I suppose that late February, 2022’s Russian invasion of Ukraine raises questions in many minds. Is this a normal action? Is it ethical?

​With regard to normality, we might argue that history is a tale of invasions. There’s been nary a year in the past millennium without a war somewhere, so, yes, the invasion is normal in that historical context. Yet, many would regard it as an abnormal action, and the reason lies in the question of its ethicality. From the perspective of the Ukrainians, the invasion is an unprovoked evil aggression akin to the German invasions of World War II. Thus, what is perceived as abnormal and evil on one side is perceived as normal and good on the other. The Russians and Ukrainians surely differ on the matter.
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Cultural differences do influence attitudes about normality and ethicality. Within cultures, people appear to distinguish normal and ethical actions from their opposites. For example, going to the IHOP in Carson City, Nevada to eat breakfast is a “normal” action in the United States. Going to that same IHOP to shoot people, as Eduardo Sencion did in September, 2011, before shooting himself, was abnormal and evil in the eyes of many Americans.

Cultural differences truly do alter perceptions of normality. A terrorist raised in a society of hatred for another segment of humanity perceives a suicide bombing not only as “normal,” but also as “good,” receiving accolades from those of like mind. Surely, there are Russians who, in spite of the state media’s quashing of information about the invasion, are aware of it and who today think the invasion is an ethical action.
   
If I used the terms ethical or normal with regard to attitudes and behaviors on social media, I would immediately subject myself to criticism: “Who is this guy to tell me what is ‘ethical’ or ‘normal’ behavior? Look at him. He’s not normal, and who knows, by his judgmental attitude, he certainly doesn’t come off as ethical. What’s that old saying in Christendom? ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone.’ I don’t think he should be casting any stones.” Such criticism would be correct in the eyes of many, and I might agree that I’m not the model ‘normal’ human from others’ perspectives. But with regard to shootings in a breakfast joint or an unprovoked invasion of a country, suffice it to say that IHOP customers and Ukrainians are similar in designating the killing and invasion as abnormal and evil.

I don’t know if there is a “normal human,” but there certainly must be “abnormal” people. Why else, for example, does the American Psychiatric Association produce The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5)? Based on decades of case studies, psychiatrists appear confident to say that “normal” mentality is distinguishable from “abnormal” mentality. The question isn’t purely academic. Mentality breeds behavior. Behavior and mental states have consequences. That shooting in the IHOP and the invasion of Ukraine have consequences.

What of the term good? Should I be able to recognize “good,” a “good” attitude, a “good” behavior, or a “good” person? Is ethicality a universal or merely a cultural matter?

A Pope is a role model for “good,” isn’t he? Think Karol Józef Wojtyła, called Pope John Paul II. He ministered to a worldwide population. He even visited Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot him, in Rome’s Rebibbia prison to offer a forgiving hand. Popes are usually considered “good role models,” even by a secular press (Time picked Francis I as “Man of the Year” for 2013). The late John Paul II had plenty of good press, particularly for the role he seemed to play in freeing millions from a totalitarian government in the breakup of the Soviet Union. But not all those who served as a pope served others in the manner of John Paul II.

Some popes led lives whose retelling would require volumes of tabloids devoted specifically to their unethical exploits. Pope Alexander VI, born Roderic Llançol Borja, fathered his famous daughter Lucrezia (Lucretia) Borgia in an affair with Giovanna de Candia, contessa dei Cattanei, just one of his mistresses. Roderic had other children, and he used his position of power to enhance their political and financial lives. Roderic wasn’t a humble guy, and ministering to the world wasn’t his chalice of tea. As he said to his famous daughter, “You must know that for those destined to dominate others, the ordinary rules of life are turned upside down... Good and evil are carried off to a higher, different plane.” Does his statement remind you of anyone?

Okay, so if Roderic wasn’t a model of “good” in the tradition represented by John Paul II, is there another term by which we should describe him? Was he “normal”? If we accept the Sencion’s behavior and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as nothing unusual, nothing abnormal, then, yes, Roderick was normal and his behavior indicative of the papacy. Keep in mind that “normal” has variable meanings; in the Renaissance the Pope was more a political figure than a religious one, holding control over territory and an army, and conquest, like that of the Russian’s invasion, was definitely on the papal menu.

So, this late February, 2022, morning, as I see news coverage of Ukrainians fighting Russians, I ask myself those questions about “normal” and “good,” behavior. Is the Ukrainian killing of Russian soldiers ethical? Is it normal? Was the Russian tank driver who, caught on video, crushed a car with its Ukrainian driver acting ethically? Acting normally? Tank vs Car: Is such a purposeful collision normal in times of war? (The driver, by the way, appears to have survived) Did the tank driver believe he or other Russian soldiers were jeopardized by a Ukrainian trying to flee the conflict initiated by the Russians?
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War and restaurant killings throw us into quandaries over what we believe to be normal and ethical behaviors. Should we judge? The Russian citizens who support the invasion no doubt deem it ethical. They might also say it is the normal course a nation should take and that it would be abnormal not to invade. The victims of the IHOP shooting and the Ukrainians would, of course, hold a different view.

I have written elsewhere that the word meaningful describes two epistemological concepts. The first centers on a thought or action that might have universal or nearly universal truth, commonsense, or logical validity. Socrates’ syllogisms are examples: “All human beings are animals; Donald is a human being; therefore, Donald is an animal.” Just about everyone can find that syllogism meaningful. But it lacks what the second kind of meaningfulness has, and that is an emotional involvement. It’s just a set of statements. The second concept of meaningful lies in a holistic epistemology: What is personal is meaningful (and the corollary: What isn’t personal isn’t meaningful).


The second concept of meaningful (that suggests meaningfulness is dependent upon personal involvement) does not preclude the first concept. I might, for example, find meaning in a hobby on a very personal level, an obsession to collect some similar gizmos. I might find meaning in a personal addiction. On the one hand, to another person my finding meaning in something might be intellectually understandable, but not personally meaningful. “Oh! Yeah. Collecting those. Interesting at best, but it’s not for me.” Or, “I can see the need for rehabilitation centers because addictions can destroy lives.” Both responses represent a cool and detached understanding without any emotional involvement. If, on the other hand, someone says, “Charles, you’re spending all our savings on your car collection. You’re ruining us financially” or “Charles, if you don’t get help, I’m leaving you,” The other person has incorporated the addictions into her own life, making them more than just a syllogistic and logical game, such as “Addictions ruin relationships; Charles has an addiction; Charles’ addiction is ruining a relationship.” No, in the second concept, Charles is ruining their relationship.


Whatever is personal is meaningful.


We see the first concept in responses to the travails of others: Recovering from disease, famine, poverty, war. In some ways, under the first concept of meaningful, the detached version, we don’t differ from ants in the colony. When one ant doesn’t return to the colony after a day’s foraging, who notices? The colony goes on; each ant has a job to do. There’s no “Where’s John? Has anybody seen John? He left this morning to find a dead bug to drag back here. I hope he’s all right.” No, there’s none of that. The ant colony continues. Think of the past century or so in the United States. Men and women have gone off to fight in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and all the while back home the other “ants” went about the business of the hive, making or attending movies, for example, or moving into a new house, traveling on vacation, or playing golf.


Probably nowhere in literature has the first concept been better described than in W. H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts.” He begins by saying that suffering


    …takes place
    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
    walking dully along…


And he ends with the a description of Brueughel’s Icarus, the painting in which the artist portrays the fall of Icarus into the sea. A farmer, a ploughman, in the foreground of the painting hears the Icarus’ “forsaken cry” but…


    But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
    As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
    Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
    Something amazing, a boy falling out off the sky,
    had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


So, on this late February day in 2022, as Russian tanks, planes, and artillery take Ukrainian lives and territory, each of us might ask about our own concept of meaningful.

As I write this morning, Russia is invading the Ukraine. No doubt, there will be worldwide ramifications and local suffering. Bullets and bombs have such deleterious effects on people and economies. Obviously, the Russians think they can do as they wish in the matter, and the Ukrainians seem to have only two choices, acquiesce or fight. I’m guessing they will choose the latter to whatever degree they can muster before surrendering to a larger military force and acquiescing to Russia’s demands. The West saw the inevitability of this collision of forces over a period of months, but it relegated itself to observing until today when it imposed sanctions on Russia.


As I wrote above, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will have effects. The stock market seems to have been affected, and the ruble has lost value. Those economic effects seem to be rather immediate; The conflict is young, however, and wars engender unpredictable variables that will play out over the course of months and even years.


Nine billion years ago two giant black holes collided, shaking their galaxy and even sending out gravitational waves that influenced both time and space across the Cosmos. * Well, not completely across. As we view the black holes, they have yet to merge and still lie about 180 billion miles apart, but their collision is inevitable and highly predictable. Because there’s a lag time in every observation, even in your seeing yourself in a mirror, a collision that already occurred won’t be observed for millennia, about ten, actually. Earthlings, assuming our species survives such collisions as that between the Russians and Ukrainians, have to wait 10,000 years to observe the black hole merger. But trust me; it’s already taken place.


Ten thousand years into our future is a long time, considering that 10,000 years into our past sends us into the beginnings of civilization in the Neolithic Period. Ten millennia hence there might not even be an Ukraine—or a Russia. Ten millennia is a long time.


Just one millennium ago neither country existed as we know them today. Just 1,140 years ago Prince Oleg of Novgorod captured Kiev, starting the past millennium of connections between Rus’ and Slav, or Varangians and just about everyone else in the region, interrupted, of course, by the Huns and, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. So, there was a previous collision of people that generated the Kievan Rus’. And today, it seems that history is about to repeat itself.


There is no way to know whether or not that distant galaxy with two massive black holes has any intelligent life. We’re still wondering about the existence of any life beyond our little planet. But if there were intelligence there, it could not know about the Russian-Ukrainian war for nine billion years. That’s twice as long as Earth has been a planet. If the Sun swells as expected in 4.5 billion years to become a Red Giant that scorches the inner Solar System, by the time that life in that distant galaxy finds out about today’s events, there won’t even be an Earth. In fact, for any intelligence in that distant galaxy, Earth will have ceased to exist 4.5 billion years earlier.


Just weigh that thought for a moment. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In 4.5 billion years it will cease to exist. In nine billion years, today’s light from our galaxy will reach that distant galaxy. Observers nine billion years from now would see something that no longer exists. I suppose it’s important from the Russians’ perspective to sacrifice life and material to merge Moscow and Kiev as in days of the distant human past and as in a country that is different today from what it was in 882 A.D.


So, here we are, the only known self-aware intelligence with advanced technology still fighting as we did 1,140 years ago. It makes me think of George Lucas’s opening scroll for Star Wars: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”


Amazingly ironic creatures, aren’t we? We’re capable of discovering the mysteries of a distant galaxy but can’t escape our own folly. We pride ourselves on our intelligence, but we have no more capability of stopping collisions on our own planet than we have of stopping two black holes merging nine billion light-years away. Pretty much all we can do is wait and observe.


*https://phys.org/news/2022-02-colossal-black-holes-heart-galaxy.html

Achilles initially went to Troy to seek eternal fame. Self-aware, he wanted all humanity to be Achilles-aware. And, as the story goes, yes, he achieved that fame because we all know who Achilles is, not just the subject of the Homeric epic, but the subject of books and movies. There’s even a tendon in the heel of every human that bears his name. His fame has endured three millennia since his supposed life as the Achaeans’ greatest warrior.


The story Homer tells makes that fame secondary to his wrath, an anger that keeps him from the fight until his beloved Patroclus is killed by Hector. It’s Achilles’ fighting skills and his revenge that enthrall all the storytellers and their audiences. But it is his lasting fame that epitomizes what those who seek an earthly immortality seek. We see that drive for fame in actors, politicians, artists, writers, musicians, and even in pathological killers, all desiring that you remember them because in your memory they live forever.


A wrasse is a tiny fish. Some serve as “cleaner” fish, remaining at a station where other fish come for a cleaning. The wrasses nibble off parasites that plague fish. It’s an interesting relationship: Fish large enough to swallow a wrasse whole float patiently while the tiny cleaners vacuum up their bodies and even the insides their mouths.


It might seem odd to mention wrasses in an essay that begins by extolling the fame of Achilles, but bear with me. A recent debatable study of wrasses seems to indicate they can be self-aware, attempting, it seems, to rub off a spot placed on their bodies that they see reflected in a mirror. * If the wrasses are, in fact, self-aware, the study suggests that the roots of Achilles’ desire for fame might lie deep in the brain.


Self-awareness, which underlies the search for fame, isn’t, however, universal as experiments with other animals reveal. It seems that only our closest relatives, such as the chimpanzees, have self-awareness as we understand it. More distant relatives like monkeys exposed to mirrors respond by attacking their own images. There’s even debate about whether dolphins have the same level of awareness that the little wrasse exhibits.


But evolution is a strange process when it comes to making brains. That self-awareness might lie in a “primitive” organism but not in “higher” organisms might imply that the neurons could be there in the bigger brains but might not serve any survival purpose. Does an organism that never sees its reflection in nature need that kind of self-awareness? Does the deer drinking from the pond not need to know it is looking at itself? Isn’t its concern more with an awareness of predators possibly lurking nearby?


Maybe the little fish aren’t self-aware. They might simply see “another fish” that needs to be cleaned, but they don’t use their mouths in the process; they try to rub off the spot. That seems to be a strong indication of self-awareness. Of course, it would be a stretch to suggest that it is the same kind of self-awareness that we humans have when we seek everlasting fame. Wrasses can’t verbalize like mythical Achilles and storytelling Homer. So, their self-awareness, if they have it, can’t be connected to any desire for immortality.


Every generation of humans has its share of successful fame-seekers, people remembered for at least an ensuing generation or two. But with seven billion or more humans currently inhabiting the planet and a hundred billion former human residents, there are only the rarest few who will be remembered through multiple generations. Buddha, Confucius, Christ, Alexander the Great, Caesar (Julius more than Augustus), Ghengis Khan, Attila, Galileo, and Shakespeare come to mind. But even they and many others that I do not list fail the test of universal fame. Even modern-day warriors given special recognition for their Achilles-like bravery and feats in battle fade from memory. If you are an American, can you name Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or Middle East wars? Heroes are numerous; memories of them aren’t.


Are there degrees of self-awareness even among humans, degrees that vary from recognizing oneself in a mirror to seeking everlasting fame? Am I, for example, more like the wrasse than the presidential candidate seeking office or the Hollywood actress seeking recognition on the red carpet? Am I more like the wrasse than Achilles? We might all profit from asking ourselves about the nature of our self-awareness and the degree to which it drives us to seek recognition by others or lasting fame.      


*The study has garnered many comments. See https://www.sciencealert.com/cleaner-wrasse-passes-mirror-self-recognition-test-self-awareness   Accessed February 22, 2022.

On the distant planet of Shades in a galaxy far away and long ago two Shadians talked. One belonged to a minority group called the Tones; the other belonged to the Plains. Their planet is gone now, blasted into nonexistence by their sun’s turning into a red giant and expelling its outermost layers of plasma.


Tone: “I see it’s time for the decadal census. No doubt there will be race categories on the form.” *


Plain: “Well, the government wants to know how to identify its citizens. I don’t see a problem in that. I mark the ‘Plain’ box.”


Tone: “But if we are all citizens under the same Body Politic, why do we need to distinguish?”


Plain: “Well, it makes sense if we want an equitable society. How would we know that rules, regulations, and laws are ‘fair’ unless we know the nature of the population or subpopulation that is affected?”


Tone: “Wouldn’t fairness equate to ‘treating everyone as indistinguishable equals’? If laws are to be ‘universal,’ there should be no distinction, no designation by shading.”


Plain: “No, the government is just trying to correct past inequities.”


Tone: “But how does separating by categories ensure ‘equity’?”


Plain: “Well, if the government knows which group is a Tone, then it can correct injustices perpetrated by Plains on Tones.”


Tone: “Such as?”


Plain: “Well, lopsided wealth, for example, and social class for another.”


Tone: “But where will this end, in an ever burgeoning list of categories? Won’t there be more and more categories, won’t the Grays be divided into the Light Grays, the Medium Grays, and the Dark Grays, and, who knows, maybe even into fifty different shades of Gray? And then, what about Grays who want to be identified as Greys? Or what of those who want to be recognized by age as ‘Faded Grays’ or ‘Faded Greys’? And then there are those who might want to be called ‘Grahs’ or ‘Grehs.’ There are even those Northerners who might want to be called ‘Grees’ and the Southerners who might want to be called ‘Graas’ to distinguish one from the other. Seems to me that the more we try to make things even, the more we make things separate and uneven.”


Plain: “But the wheels are turning. The government officials are determined to impose equity by distinction, and society seems to be going along with them, or maybe it's vice versa, that groups of citizens are motivating the government officials to comply.”


Tone: “Sorry, when my census form comes, I’m going to mark “Prefer Not To Answer.’ What are they going to do? Force me to self-designate? What if I don’t want to do so? What if I prefer to be known simply as a Shadian?”


Plain: “You can’t do that. If you do, people will know that you are a racist.”


Tone: “So, I’m a racist if I don’t acknowledge any race?”


Plain: “Yes.”


And so their society went, spiraling into ever smaller units until the census forms had a separate category for every member of society.


*For an Earthling’s take on the subject, see https://phys.org/news/2022-02-middle-eastern-north-african-americans.html  Accessed February 20, 2022

So long, Lolong. I know you probably would plead “not guilty” by virtue of your nature, but the reality lies in your killing a fisherman and a young girl—the details too gruesome to give.


Yes, you were a saltwater crocodile, and yes, you were the biggest in captivity at more than 21 feet long and weighing more than a ton. * But your species is thriving, and there just isn’t enough room for the two of us on this planet if you insist on going around eating my type. Couldn’t you have just kept your diet nonhuman? Couldn’t you have resisted that temptation to devour your human neighbors?


So, Lolong, sorry you died, but you entered the world of humans, and that, as you found out, can be stressful, very stressful. Put into captivity, you suffered the humiliation of someone’s poking you with a stick and posting it on social media, stoking the rage of the human crowd. And supposedly, you got a fungal infection on top of the stress imposed by your captivity.


But, Lolong, didn’t you bring your demise on yourself by killing that fisherman and biting the head off a child (Sorry, I said I wouldn’t dwell on any details)? After millions of years of pre-human existence, you crocodilians just haven’t adapted to us, the relative latecomers on the planet. But, you’ve had at least 200,000 years to find out that we are not to be toyed with when our dander is up, and killing one or two of us has consequences. Heck, haven’t you observed in your long life how we treat our own kind?


Sure, Lolong, you were just a hungry opportunist. You saw something that looked like food, so you snapped it up with jaws that crush with nature’s biggest bite force. And sure, it’s true that we humans can be a bit careless where we step in the wild, crossing the border of civilization and believing that we are sole owners of the planet and that “nothing can happen to me” because of our own size and strength.


So, Lolong, you crossed the line. And now you’ve paid with your life for your actions. Too bad you couldn’t emulate the high level of rationality we humans can exhibit. I mean, when did you ever see any humans foolishly risking their own deaths just because of some opportunity. It’s not as though there were parallels in the German invasions of WW I and WW II, in the Japanese  invasion of the Philippines, where you once roamed, or in the many other invasions into the territory of innocents. It’s not as though we humans haven’t like you suffered our own deaths as a consequence of our actions. It’s not as though the Russians were at the time of your death threatening to invade the Ukraine, risking not only Ukrainian lives, but the lives of their own young people.


Now that I think about it, we humans are a bit like you, Lolong. I guess we just can’t keep to our own territory and can’t keep ourselves from devouring what we see.


*https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/biggest-ever-saltwater-crocodile-captivity-26260308   Image: AFP via Getty Images

In his How Much Does the Earth Weigh? Marshall Brain writes that a person jumping into a tunnel drilled through Earth’s diameter would reach the antipode in 42 minutes. * That fall would involve accelerating toward the center and then decelerating toward the other end of the tunnel, with Earth’s gravitational forces in control. Antipodes are sites on opposite sides of Earth. **


The antipode of Taiwan, for example, is Paraguay; for Miami, Florida, it’s ocean water west of Australia. The coterminous United States all have antipodes in the Indian and Southern Oceans. Only the most northern tip of Alaska has an antipodal landfall on Antarctica’s coast. So, falling from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles means falling through a tunnel that ends in water, not land. One can’t, as the expression goes in many states, dig straight through Earth to end up in China. The antipodes of China lie in South America and the Pacific west of Chile.


Forty-two minutes would be a quick trip if it were possible. Of course, the fall would send a person into the heat of Earth’s interior, which, if you don’t know, is about the same as the surface of the Sun. So, no one, not even Elon Musk, is going to build a tunnel through the planet from antipode to antipode. Some shortcuts are not just hard, they are impossible.


Falling through the Earth Tunnel provides a number of analogies. And this is where you get to write this essay. Pick the topic and its antithetical poles: Politics, religion, philosophy, behavior, or generational differences. I assume you can think of other topics that have polar opposites, such as debilitating addiction and wellness.


Now, having chosen a topic and identified its poles, ask yourself how one gets from one side to the other side without burning up in the middle of the process. Often, the direct approach, the shortcut, is injurious to those who would jump into the hole. To reach an understanding with someone who holds an antithetical position requires a journey on the circumference and not through the diameter. Psychotherapists understand the efficacy of the longer term process, thus their advice to attend multiple sessions. 


Want to convince someone that you have a valid position even though it is antithetical? Take the circuitous route. Yes, it takes longer than 42 minutes, but the trip to agreement is less hazardous and frustrating.


*Brain, Marshall. 2001. New York. MJF Books.
** See https://engaging-data.com/antipodes-map/ for your antipode. Accessed February 16, 2002.

Parody is fine as long as it isn’t parody of oneself. Have you noticed how so many nationally known comedians can write clever parodies of those with whom they disagree politically, but cannot write similarly clever parodies of those with whom they agree?


In our world, where currently all things, even a pandemic, are viewed through the Lens of Politics, only those whose opinions are favored by the group in power seem to be the stuff of public comedy. It appears that we are little different from those who banned Molière's Tartuffe in seventeenth-century France. If you read the revised online Britannica article of the dramatist’s work by Amy Tikkanen, you will see this translation of a passage from Molière’s La Critique de L’École des femmes: “You haven’t achieved anything in comedy unless your portraits can be seen to be living types.…” *


In his “Preface to Tartuffe,” Molière writes, “If the purpose of comedy is to correct men’s vices, then I see no reason for any privileged class. Such a class would be in a position much more dangerous than any other….” He goes on to say, “Nothing reprimands most men better than painting their faults…We easily endure reprimands, but we cannot stand being laughed at. We do not mind being wicked, but no one wants to be ridiculed.” **


So, the apparently one-sided comedy of American TV’s late-night comics ignores a treasure of comic fodder lest they offend the “wrong side.” That current cultural “correct” side has many supporters in media and social media, and it underlies the work of many TV and film script writers. Censorship applies to those who would ridicule the “privileged class.”


Molière also writes, “I know there are certain delicate souls who cannot tolerate any comedy, who say that the most honest comedies are the most dangerous, that the passions which they depict are more stirring …and that people are too affected by such representations.”


So, back-and-forth audiences go, bouncing from generation to generation from one victim of ridicule to another with parodies dependent upon political views. For Molière, the politics of the time included those of the Church, so he found his play banned by a coalition of political and religious authorities. And even when he tried to assuage those censors, he found his rewrites unacceptable. Eventually, however, the tide of censorship ebbed with cultural shifts, and people could view his drama.


Recognize that his play centers on a tartuffe, a hypocrite. Certainly, hypocrites are worthy of parody, but not the hypocrites, it seems, of a privileged class who readily enjoy  parodies of those outside that class.   


*Britannica onliine: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Moliere-French-dramatist/Last-plays.  Accessed February 15, 2022.


**Tartuffe. In various sources. This translation comes from Hogan, Robert and Sven Eric Molin, Eds. Drama: The Major Genres. New York. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1967, Passages here are from pp. 304-307.

From a distance, as Gulliver’s observation of the Lilliputians reveals, beauty abounds. We see physical beauty in people, mountains, stars from distant perspectives, like the “happy little trees” the late Bob Ross painted on grand vistas. Close up, the mole on the tip of the nose is apparent. It’s difficult to find proximal beauty because details beg critical inspection.


Confined as we are on a little planet in the suburbs of the Milky Way, what we see in the distance appears grand: The rings of Saturn, for example, the multicolored bands of Jupiter’s atmosphere bending around the Giant Red Spot, or the methane-blue and lightning-lit atmosphere of Neptune. Certainly, the sky is filled with distal wonders that close-up inspection might diminish for the frightful dangers they would pose if we were close by.


But there’s no denying that beauty-at-a-distance. Take, for example, the impending collision between galaxies IC 1559 and NGC 169. * Located in the Constellation Andromeda, the two galaxies are over 200 million light-years away, far enough for many details to be obscured in a beautiful light show. Both galaxies are, however, dangerous active galaxies that spew out gamma and X-rays. The visible light image above hides the reality of their ionizing radiation. Best to see the collision from a distance, like seeing a fireworks display over the Castle at Disney World from the park grounds. At a distance no one gets a phosphorous burn.


If there are life-forms on planets in either galaxy, they, too, might see a spectacular sky, but the impending collision is already starting to express itself in enormous tidal forces that will distort both galaxies during a collision that might last millions to billions of years and involve repeated passes as they fall into a mutual gravity well that will combine them into a single larger galaxy.


Seeing the image draws to mind not just the discovery of Gulliver that the actual details of the Lilliputians revealed a different reality from the one he surmised, but also the discovery each of us makes when we see close-up those we might have deemed from a distance to be worth praise, emulation, and even discipleship. History holds many examples, but one comes to mind: the adulation of Hitler in pre-war Germany. Political leaders have long been seen initially through telescopes that belie what microscopes eventually reveal. The destroyed cities of Germany in 1945 began the decade in a seeming grandeur that was very much like the image of the impending collision between IC 1559 and NGC 169. The details of death and destruction were hidden in a distal future.


Judging others by their distant display seems to underlie how many people view those whose ideologies they favor. They see people of like mind through telescopes. They see those who differ, however, through microscopes.   


* Credit for the image and explanation: Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey, Department of Energy (DOE), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NoirLab/National Science Foundation/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS); Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt. Press release: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 11 Feb 2022. phys.org news. Online at https://phys.org/news/2022-02-image-hubble-views-cosmic-interaction.html  Accessed February 13, 1022.

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