The Blue Curtains
Every morning, when the Earth has spun enough and the Sun begins to come in sight, the rest of the universe slowly fades away. The blue curtains are drawn.
And every night, when the Earth has again spun enough, the Sun begins to get eclipsed by the Earth, the blue curtains are slowly undrawn, making our magnificent starry local universe visible again.
In the 300,000 years humans have been here, we have always been wary of the dark, wary of the predator. And during the day, survival was the focus - we could gather food and resources. We were hunter gatherers.
It wasn't until 11,000 years ago that slowly, agriculture diminished our need to search for food. We could focus locally, to enhance and fortify our survival needs. This allowed for more safe time for wondering and wandering into the starry cosmos.
This is exquisite design.
When the blue curtains are drawn, we see all that is urgent, and when they are undrawn, we can see all that is important.
Action, and perspective. Beautiful.
Today, 80% of the global population lives under the artificial curtains of what scientists refer to as "light pollution," effectively hiding about 80% of the stars from our night sky. And this figure is growing by about 10% per year.
Compared to about 3,000 stars we could see for thousands of years, a kid in New York today can see about 12.
And this is still different from how many of us have the time to look at the night sky to begin with.
That's a lot of action for a lot less perspective. What is happening?
We are becoming hunter gatherers again.
We can do better. We deserve it.