On Monday, we will experience a rare, natural phenomenon of literal cosmic proportions. There’s been no shortage of media coverage, government pronouncements and cultural commentary in anticipation of the coming solar eclipse. But it’s 2024, so of course, our culture is interpreting it all in the stupidest way possible. It might be hard to imagine in this day and age, but some things are still bigger than ourselves.
The last total solar eclipse occurred in 2017, a time frame which misrepresents just how rare these events really are. Before 2017, we hadn’t seen one since 1979. After the one on Monday, another will not be seen from the United States for another 20 years. With the world in turmoil, who knows where we will be as a country by 2044. (RELATED: Watching The Solar Eclipse: What You Need To Know)
But for roughly two hours on Monday afternoon, tens of millions of Americans will experience a few moments of cosmic wonder, as the sun and moon track together from Dallas, Texas to Caribou, Maine. Directly within the path of totality, approximately 31 million Americans will experience near total darkness, NASA estimated. The darkness will last only a few seconds, but the sky will shine in other ways. The sun’s hazy atmosphere will glow, forming a ring around the moon. Faraway stars, planets and even a comet will be visible to the layman’s eye. The temperature will drop, lights might flicker and plants and animals may begin to act strange.
Are you in the path of totality club? #SolarEclipse pic.twitter.com/VD0368Id6q
— Kim MacDonald 🌻 (@KMacTWN) March 29, 2024
Even outside the path of totality, most of the country will experience a partial eclipse. In a healthy society, an event like this offers a moment to stop and reflect on our lives. It’s a brief reminder that there are more significant forces in the universe than those that govern our daily lives, that there are more complex designs than the routines, loyalties, rivalries and petty grievances around which our own little worlds revolve. There are things we don’t — can’t — understand. Humanity itself falls humbly to its knees, or at least it ought to.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a healthy society, but a narcissistic idiocracy. We’ve eschewed any real reflection, and instead have treated eclipse preparation in one of two ways: either a miniature re-run of the COVID pandemic or a like trip to Disney World. Both are equally embarrassing.
On the one hand, we have the mad dash toward safetyism. Much of the media coverage focuses on how to Keep Yourself And Others Safe™ from the sun’s harmful glare. Some outlets offer anodyne Q&A’s for issues generations past would solve through common sense rather than consulting an expert. Others, like The New York Times’ piece on eclipse injuries, can’t resist a bit of fearmongering. After COVID, our political leaders, media and cultural arbiters have this playbook down pat — it’s pathological at this point. They relish another opportunity to treat us all like idiots.
On the other hand, we have the complete commodification of the universe; it’s our own little amusement park. Some pieces suggest “fun ways” to experience the eclipse; others get more specific with “fun recipes.” Another shamelessly plugs “7 food and beverage brands” with “fun specials” for the eclipse. NBC documents the many festivals that have been planned throughout the country, packed with eclipse-related activities and merchandise. If you couldn’t tell, there’s a whole lot of emphasis on fun. (RELATED: Out Of This World: Start Time Of Marlins-Yankees Game Pushed Back Due To Solar Eclipse)
True to liberal sensibilities, we’re thinking only about protecting ourselves or enjoying ourselves in the most banal ways possible. Either way, it’s all about our own comfort. Drives toward safety or pleasure are our only two modes; we are the Last Man.
Our ancestors knew better. The Ancient Greeks, advanced as they were for their time, lacked our scientific understanding of the celestial universe. They believed solar eclipses were a bad omen from their angry gods, signaling displeasure with humanity gone astray. Eclipses were seen as a tacit threat; it’s no coincidence that the English word for “eclipse” comes from the Greek word meaning “abandonment.” The Greeks worried that just as the sun abandoned earth, the gods would abandon them.
In 585 BC, the Medes and the Lydians were at war. After six years of fighting, day suddenly turned to night in the midst of battle. Both sides took the eclipse as a sign from the gods and sued for peace. As the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus explains in The Histories,
Afterwards, on the refusal of Alyattes to give up his suppliants when Cyaxares sent to demand them of him, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes, and continued for five years, with various success. In the course of it the Medes gained many victories over the Lydians, and the Lydians also gained many victories over the Medes. Among their other battles there was one night engagement. As, however, the balance had not inclined in favour of either nation, another combat took place in the sixth year, in the course of which, just as the battle was growing warm, day was on a sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold by Thales, the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the very year in which it actually took place. The Medes and Lydians, when they observed the change, ceased fighting, and were alike anxious to have terms of peace agreed on.
Science has taken all of this uncertainty out of the equation — at least it thinks it has. Scientists now fully understand how and why solar eclipses occur, to the point of predicting them with perfect accuracy. This knowledge is so widely dispersed in the information age that the average man forgets there are larger questions at play. We fool ourselves into a false sense of certainty, of understanding — but the universe is not predictable. We might be skilled at technical calculations, but we remain woefully ignorant of the larger forces at work.
It’s wrong to reduce the movement of the heavens down to a matter of simple science. It obscures the larger questions we have yet to figure out: why we’re here, the meaning of our lives, and what a higher power or purpose, or lack thereof, might be calling us to do. The Greeks understood, and were humble enough to realize, that humans do not have the capacity to answer these questions in a concrete way. But their uncertainty left them more in tune with their own humanity: sometimes, we must simply look at the heavens with amazement, and accept just how insignificant all our little designs really are in the face of it all.
We will probably never know the answer to these existential questions, and if they are one day discovered, it will likely not be through the processes of modern science. With the cultural malaise around the coming eclipse, it’s not even that we foolishly think we have the answers to these unknowable questions; that would at least be admirably brash. The real problem is that we’re too preoccupied to care either way. We’re content to accept that everything’s already been figured out. All that’s left to do is sit back, relax and safely enjoy a cold beer through some expert-approved eclipse glasses.