A Sky Full of Stars
This entry was almost not written. This entry was almost impossible to write. For a couple of hours tonight, there was no power in my neighborhood. No lights were on, no one had any generators, which is hardly suprising given the urban nature of my neighborhood and a light chaos ensued. All the traffic lights of the largest street were out for a couple miles of stretch and people, of course, panicked. Well, not panic, but definately got stupid. I was warned by some not to go out and to avoid driving. Oddly, I meet new neighbors and I saw something I had not seen in a long time. I looked up and I saw a lot of stars. Both Dippers and other contellations I didn't recognize for the first time in a while. It was also the first time I saw real darkness in my neighborhood in a long time.
Humans are, by nature, a diurnal animal, so it is partially in our nature to fear the dark. The night is often associated with all kinds of terrors. The phrase "in the dark" is to be lost in confusion. So, when the power goes out, people panic. Especially at night. People reach for candles, flashlights and anything else that will provide light ifthe electrcity we have come to rely on goes away. Without our beloved technology, we feel lost. If we can't have the artificial light, we don't know what to do. We've lost our night vision and forgotten how to make fire for ourselves. This very medium is vulnerable to power outages. If there is no electricity to my house, there is no blog that day. And somehow this is important to all of us.
Well, to be fair, there are real reasons why having electrical power for light is important. As a practical, physical part of it, crime goes down with lots of light. The light of the moon and stars is not enough to deter people from committing crime. It's hard to be sneaky when you have a few hundred thousands lumens of civic light on the streets. We also like food, lots of food. Food is easier to keep fresh for days at a time. Our society has now become completely physically depending on electricity. Humans, at their base, only need to do five things: Eat, drink, sleep, breathe and relieve ourselves. That's it. Now think about how many of those things we need to RELY on electricity. Eating and drinking are obvious, since we have too many people for each person to be a self-sufficient farmer; nor do we have the room for it. To sleep, we need to feel secure where we are sleeping, so to do this we need lit streets and telephone cables that work so we can call the police. Hell, to relive oursleves, we need sewage plants to run at capacity, which require power to clean out water to be recycled.
But, having become to reliant on the so secure has left us weak in a way. Try out your night vision some night when you are far away from a city. Think of away to keep food fresh for a few days without electricty. If you live someplace cold, think about how to keep warm in away that will not kill people. If you live in an apartment, building a fire could kill everyone in the building. We have forgotten our instincts of the hunt in pursuing our gift for tools. We have left behind some of our instincts in the interest of security. Of course, we call that civilization. Civilization has let people live past 50, not die at childbirth and try to provide for the weaker members of society.
Human instincts let us do what need, civilization let us do what we should.
So it is written, so do I see it.
Humans are, by nature, a diurnal animal, so it is partially in our nature to fear the dark. The night is often associated with all kinds of terrors. The phrase "in the dark" is to be lost in confusion. So, when the power goes out, people panic. Especially at night. People reach for candles, flashlights and anything else that will provide light ifthe electrcity we have come to rely on goes away. Without our beloved technology, we feel lost. If we can't have the artificial light, we don't know what to do. We've lost our night vision and forgotten how to make fire for ourselves. This very medium is vulnerable to power outages. If there is no electricity to my house, there is no blog that day. And somehow this is important to all of us.
Well, to be fair, there are real reasons why having electrical power for light is important. As a practical, physical part of it, crime goes down with lots of light. The light of the moon and stars is not enough to deter people from committing crime. It's hard to be sneaky when you have a few hundred thousands lumens of civic light on the streets. We also like food, lots of food. Food is easier to keep fresh for days at a time. Our society has now become completely physically depending on electricity. Humans, at their base, only need to do five things: Eat, drink, sleep, breathe and relieve ourselves. That's it. Now think about how many of those things we need to RELY on electricity. Eating and drinking are obvious, since we have too many people for each person to be a self-sufficient farmer; nor do we have the room for it. To sleep, we need to feel secure where we are sleeping, so to do this we need lit streets and telephone cables that work so we can call the police. Hell, to relive oursleves, we need sewage plants to run at capacity, which require power to clean out water to be recycled.
But, having become to reliant on the so secure has left us weak in a way. Try out your night vision some night when you are far away from a city. Think of away to keep food fresh for a few days without electricty. If you live someplace cold, think about how to keep warm in away that will not kill people. If you live in an apartment, building a fire could kill everyone in the building. We have forgotten our instincts of the hunt in pursuing our gift for tools. We have left behind some of our instincts in the interest of security. Of course, we call that civilization. Civilization has let people live past 50, not die at childbirth and try to provide for the weaker members of society.
Human instincts let us do what need, civilization let us do what we should.
So it is written, so do I see it.