The Stygian silence of a main sequence star

Back in the mid-90s, I had the most amazing program called Redshift 5 (we called apps “programs” back then, kiddo, because our cell phones were just beginning to exist, and - get this - they were only used for talking to each other). It was an astronomy program that gave you all of the information about the night sky you could possibly want. It even had a “night mode” so you wouldn’t ruin your night vision if you took your laptop out “into the field.”

At the time, I was taking an astronomy class and I loved it. Nonetheless, I was a horrible student, or rather, as my wife might say, I wasn’t the type of learner who would benefit from the industrial educational method. (Yeah, let’s go with that). 

Our big class project was to observe the rising moon in its path across the horizon for at least one month. We were supposed to mark where it rose every night and draw it on a big poster board. Naturally, I used my usual strategy of waiting until the last second to get it done, which was problematic because the whole project was predicated on a month of observations. 

That’s where Redshift came in. I actually did do one observation, and from that benchmark, I “rewound” Redshift to see where the moon had appeared in the east, twice per week for a whole month. I drew the corresponding appearances on my poster board, and even added a little artistic flair to Mt. Sentinel, the big, steep backdrop of a mountain behind the university.

I got an ‘A’ on the project. The professor even wrote, “Great job! You obviously put a lot of work into this!”

That was my whole college career in a nutshell.

I have another story about star apps…

Now I have one on my phone called Star Walk. You’ve probably seen apps like it. You can hold your phone up to the sky and see what’s up there, day or night. For example, I love the constellation Orion. If I need to remember what the big blue supergiant in Orion is called, I just point the app up to the sky and it tells me.

Oh yeah. Rigel.

If I want to go farther, I can learn that Rigel (Beta Orionis) is the “brightest and most massive component - the eponym - of a star system with at least four stars…It is located at least 860 light years from our sun…It’s apparent magnitude is between .05 and .18, and is classified as an Alpha Cygni variable due to the amplitude and periodicity of it’s brightness variation…It is expected to end its life as a type II supernova…”

In a move that probably frustrates empiricists to no end, I’d say that having that kind of information at our fingertips is literally a miracle. Yes, I mean a gift from God. It’s the dream of generations millennia past who looked up and wanted to know. 

Does Orion have any “meaning” for me? Actually, yes. The first time I see Orion every year, I know that a season is coming to an end. “The Holidays” are right around the corner, as is my youngest’s birthday. And I think about how I need to do better with gifts this year, and to be sure that Anna, whose birthday falls outside of the family “birthday cluster,” more or less, should get extra attention because she always feels like she’s ignored (she most definitely is not) and, that I probably need to get a better winter coat. 

In other words, where Rigel sits on the the main sequence isn’t terribly relevant, and I don’t mean that in some strictly practical sense. It’s just data. It doesn’t have any meaning. But it signifies a whole bunch of life stuff.

I’ve been musing about this topic for awhile; tagging it with “empiricism vs. mysticism” in my head, thinking it was almost certainly above my pay grade. But then Norm Macdonald appeared. Yes, the Saturday Night Live Norm Macdonald. Allegedly, he said:

“The Enlightenment turned us away from truth and toward a darkling weakening horizon, sad and gray to see… The afterglow of Christianity is near gone now, and a Stygian silence lurks in wait…”

The Weekend Update guy said THAT?

I’d been thinking about this for a long time - beginning around the time when I realized that Internet debates were a colossal waste of time, and now, probably, even a sin against charity, at the very least. I also worry about what empiricism (for lack of a better word), is doing to us. No, I don’t mean that medicine is bad, or science is bad, or that you’re bad if you’re interested in what Rigel is primarily made of. What I mean is this: the ackshually-ing of everything isn’t just tedious, it’s blinding us to the Big Things.

That’s probably obvious. Maybe that’s one of the points of this silly little blog - it’s for me to put down on paper some foundational first things so I can set up a foot stool upon them and reach higher… 

But one of the points is definitely this: poets, mystics, saints, and even scientists have been saying it for a long, long time: all of this knowledge isn’t making us any happier or wiser, and it certainly isn’t making us more kind and charitable to each other. One misstatement in a simple discussion about X invalidates whatever wisdom you’re trying to draw from it. The point of a wise man or a saint who pronounces it, “expecially” instead of “especially” can safely be removed from serious consideration. He becomes roadkill. The critic is technically right, but he’s now marked safe from wisdom.

G.K. Chesterton said,

“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know the dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

“But…but…but…that’s the logical fallacy of begging the question!” Or if you’re debating a college sophomore: “It’s, it’s…petitio principii!”

That reminds me of my other favorite Chesterton quote:

“When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”

I believe he was making a different point there, but I think it can also apply to the problem of an abundance of knowledge. (Right now somebody is cracking their knuckles, hitting the CAPS LOCK button, and preparing a response about intentional ignorance… Fine.) When you “know” everything, you end up denuding existence of any point to it.

What does any of this have to do with “rising above,” entrepreneurship, or personal discipline? Honestly, I’m working on that. Haha. Not just for this little piece of 1000-plus-word fluff, but in general. In life. I’m detoxing from 10+ years of battling my nature to be a better-scheduled, more disciplined “life warrior” or something, and during this time, discovering that the epic stories have more relevance to the minutiae of our daily lives than that guy on Twitter who says you’re a loser if you’re not taking cold showers and asking for people to rate his breakfast on a scale of One to Ketosis.

But if you’re looking for something more practical, I might say this: Get out and greet the morning stars. It might be the most important thing you do today. Build, yes. Discipline yourself, absolutely. And don’t forget to ask yourself what Gilgamesh would do.