A Small Part of a Much Greater Story: How 2020 Re-Situated Humanity in the Broader Universe
2020 has exposed myriad ways in which human individuals are not the center of the story of the universe, the galaxy, Planet Earth or even our own human world.
On Halloween last year I sat in the Mendocino County, California sun with a 24-pound pumpkin lodged on my head in front of an iPhone camera waiting for my chance to deliver a brief toast for my dear old friend at his (historic, Halloween-)Zoom wedding. Before my turn I serendipitously heard a story in another toast in which was discussed the possibility that the corn plant had employed human beings to spread their seeds around the earth. Apparently these two old friends had developed a whole theoretical framework about how different plants hijacked and employed different animal organisms to serve their needs. It reminded me of many ancient and current mythologies about plants, genes, fungi and bacteria. The Botany of Desire, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the Corn Mother Myth, and countless other stories that place humanity in various decentralized positions vis-a-vis the greater living world and universe. It seemed a particularly suitable story for what had been a most humbling and historically arduous year. With a pandemic that has gone off the rails, the fight for racial justice, historic weather events, and a president that ignominiously created his own delusional version of reality, it was a fitting time to question who, or what, is really at the center of the greater story.
Of course, we humans are silly to assume, as we often do, that we’re the only star of story. Plants, indeed, have used us to spread their flourishing around the earth — they’ve also been around much longer than we have. And their long dead bodies — what we call fossil fuels — have been dug up from the entrails of the Earth to now show their own star power which wreaks havoc on the atmosphere and its climate stability. In the long run it is reasonable to assume that plants would outlive humanity. Beyond humanity there has been, and will be, a much longer story with lifeforms evolving and carrying on myriad stories that we could never know. And, of course, this is just on this little green and blue gem of a planet. The galaxy and galaxies beyond have so many stories we will also never know. As the late Carl Sagan famously pointed out, “The total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Planet Earth.” The simple truth remains that if we cannot know the greater truths and greater stories of the universe, we will surely never know where we and our fellow planetary lifeforms fall into the meaning of these myriad, and forever mysterious, stories.
For many years the settler colonial culture of the United States has been one centered around the idea of throwing away. This “throwaway culture” imagines a place beyond our place at which one can get rid of this refuse. That may be the open air, a waterway, or a maligned piece of land. But 2020 made it abundantly clear that there is nowhere to throw away to: when something is thrown away it becomes a boomerang heading right back at us and everything else.
The Covid-19 pandemic also makes it clear that our actions, and/or lack thereof, have consequences that, in the end, affect us much like the boomerang of the attempted throwaway. When we don’t wear masks it might very well bite us in the arse. When communities don’t participate in the appropriate precautions and closures they may find themselves closing inadvertently instead.
Then there is that age-old aspect of the human condition: mortality. We are seasonal leaves on a tree. We start as green buds and baby leaves, and, if we’re lucky, we live to grow and age, change colors and then fall to the ground to replenish the soil. It was never about the sole human individual, even if that’s how we like to tell our stories. We are all simply iterations of a larger process that unfolds in its own mysterious ways.
There are two key takeaways that these realizations of radical humility and decentering can yield. The broader takeaway is that to sustain human life in the universe we must more accurately see our role as a small part of a greater ecosystem. A smaller scale takeaway is that by reflecting on the brevity and impermanence of life, environmentalists can re-imagine their attachments and take solace in constant change. We are not the center of the story and the greater entities march to the beat of their own drums. In this new humility individuals can better navigate what will likely be more chaos and non-control to come. It would be comforting to assume that 2020 will be unlike future years but the likelihood is quite the opposite: last year taught us what we need to learn to symbiotically coexist with a greater being with its own wild, uncontrollable heart.
