such a common narrative. The one where governments say they need to “balance the budget”, match the government’s income to its expenditure, or vice versa. There’s talk everywhere about “deficits”, “the gap in the budget” and “cuts’. Yet all this comes at time of wage stagnation, deteriorating Public Services, schools, hospitals, hospices, care homes, GP Practices struggling to deliver the basics.
Well, I’m not an economist. I trained as a doctor, graduating in 1978, with no debt, because the State paid for my education. My generation experienced job security, were able to purchase their own houses or afford rented accommodation, had access to local libraries, sports facilities and so on, in ways which are no longer the case for my grandchildren. I can’t help but wonder why. Why could the country afford better services, a better NHS, free education and decent jobs back in the sixties and the seventies, but can’t afford them now? Has the country become so much poorer over the last fifty years? If not, where has the money gone?
But my first thought is “what is money anyway”? I understand that centuries ago the Knights Templar developed an early banking system, allowing someone to deposit gold in an abbey in one country, receive written confirmation of that deposit, then travel to an abbey in a completely different country, present that note and receive the same amount of gold. There was a link between the paper and the gold. As best I know that remained at the heart of finance for centuries. The paper notes in my wallet, and the coins in my purse, represented something physical stored somewhere else…..gold, or other “assets”. But that’s not the case any more. Now money, for me, is a number on a screen on my banking app. A transaction involves somebody’s account increasing by the same number as mine reduces. We don’t actually send each other anything. It’s a sort of balancing act. Money is no longer tied to gold, or to anything else.
I could understand that in the past, more gold could be mined, refined and stored, and that notes could be issued relative to how much gold there was, but maybe that was always a sort of fairy tale. However, nowadays, for any country which has its own sovereign currency, it’s the government who “issues”, or “makes” the money. I know they talk all the time about increasing the government bank balance by taxation – taking it from other peoples’ bank accounts – but how did it get into other peoples’ bank accounts in the first place? Actually, it was the government which issued orders to change the numbers in the Central bank upwards. Money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s created in spreadsheets.
During the pandemic governments suddenly “found” or “issued” billions more pounds, dollars, or whatever. They lent this “new money” to individuals and companies, and, apparently, billions have been “lost”, loans not paid back, and money “disappeared”. They spent “new money” on purchases of vaccines, protective clothing and testing materials. They didn’t have to say, “sorry, we haven’t got any money in our bank account”. As has been said before, in times of war, governments always find the money. It’s at other times that they choose to say there isn’t any.
Over the last decade or so, the number of millionaires and billionaires has increased, while average earnings have stagnated, or fallen. The profits of energy firms, pharmaceutical firms, and global corporations have soared. Money, what money there is, has moved….away from workers and families and Public services to private individuals and corporations.
It turns out the country isn’t poorer now than it was when I was at university. It’s just redistributed the money into the hands of fewer and fewer people, away from Public services to private companies.
So, when the government talks about black holes, and needing to balance budgets, it is choosing not to do at least two things….one, redistribute money away from those who have the most, and, two, create the money needed to fix what needs fixed.
It’s the system which is failing millions of ordinary people. It’s the system which needs to change, and the system won’t change until the values change. The covid pandemic showed us that we need each other, that our shared environments affect our chances of getting sick, that poverty, poor housing and chronic ill health are the biggest determinants of who gets sick and who dies.
It’s not a lack of money which is hindering our ability to create a better society.
Maybe it’s time to try kindness instead, to draw upon the wells of compassion we saw in the early days of the pandemic. Most human beings will act to try to help others when they can. We’ve seen that time and again, during the pandemic, during floods, earthquakes and forest fires. We need to nurture that basic quality, instead of promoting selfishness, greed, and hyper-individualism.
What do you think? Does this make sense to you? If it doesn’t, tell me why. I’m always keen to improve my knowledge and understanding. I just don’t think it’s necessary to make peoples’ lives harder.
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 