A flaw

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Now that we have explored the Universe we understand phenomena like eclipses.

Scientists have explained earthquakes and weather and so much that was once a mystery, but you can understand the superstitions that were once attached, the inclination to believe that the Sun, the Moon and planets were Gods.

Yet some of us still see signs or have our own superstitions. I do. They are based on personal observations and experiences that seem more than coincidental.

Intellectually, I realise they are all likely a figment of my imagination. Perhaps we hold on to such fantasies to make sense of our mad world.

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Only yesterday I mentioned the ordinariness of panhelions or sun-dogs.

What is less ordinary is having them occur two days in a row in exactly the same location.

But I won’t read it as a sign unless it happens at the same time tomorrow.

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Thinking too much about the Universe makes my head hurt, so I satisfy myself with admiring whatever minute bits I can see. However, the above thought did set me pondering.

We have proved scientifically that the Sun, Moon and planets are not Gods, but what is the power behind the Universe? How many Universes are there? Where do they begin and end? No matter how evolved mankind may become, we shall never know that answer.

My personal belief is that we should accept our insignificance and content ourselves with respecting the vast unknowable power that drives the Universe.

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But humans are creatures with insatiable appetites. Nothing is ever enough..

It’s how we have eaten and drunken and drugged ourselves into such an unhealthy state.

It’s why we have explored every corner of our beautiful planet, despoiling her beyond repair and now we seek to explore beyond. Already we have created space junk.

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The debris of the second world war was to a large extent tidied up by the time I was old enough to appreciate my surroundings, though London was still being rebuilt when my father took a job with UNESCO which involved us moving to Cambodia in 1956.

We lived for six years in Southeast Asia and despite the disruptions to my education and upbringing, I shall be eternally grateful to have seen parts of the planet in the pristine condition you could still witness then.

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When we “went abroad”, as they used to say, my brother Peter who was older, was left behind in England, persuaded by the fact that in Cambodia there would be no cricket. Consequently, I became like an only child and spent a great deal of time on my own which is perhaps how I became a thinker and an observer.

One thing that always interested me was weather. I was fascinated by the monsoons, by the fact that the current of the Tonle Sap river could be reversed by the flooding Mekong into which it flowed. My father had a shortwave radio that brought us twice-daily news and once we heard mention of a typhoon. I remember an American friend describing a hurricane he had experienced in Florida, but those things were exceptions to the norm.

By the end of the last century they had become regular events. How could anyone not pay attention? It was so obvious to even a simple person that we must mend our ways. To not address the matter is irresponsible and reckless. There are plenty who seek better, more efficient ways to exist but their efforts are in vain when money-making big business pays to have their climate-denying supporters placed in office.

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The young no doubt laugh at people of my vintage who bemoan the pre-technology age, yet I doubt any of us would claim to have felt they suffered in the absence of the Internet or smart phones or instant this, that and the other thing. You can’t miss what doesn’t exist.

As a child I had no television and in Asia we had no telephone of any kind. Frequently we didn’t even have electricity and life was just fine. I didn’t even have wheels for my suitcase. When I travelled, I carried the wretched thing. It never occurred to me that this constituted a problem, but of course, when wheelies were invented and ultimately suitcases with attached wheels, I obtained them.

The more we are offered, the more we want. It’s the law of insatiable appetite.

It’s just one flaw of our species.