I watch the BBC Global News every night, and more and more, I’m thinking about Copernicus.
Nikolai Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (English translation: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in 1543. And the collective human mind, so to speak, wasn’t happy. Before Copernicus, the general public thought of the earth as being the center of everything. The sun turned around our planet, as did the moon. We were the center of it all. So the idea of making earth peripheral to the sun was radical. Forty-one years later, Giordano Bruno expanded Copernicus’ model, arguing that the stars we see in the night sky are other suns, with planets revolving around them. He was executed as a heretic in 1600. Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 “with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.” Still, he died in 1642 under house arrest for heresy.
During the tumultuous century or so between Copernicus’ model and a universal acceptance of it, the collective human mind convulsed from the trauma of discovering how subordinate we really were, in relation to space and time. The change of consciousness this incited had to be universally accepted by all humans before we could proceed to evolve. This type of perceptual change is commonly called a Paradigmatic Shift. Graduate students and college professors joke about paradigmatic shifts all the time over a beer, but I’m currently not laughing. I’d say we’re having one.
Thanks to the James Webb Space Scope and the emergence of global social media, people all around the world are currently being forced to change their perceptions of time and space in two different ways. First, and most significantly: with each new image from outer space, our planet and our solar system shrinks. That Sun In The Middle Of Eight Planets Solar System Carnival Ride-Like Celestial Model is no longer valid. Hell, we’re watching stars exploding.
Simultaneously, we’re able to watch global news as it happens: Russia, destroying the Ukraine as it tries to reclaim former empirical cities; national and world leaders acting like five year old boys on the playground. There’s social upheaval in Iran. In the U.S.A., we’re bickering over identity. Gender identity. Individual identity. National identity. Regional Identity. Social identity. Political identity. We’re hanging on a thread between Democracy or Autocracy, as Jonathon Capehart has said. As if anyone cares anymore. On some level, everyone realizes that thinking about Earth as separate states, nations, even continents, is not viable anymore.
The transition we’re going through, whether we like it or not, asks us to give up our national and local differences and begin acknowledging that we’re global citizens, and tending the earth is are most important task right now. We’re all going through torment right now, because our earth is suffering. She’s been traumatized. Or is it menopause? We alone have the power to revive her. Earth can still nurture us, if we nurture it. If we want our children and grandchildren to enjoy our beautiful home, we’re all responsible for our planet’s survival.
Based on the last time humanity shifted paradigmatically, it could take a century for humanity to make this intellectual transition. With all the wars and bickering that we’re doing, I wonder if we have that much time left?
Mary Louise Hill 