We Are All Made of Stars

September 20th, 2003 Posted in 2003

Our global population currently sits at roughly 6 billion; it is hoped by scientists and eco-conservationists that this number will level off to 8 billion in 40 years, though more pessimistic experts have offered reasons why it might just keep on going. Certainly a combination of ignorance (a group in which I grudgingly include myself, except perhaps for the barest factoids I may have remembered to impress in conversations), religious and cultural dogma (”population explosion be damned; keep fucking and converting or else we won’t win!”) and a general squeamishness on the part of most to evaluate what we’ve managed to do to the Earth in a thousand short years seems to indicate it would be safer to guesstimate on the side of disaster when contemplating humanity’s capacity to avoid making a supreme mess of things.

You could make yourself red in the face wondering why it is we don’t, on the whole, seem to really care about increasingly dire problems. I always love telling a story I heard through David Suzuki that, to my thinking, puts a darkly comic perspective on our collective inability to pay serious attention to these sorts of large-scale issues. Some years ago a group of Nobel prize-winning scientists combined all of their knowledge and research to compose a document explaining precisely what the captains of industry, world leaders and everyday people should change if we wanted to avoid large-scale extinction. Matters of the environment, over-population, pollution, drinking water, susceptibility to disease were all covered, taking into account past trends and current statistics. The scientists even helpfully included a “good until” date on the essay—essentially, the year that, assuming we changed none of our current planet-obliterating practices, we would no longer be able to save ourselves. At some point, we could do enough damage that it would, in essence, be irreversible.

The paper was completed and distributed for immediate release throughout the world. What I love about the story is that this ambitious, comprehensive planet for avoiding the total obliteration of the Earth made it to page 36 of the Lifestyle section in the paper where I live. On the cover was a story about Wayne Gretzky being traded.

The date by which we would have been fucked, by the way, has since passed. As far as I know, this wasn’t reported in any news media.

So, yes, it’s tragically hilarious, but why? Why don’t we care? I suspect humanity is simply incapable of wrapping our brains around concepts as large as these. Much like we couldn’t ever conceive of the vastness of our galaxy, or even the vastness of the distance between our planet and the sun, or how much a trillion actually is, I don’t think we are able to easily conceive of the large-scale damage we do to ourselves. If our slow destruction of Earth were drops in a bucket that over time fills the bucket, we would only be able to see to grasp the idea of one drop at a time, perhaps commenting that it’s only a drop of water, without grasping the larger problem that drop represents. As a pampered, fat-assed, minivan-driving, latte-sucking North American, I’m as guilty of this as anyone—though I hear about the destruction of forests, there’s a tree outside my apartment; though I hear about overpopulation, there’s always an apartment for me to rent; though I vaguely understand the third world hardship and blood that goes into making my clothes and food plentiful and inexpensive, I’m never terribly bothered by it on a day-to-day basis. Why should I give up my comforts, my energy consumption, my excessive food consumption, simply for some mist-enshrouded far-off concept of conversation and the future world. The world looks fine, why sweat it?

Even when we attempt to make things better, we usually go in the wrong direction. If you asked any North American what the ideal solution ultimately is to inequity and starvation in the world, it would be that everyone should have the right to the same goods and comforts we do. We invest money into attempting to make this happen, despite the fact that it’s patently ridiculous. If every person on the planet enjoyed the per capita consumption (grains, meat, energy) of a North American, the planet would have to be four times bigger to accommodate this. This isn’t even taking into account that if we’re all suddenly a global North America, who might actually be willing to work the eight-cents-a-day jobs that make our plentiful supply of goods possible. The key, of course, isn’t that the rest of the world needs to catch up but that North America and Europe have taken too much—we are excessive consumers.

But again, it’s difficult to wrap your head around numbers like that. Human beings define ourselves by our deluded conception of our own uniqueness and specialness, which is reflected in our movies and advertisements and our blogs, all of which blast the idea that we are all the center of a multi-centered universe. Despite the fact that we’re hardly special beyond our own sentience and ability to breed like locusts, the key to saving our planet lies, I think, in the recognition that we aren’t in fact special. That we are mortal. That the ultimate goal isn’t to be a rock star actor loved by millions but to be happy with the short time allotted to us. That an omnipotent being isn’t listening and responding to our prayers. That we don’t deserve $300 pants as an inalienable right. That every human life is not sacred. Every human life is a dice roll.

Contemplate the idea of a population of six billion people. If the human brain could conceive of a number that enormous, it might put the delusion of our own unique specialness into perspective. Think about the romantic notion that somewhere out there, your special soulmate someone is waiting for you. Now crunch those numbers into the idea of 6 billion people on a planet of our size, dispersed randomly. Assuming our planet had exactly 6 billion people (good thing it’s a round number, or one poor fucker’s soulmateless), the odds of 3 billion soulmates finding one another is astronomical. If you believed in soulmates, I invite you to contemplate the fact that, with a population of six billion, you would be more likely to have a 747 land on you than find yours.

Another excellent example of our incapacity to understand large issues is the quaint maxim, “one in a million.” We say this because, to us, a million really is a large number, and it buttresses our feeling of uniqueness, because you, my friend, are better than the other 999,999,999. But if you take into account a population of six billion, being one in a million actually still makes you fairly common.

This isn’t advocate a fascistic world regime or anything—without the human capacity to conceive of our uniqueness, we would never have been able to make poetry or write literature or express ourselves through music. The power of uniqueness and intimacy is as much what makes us great as what makes us so ignorant to the concept of vastness and enormity. All I’m saying is that we need to temper our self-centered worldview if we want to continue having one for years to come. You and I are not the center of the universe, sadly. But there’s nothing wrong with being a star—the sky is littered with them; they aren’t unique like snowflakes; they’re actually fairly uniform from our limited perspective. But each one is still beautiful, and capable of shining from time to time.