Context: Solar storm on Thursday expected to make Northern Lights visible in 17 states
These events are nothing if not a reminder of the diminutive transience of our own lives and (all of) our aspirations, agendas, affiliations and vanities.
In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the character Zaphod Beeblebrox enters a machine called The Total Perspective Vortex. This device was intended to show a human being just how very, very small and insignificant they are in regards to the orchestral immensity of the Cosmos.
Of course, Beeblebrox possessed an ego even faster than the infinite extensivity of all possible worlds and, subsequently, broke the machine. Notwithstanding the presence of a variety of uniquely ugly personalities in positions of unwarranted power on this planet, I expect that a good dose of humility is what these solar ejections should instil in us.
For those who can not see the significance as a visceral and affective catharsis of participatory engagement with that Other, larger part of each and all of us that the Universe represents, I am afraid that there is no machine large enough to deliver the message.
These are, incidentally and often enough, precisely the narcissists that percolate by bloviating self-obsession into positions of power.
Agnostic of political belief, it’s a fact.
Daedelus Kite 