By Larry Berz
I spent a most enjoyable Saturday night live in Presque Isle recently experiencing “The Martian” in the local Braden Theater. Science fiction fans should find the film thoroughly engaging and stimulating. I sat with a $5 bucket of buttered popcorn, munching away as Mark Watney, the astronaut, solved problem after problem on the surface of the Red Planet and the inside casing of his brain.
Though dealing and detailing the survival saga of a young man on Mars, “The Martian”, to me, quickly moved from a technological to a more existential and urgent direction than you might expect. For, in a sense, we are all Mark Watneys. We endure these many decades (especially since the end of World War II) coping as survivors of the most devastatingly destructive and constructive era of Earth’s long legacy. We live on planet History, compelled within our mental and physical frame with the difficult mission of making sense of pressing challenge sand still finding our way back home. I think, yes, that’s the peculiar position we all face within our minds.
“The Martian” seems to leave his heart on hold while he relies upon his wits and stamina to calculate and manage his self-made itinerary to “freedom.” Life without humankind, in the final analysis, will not serve as an option for this astronaut and probably not for us either.
Within the blasted wilderness of our 21st century American lifestyles, we must find our way back home to not just the life force but the love force. That seems the heart of the matter that our Earth battle will now breed.
As President Kennedy uttered in 1963, to walk on with nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope stands out as a fate America must avoid. We are left to our own individual and collective devices to sort out with all the brain power and heart power we can muster to return to safety and sanity and community.
I see in America today a failure of community trust and empowered vision. We batten down the hatches, paying our bills, and educating our children and feeding our faces but I don’t see a collective soul force driving towards a future of our own making, a good and noble place for our children and grandchildren to live securely and yet adventurously.
I see a furious fear written on our faces unaware of how to face the future … together. So we attempt to face it individually … unsuccessfully. We, like “The Martian” must use all our wits and ways to construct the instrumentality to communicate with higher orbital power to guide and map our way. He cannot rescue himself … nor can we, after all seems said and done alone. We must compel somehow the future to come down to us and meet us at the Great Assembly plant of human greatness. We must align and prepare ourselves not for the day of the white humanity or the black humanity or the yellow humanity or the brown humanity but for all humanity. We must begin in the smallest and most meager ways those small steps towards collective kindness, whether random or intentional and trust that the future will step towards us as we bravely step towards it. Today, we start dreaming.
That remains the lesson and the experience of “The Martian”. We can overcome today for tomorrow. We hold the map and possess the tools to walk by faith and not by plight. It stands out as an historic effort, and viewed in that context, a worthy walk by Americans whose predecessors knew the price for posterity.
L.W. “Larry” Berz serves as astronomy educator and planetarium director at the Francis Malcolm Institute (Science Center) of Easton. He intends to return to winter drill and duty with “Goliath” telescope in a neighborhood near you in January, 2016.
