The Milky Way

I don't know that I've ever seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes. This bothers me. While I am by no means a hardcore outdoorsman, neither am I a stranger to the smells that a fresh rain unleashes from the earth. In fact, I derive much of my spiritual sustenance from moments of "Einsteinian wonder," moments when you are put face to face with the largeness and beauty of the cosmos through nature.

The night sky invites its undeserving gazers to ask age-old questions. It sends a chill down my spine to think that humans have been staring and wondering at essentially the same constellations since, well, the beginning. But I was at Safeway the other day, and I saw the front cover of a National Geographic magazine, a night-time, bird's-eye view picture of a city, a rationalized grid of orange light. The editor's letter was about a small town in Virginia that is known for its view of the night sky, and the controversial decision of the town to install stadium lighting for high school football games. Isn't it strange to think that something as ancient and revered as the night sky has become a tourist attraction? A thing that a town can become known for? Isn't it strange that I have only seen the Milky Way in pictures that I studied in elementary school?

I associate stars with the silent chill of night air, when one cannot help but shiver--from the coldness of the darkness? or maybe from the smallness of one's existence? It troubles me, then, that when I look up at the night sky--on those few clear, chilly nights when light conditions permit--I can only recognize the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion's Belt. In a way, I suppose, this is nice. The night sky allowed to be a mystery, a spectacle that evades scientific classification in my mind. The stars unnamed and unknown to me. But the fact remains...I don't know that I have seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the different ways in which today's environmental problems are framed. Some describe the environmental crisis as a problem of awareness and consciousness, others point to the limits of technology and capitalistic growth. More recently, people like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman frame the problem as a policy failure and have advocated for a Coasian solution, a price signal placed on carbon emissions. Mark Wallace, in introducing his book, Finding God in the Singing River, describes today's environmental problems as fundamentally "a problem of the heart." It is this last formulation that I can't seem to get out of my head. How do humans relate to nature? Are we to be its benevolent stewards? its domineering masters? its helpless victims?

In Al Gore's famous climate crisis slideshow, the photos that he shows of melting glaciers are truly harrowing. Presented with such pictures, I invariably react with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. We did this? Changes of this magnitude are the result of industry and human activity? Is this really possible? There is such a profound hubris in the imagining. We did this, and now we need to try to fix what we have damaged. Weather, previously the exclusive playground of the gods, now rendered a human plaything. There is something deeply offensive to me about talking about global warming, or about our relationship with nature, in this way.

There are people who yearn for some imagined era when humans existed in harmony with nature, or who romanticize the relationship that exists between humans and nature in developing countries that have not yet been falsely weaned from Mother Earth. The irony being that companies from developing countries are invariably dirtier and more hurtful to the environment than their first world counterparts. Such romanticizations make me cringe. Have you ever been to a developing country? I want to ask. Have you seen the litter and the careless disposal of waste?

I don't know. Perhaps it can only be helpful to exaggerate our abilities to manipulate nature. Much like it can only be helpful to believe in the persistence of personal agency in the face of external constraint. Maybe, despite all odds, something profoundly human will triumph. It is a nice thought at the very least.

But jeez, the Milky Way. Surely something is amiss.