“What’s goin’ on? Is Nature mimicking humanity? The other way ‘round? Or is it just ‘all Nature,’ and this is just the way ‘things’ always have been, always are, and always will be?”
“No idea what yer talkin’ ‘bout.”
“There’re always wars, if not full scale, then battles, and if they aren’t raging, then simmering conflicts. That’s always been humanity’s way. Somewhere all the time conflict. It undermines every human accomplishment, every settlement, every civilization. We don’t pay much attention to conflict both because it is a constant and because it isn’t always personal; it’s mostly a distant, albeit a widespread phenomenon. I mean, the general attitude has always been that whatever isn’t personal really isn’t meaningful. In an interrogative form: Who cares if some conflict occurs on the other side of the planet? Who cares if another city’s citizens suffer ‘naturally caused’ or ‘human-caused’ disruption? Sure, there’s sometimes a pang of empathy possibly driven by recognition that ‘it could happen to me,’ but that’s usually a fleeting feeling.”
“But what’s this ‘bout Nature. You sayin’ that conflict is the way of the world? Nothing new there.”
“That, but more. I was thinking about this current year, the 2020 COVID Year, the sickness that connects all of us if not by its danger, then by its economic and political ramifications. And certainly about its reach. It’s like lightning in a way; it came as an unexpected flash, a big flash with a rolling thunder that keeps reverberating. Throw in some civil unrest, and walla! A flash that seems to go on and on.”
“Naw. Lightning isn’t it. Lightning is fast, a flash that comes and goes. Short burst over short distance between clouds or cloud and ground. Sure, unpredictable, but not long-lived like this epidemic.”
“Did you see what happened in Brazil a couple of years ago? Lightning strike, according to the World Meteorological Organization, 700 kilometers long.* Seven hundred! That’s over 434 miles, like stretching over America’s East Coast megalopolis, just the way the disease ran from Boston to D.C. or from northern to southern Italy. That’s a long flash in distance. And a flash that occurred over northern Argentina probably about the same time that the pandemic was just about getting started in China lasted 16.73 seconds. That’s what I mean about Nature mimicking humanity—or maybe even foreshadowing it. Are the flashes getting longer and lasting longer?”
“Four hundred miles! Sixteen seconds! Where’d people hide? No, I take that back. How many people just stood and watched the dangerous display? Free fireworks. Must have been mpressive as typani in Mahler’s Symphony Number 2** or in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastic.*** Sorry I wasn’t there to see that; and, yeah, I ain’t as dumb as I sound; I had music appreciation in seventh grade.”
“See what I mean? Even you understand the significance of a long flash. And you also understand the ‘not being too concerned unless it’s personal.’ Off in the distance, the flash is entertaining, a momentary disruption in the brain, but not perceived as a danger: Makes me think of tourists staring at an elephant on an African safari or at a bison in Yellowstone. Fascinating, but, hey, how often do they charge? Lots of elephants and bison and lots of tourists, but very few flashes of animal anger, of charging the tourist, and not many tourists injured considering the number of tourists. Lightning, even megaflashes…’What’s the chance of hitting me?’ we ask. Virus. Many sick, but not me. Rioting somewhere on the planet; wars, too, but not in my neighborhood. If it isn’t personal, it isn’t meaningful.”
“I was just thinkin’ about how a 400-mile long lightning strike would look. Couldn’t see it all even if you stood on a mountain, curve of Earth and all that.”
“Yeah. But back to what I said. Seems we’re always in the midst of a long flash. Can’t imagine what the people living in the 14th century plague days might have thought other than, ‘Is there an end to this?’ Long flashes? ‘This just in,’ as the news anchors say to punctuate continuous bad news that runs in a ribbon across the bottom of the TV, continuous ribbon of bad news. Maybe it’s because we get thunderous news coverage of stuff, a rolling sound of story after story about whatever’s goin’ on that’s bad, especially if the news agency wants to make some point, nowadays, usually a political one, anyway, maybe because one lightning strike can be exaggerated into a widespread flash in 24/7 stories impossible to avoid, maybe it’s because the news people can keep the rolling thunder rolling because they know that they have an audience off in the distance who just can’t stop staring at a lightning strike that continues for 16.73 seconds or one that travels 434 miles, maybe because of that, I’m driven to think that Nature itself is mimicking humanity.
“But then I remember that humanity is, in fact, part of Nature, part of the makeup of this planet. We’re not something separate no matter how we like to bill ourselves on the marquis of civilization. We are that long lightning strike, that rolling thunder, that ‘flash’ that lasts longer and travels farther. And everything we do has the potential to be a long-lasting, far-traveling flash. We’ve been keeping up the intensity of conflict for all our existence. We are the continuous flash and the rolling thunder. We are the typanists in Nature’s orchestra. We put on the entertaining display that is so only as long as it isn’t personal. If it’s personal, we all know, it’s meaningful.”****
*Phys.org. 25 Jun 2020. 700-km Brazil ‘megaflash’ sets lightning record: UN. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-06-km-brazil-megaflash-lightning.html Accessed June 26, 2020.
**Hear Bernstein’s version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edA9Zard3-U , but skip right to about 11:45 in the video; the rolling typani section occurs at about 12:00 and then occurs again at about 16:00 (Sorry, I’m not a Mahler fan; he just doesn’t compose hummable stuff).
*** Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastic, Jansons’s version at about 41:25 and also at 55:59 (in the Dies Irae movement) in the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK6iAxe0oEc . There are, of course, other pieces that include powerful typani.
****Are we both orchestra and audience? We definitely are Nature watching itself.
“No idea what yer talkin’ ‘bout.”
“There’re always wars, if not full scale, then battles, and if they aren’t raging, then simmering conflicts. That’s always been humanity’s way. Somewhere all the time conflict. It undermines every human accomplishment, every settlement, every civilization. We don’t pay much attention to conflict both because it is a constant and because it isn’t always personal; it’s mostly a distant, albeit a widespread phenomenon. I mean, the general attitude has always been that whatever isn’t personal really isn’t meaningful. In an interrogative form: Who cares if some conflict occurs on the other side of the planet? Who cares if another city’s citizens suffer ‘naturally caused’ or ‘human-caused’ disruption? Sure, there’s sometimes a pang of empathy possibly driven by recognition that ‘it could happen to me,’ but that’s usually a fleeting feeling.”
“But what’s this ‘bout Nature. You sayin’ that conflict is the way of the world? Nothing new there.”
“That, but more. I was thinking about this current year, the 2020 COVID Year, the sickness that connects all of us if not by its danger, then by its economic and political ramifications. And certainly about its reach. It’s like lightning in a way; it came as an unexpected flash, a big flash with a rolling thunder that keeps reverberating. Throw in some civil unrest, and walla! A flash that seems to go on and on.”
“Naw. Lightning isn’t it. Lightning is fast, a flash that comes and goes. Short burst over short distance between clouds or cloud and ground. Sure, unpredictable, but not long-lived like this epidemic.”
“Did you see what happened in Brazil a couple of years ago? Lightning strike, according to the World Meteorological Organization, 700 kilometers long.* Seven hundred! That’s over 434 miles, like stretching over America’s East Coast megalopolis, just the way the disease ran from Boston to D.C. or from northern to southern Italy. That’s a long flash in distance. And a flash that occurred over northern Argentina probably about the same time that the pandemic was just about getting started in China lasted 16.73 seconds. That’s what I mean about Nature mimicking humanity—or maybe even foreshadowing it. Are the flashes getting longer and lasting longer?”
“Four hundred miles! Sixteen seconds! Where’d people hide? No, I take that back. How many people just stood and watched the dangerous display? Free fireworks. Must have been mpressive as typani in Mahler’s Symphony Number 2** or in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastic.*** Sorry I wasn’t there to see that; and, yeah, I ain’t as dumb as I sound; I had music appreciation in seventh grade.”
“See what I mean? Even you understand the significance of a long flash. And you also understand the ‘not being too concerned unless it’s personal.’ Off in the distance, the flash is entertaining, a momentary disruption in the brain, but not perceived as a danger: Makes me think of tourists staring at an elephant on an African safari or at a bison in Yellowstone. Fascinating, but, hey, how often do they charge? Lots of elephants and bison and lots of tourists, but very few flashes of animal anger, of charging the tourist, and not many tourists injured considering the number of tourists. Lightning, even megaflashes…’What’s the chance of hitting me?’ we ask. Virus. Many sick, but not me. Rioting somewhere on the planet; wars, too, but not in my neighborhood. If it isn’t personal, it isn’t meaningful.”
“I was just thinkin’ about how a 400-mile long lightning strike would look. Couldn’t see it all even if you stood on a mountain, curve of Earth and all that.”
“Yeah. But back to what I said. Seems we’re always in the midst of a long flash. Can’t imagine what the people living in the 14th century plague days might have thought other than, ‘Is there an end to this?’ Long flashes? ‘This just in,’ as the news anchors say to punctuate continuous bad news that runs in a ribbon across the bottom of the TV, continuous ribbon of bad news. Maybe it’s because we get thunderous news coverage of stuff, a rolling sound of story after story about whatever’s goin’ on that’s bad, especially if the news agency wants to make some point, nowadays, usually a political one, anyway, maybe because one lightning strike can be exaggerated into a widespread flash in 24/7 stories impossible to avoid, maybe it’s because the news people can keep the rolling thunder rolling because they know that they have an audience off in the distance who just can’t stop staring at a lightning strike that continues for 16.73 seconds or one that travels 434 miles, maybe because of that, I’m driven to think that Nature itself is mimicking humanity.
“But then I remember that humanity is, in fact, part of Nature, part of the makeup of this planet. We’re not something separate no matter how we like to bill ourselves on the marquis of civilization. We are that long lightning strike, that rolling thunder, that ‘flash’ that lasts longer and travels farther. And everything we do has the potential to be a long-lasting, far-traveling flash. We’ve been keeping up the intensity of conflict for all our existence. We are the continuous flash and the rolling thunder. We are the typanists in Nature’s orchestra. We put on the entertaining display that is so only as long as it isn’t personal. If it’s personal, we all know, it’s meaningful.”****
*Phys.org. 25 Jun 2020. 700-km Brazil ‘megaflash’ sets lightning record: UN. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-06-km-brazil-megaflash-lightning.html Accessed June 26, 2020.
**Hear Bernstein’s version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edA9Zard3-U , but skip right to about 11:45 in the video; the rolling typani section occurs at about 12:00 and then occurs again at about 16:00 (Sorry, I’m not a Mahler fan; he just doesn’t compose hummable stuff).
*** Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastic, Jansons’s version at about 41:25 and also at 55:59 (in the Dies Irae movement) in the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK6iAxe0oEc . There are, of course, other pieces that include powerful typani.
****Are we both orchestra and audience? We definitely are Nature watching itself.
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