By Larry Berz
In my earnestness, for over 20 years, to convey my passion for exalted skywatching in your neighborhood, I have unearthed some visceral and vital truths which now extend beyond the boundaries of my casual and occasionally humorous encouragements on behalf of the soul of the night.
We live, as the Chinese philosopher once penned in black ink, in “interesting” times. Who can deny, with downturns and fluctuations of our economic growth, the widening gap between the have and have not, loss of jobs, the rampant violence, dissatisfaction, and confusion of our materialistic world, the increasingly documented poisoning of our global environment, our unholy disrespect for life in all forms, that we individually and collectively share guilt and condemnation and are inhabiting a world of unbound uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. With a resultant loss of meaning unmatched in civilized history. Neighbors now spy one another with unparalleled and overstimulated suspicion, jealousy, fear, paranoia, and isolation.
Like Odysseus of ancient Greek legend, we chart a stormy course through the impregnable annihilating boulders of Scylla and Charybdis. Today I give those two rocks modern names: Hiroshima and Auschwitz. And I must confess, to the risk of offending many in the community, that as grief stricken and traumatized as we Americans remain (I hope) over the burning, crushing, and melting of three thousand men, women, and children at the Fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, how can we, with any sense of historical conscious, deny or diminish the earlier loss of both 100,000 lives or more in the spontaneous detonation of American weapons technology over Japan or the intentional murder by Hitler, the Nazi machinery, and the German nation of 6,000,000 Jewish men, women, and children among millions others whose only crime was their right to breathe uniquely on Earth? I chose these two historical events, not to deny the other tragic list of human cruelty in the 20th and 21st centuries, but to highlight the nexus between technology and morality today. In the light of those crimes against humanity, the 9/11 crime and tragedy appear relatively lightweight efforts by pitiful impotent extremists led by a pathological religious prestidigitator.
Can we sum up the cruelty of our times by joining the philosopher’s chorus: “History is a nightmare of which we are trying to wake up from.” Or worse yet. There is no history — just an ever present cycle of human self-destruction interspaced by temporary breathing spells we label “civilization.” President Kennedy once declared “technology has no morality of its own. Whether it be used as a force of good or evil depends upon our choice. And if only the United States occupies a position of preeminence will we know whether this space will become a theatre for peace or a new and terrifying forum for war and destruction.”
The night sky of October, viewed in this light, gazes down upon our upturned faces with an awaiting serenity. Jupiter unmistakably draws our eye all through the night. How pure! How lovely! How beautiful! How peaceful! Can we not use what 19th century New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson penned as the opportunity to remain “in the presence of the sublime” to fortify ourselves for our duty in the decade to come. To paraphrase a great American political legend, “I believe that this Aroostook County community, should commit itself, before this decade is out, to achieving the goal, of establishing a total Judeo-Christian Islamic commitment to love and gratitude and unity to all that we are and hope to become and returning safely to the Land of Our Fathers and Mothers. No single moral expedition in this period will be more impressive to humanity or more important for the long range exploration of our souls and none will be more difficult or expensive to accomplish based upon our willingness to sacrifice.”
I know not what others may say, folks, But as for, give me liberty or give me death as the true Tea Party spirit of heroism declared.
The stakes remain high, regardless of our remoteness from the next Bomb. As Martin Luther King so ontologically stated not long before his assassination, “We do have a choice today. It is either collective non-violence or mutual co-annihilation. That was 1967.
How much more does Dr. King’s warning ring in the ears of our deafness as we live our lives in the global village. We can deploy Amerian soldiers around the world to inflict death and destruction, we can fortify our borders with barbed wire, but we shall never murder murder. No, not if the Heart of Darkness holds sway. Only Love can overcome those forces to have the final say in reality. I believe with all my heart, that this is the true lesson of the stars and music of the night.
Larry Berz is an astronomy educator and planetarium director at the Francis Malcolm Science Institute in Easton.
