Historical Perspective

How long has the world existed? How long have people populated the earth? I got curious about how to understand the span of my own life in relation to how long the whole cosmos has been "here". So I imagined the "Big Bang", which is reputed to have occurred in the neighborhood of 13.5 billion years ago, located in San Diego, California. I imagined "now" to be located right here where I live. Starting on the west coast, I imagined traveling across country.

The whole journey from the birth of the universe until today covers about
13.5 billion years, which I imagine as the distance from San Diego to Woodbury, Connecticut.

Our Solar System took shape about 4.568 billion years ago, the distance from Woodbury to Chicago.

Our planet, the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago ... puts us just about 14 miles offshore of Chicago in Lake Michigan.

Life is believed to have originated 3.7 billion years ago - east across the lake, and I-94 to Detroit, about a four hour trip.

Modern Humans arrived on the scene about 195 million years ago. Now we're in Connecticut, paddling around Candlewood Lake.

The era we refer to as "Civilization", when our ancestors began settling in cities, began between 6,500 and 5,000 years ago. We're suddenly standing on my front porch!

The history of the United States as an independent nation began in 1776, 234 years ago, which means our journey has brought us to within a quarter inch of my front door!

Our current Global Information age, Age of Technology is maybe 50 years old. That's about 1/16 of an inch from stepping inside. (I'm 59 and a half ... maybe 3/32 of an inch away?)

Historical perspective, in my judgment, is missing from so much of the lurching and screaming talk and cyber-verbiage I read and listen to. It appears that as a species we have determined that there can be no future for life unless humans define the parameters of that life. Some of today's rhetoric appears to advocate a studied ignorance of history. Who cares, they seem to suggest, what has happened over mere decades or even centuries (never mind millenia!) to bring us to a day when our human species ... so late to the game and having attained such power over the other creatures ... stands on the brink of making decisions consequential to the well-being of all future beings?

I care. The solution to our global crises begins and ends with the transformation of modern minds, the collective "modern mind". I challenge every human reading this blog to consider whether you are willing to surrender your claim to singular superiority among Earth's living systems, and begin again to seek the deeper, sacred wisdom that has been ever hinted at by ancient spiritual traditions. And I'd love to know if you have hope for the survival of living systems in the future. It could be, in light of our teeny human time-print, and the even more ephemeral success of "civilization", we are on the verge of an age of genuine wholeness for all of Earth's diverse creatures.