Where We Are: Eclipse Edition

What can the eclipse do for you?

On Monday, I was speaking with a young woman who was in a different social class than me. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt, leggings, and designer sunglasses holding an energy drink in one hand and her phone in the other.

“What do you have going on today?” I asked, unenthusiastically.

“Nothing, really,” she said. “Just avoiding all of this eclipse shit.”

I didn’t feel the need to ask her to elaborate further. So, I slipped away between bouts of her compulsive texting. Half an hour later, I heard someone else ask her if she was going to watch the eclipse later that day.

“Sucker,” I thought.

As it turns out, the interim time between when I last heard her speak and her answer had neither improved her attitude, nor her vocabulary.

“No,” she scoffed, “I don’t give a shit.”

It was then I thought that there must be two types of people in the world. Those who appreciate the unique event of an eclipse, the type of person who recognizes the divine inner workings of the universe that permit such alignment every few trips around the sun, and the miracle of human existence. And those who are just too stupid.

My acquaintance, who possessed the lexicon of an edgy pre-teen, was evidently in the latter camp.

I made it home just in time to watch the moon coyly slide over the sun with my wife in our backyard as rain clouds threatened to ruin the entire experience. We didn’t get to view totality here in Middle Tennessee but it was still an impressive sight. What’s even more impressive is that I stared directly at the sun the entire time and am now typing this week’s newsletter in blinding, excruciating pain.

Only afterward did I realize there is actually a third type of person in this world - the one who thinks that the eclipse is a sign from God.

The predominant religious experience in America in the 21st century has devolved into some amorphous mess that can only be described as pagan-monotheistic-spirituality. In this world belief, there are no rules, there is no tradition. It’s worship of the self masquerading as deference to a higher power. There are no consequences unless they’re ones for your political or cultural enemies, science is only a weapon with which to bludgeon your opponents, and where there are no subjects, only prophets.

Fortunately, for you and me, this type of thinking isn’t just shared by the ignorant commoner, but by celebrities and elected officials as well. We’ve all heard the preachings emitted after a natural disaster - about how hurricanes and tornadoes are God’s retribution for man for committing climate change. It’s not a new thing that individuals would invoke the idea of God’s wrath to explain something that fits tightly within their narrative, but appropriating a solar eclipse is a different phenomenon altogether.

The View’s Sunny Hostin was allowed to speak long enough to the point she actually suggested that the coincidence of events this year, the brood of cicadas (predicted), earthquakes (random), and the solar eclipse (also, predicted) are either obvious evidence of climate change or that the rapture has begun. In her profound ignorance, she didn’t seem to lean heavily one way or another. You know, keeping her options open.

Dumb side of the earth.

Not to be outdone, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took to X to dispense her unrivaled wisdom. “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come,” she wrote. “I pray that our country listens.”

Run-on sentences aside, who appointed her as messenger? Does she know how astronomy works? Has she heard of the tectonic plates? Science just goes out the window when one has the opportunity to prove how righteous their position is.

The ego-centrism of this belief system is front and center. The fact that Hostin thinks that The View wouldn’t be the first thing to go with the rapture is cute, and the shoehorning of regular events into a useful catastrophic narrative is borderline psychopathic.

MTG’s is worse, I think, as she applies an even narrower lens and attributes a moral grade to natural events. First, how does she know the eclipse isn’t a warning to Mexicans? Too many tacos, not enough tamales? Mexico City is sinking, for God’s sake!

Secondly, how does she know that the sign is meant for her American opponents and not for her side of the aisle? Couldn’t be interpreted as her sign to remove herself from politics?

And lastly, what makes her think the eclipse is a bad thing at all? It’s super cool to stare at and a bunch of public schools closed for the occasion. If it was supposed to be a warning from the creator, I’m not sure anyone understood the point.

If only using the Lord’s name in vain was prohibited by a stone tablet or something like that.

NASA abandoned the whole supreme being pretext altogether for their broadcast of the event and brought on an ‘indigenous scientist’ to explain how his elders had imparted centuries-old wisdom about eclipses. Their valuable insight? Don’t look at the sun for too long. If only those ancient Greeks and Romans hadn’t blinded themselves! Think how much more smarter we’d be now.

He also went on - on the NASA broadcast in case you’ve forgotten - to declare there are multiple different sciences, Western, indigenous, and otherwise. There isn’t. Science is neither western nor eastern, neither god nor devil. ‘Don’t look at the sun’ is one of my favorite hypotheses, though.

False piety is reprehensible, especially when wielded for political gains. Hostin and MTG are less of an exception than I would like to admit. Covid saw a whole lot of people on the left adopt the ‘get what you deserve’ attitude while in the Bible Belt, Biden getting elected was taken as a sign that Christ is already on his way.

I enjoyed the eclipse, though. For a few moments, I was amazed at how beautiful life is, and the inconceivable complexity of the universe. The moon slipped past the outline of the sun as I watched in wonder, mouth agape. The light lost its glow and returned to normal, but in those final moments, I understood that if not for the grace of God, the sun would be, not blocked momentarily by the moon, but permanently by our vanity and utter stupidity.

To a better next week,

Cheers,

FDA