PK New Scientist book review: Finding space on Earth
Can we mend a broken planet by gaining the cosmological perspective reported by astronauts? Pat Kane is curious
This is the fully-researched-linked version of my New Scientist review of In Light-Years There’s No Hurry: Cosmic Perspectives on Everyday Life by Marjolijn van Heemstra (translated by Jonathan Reeder) W. W. Norton. Subscribe to New Scientist here
AMONG the many reasons to rail against the tech elites is their desire to place themselves in a cosmic context. “We must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization and extending life to other planets,” tweeted Elon Musk in 2018. He has only doubled down on that since.
But what if a cosmological perspective wasn’t just a backdrop for the arrogance (maybe hubris) of space moguls? What if it could calm our personal anxieties, take the edge off social divisions and be a resource for everyday well-being?
This is the fervent hope of journalist and poet Marjolijn van Heemstra [see her Dutch website], laid out in her charming yet challenging book, In Light-Years There’s No Hurry: Cosmic perspectives on everyday life.
It is an account of her year as a “house poet” for the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. This year also straddled school climate strikes, the murder of George Floyd, the gilet jaunes protests in France and the first lockdowns of the covid-19 pandemic.
“Brokenness” is everywhere. But van Heemstra thinks the “overview effect” – the moral, even spiritual transformation many astronauts report after seeing Earth from space – may be our route to repair. She sets out to take “a space journey on earth. A journey that will take me to the corners of the universe, with both my feet on the ground.”
This involves interviews with a diverse cast of the astrophysically aware, who van Heemstra mines for their wisdom. Take theologian Wil van den Bercken, as he grapples with the awareness of living “statistically speaking, on a negligible planet in an unfathomable universe... Begin your day with what you truly are – deeply improbable. If we appreciated this fully, wouldn’t we take better care of each other and the planet?”
The writer finds technologists devising virtual reality experiences that try to remind us we are all astronauts, but keep forgetting it.
Yet you could just gaze at a starry night for the same effect, she says – were it not for the Netherlands being in the top five countries for light pollution.
Van Heemstra is always ready with a beautiful, apposite quote. The Iroquois say that “we have the night so the earth can rest”, and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa writes: “I am the size of what I see.”
The gentle activism of her home life – gathering with neighbours in parks at night, feeling their cosmological connection beyond the city’s glare – threads humanely through the book.
She hangs out with biologists who are prototyping tiny algae farms designed to feed astronauts on Mars missions. For such a great adventure to happen, empathy is a functional necessity. When you are squashed into a few square metres, the most important thing is to be kind to one another, she writes.
What is most affecting are the author’s stumbling, tender attempts to use her cosmic insights to heal the fraying social relationships around her. Acutely aware that she is gentrifying her neighbourhood, van Heemstra strikes up a scratchy relationship with Bob, a former industrial worker and volunteer for the Red Cross.
When she asks him whether the sense we are all earthbound space travellers could unite people, Bob says that a walk under the stars is a great de-stresser. “Then you’ve got the space to think about others, about their needs,” he tells her.
Which leaves van Heemstra, who is very good at setting out probing questions, with one big answer. “If you want to be changed by space, don’t try to change it first. You can substitute space for anything – a view, a landscape, your neighbour.” This is her final caution to “visionary” space moguls, who are, to say the least of it, in a hurry.
Hi Dil, thanks for comment. Read it… are you suggesting that a cosmist horizon to activities in everyday life, or at least Marjolin’s, can be a defence of liberalism? IE, the compensation for staying within planetary boundaries could be a 10K-long exploration of the universe beyond those boundaries? The “enterprise” of Trekkies, eg?
See tweet 7 in this thread
https://x.com/kalahar1/status/1690760307172372481?s=46&t=8qAuXEK6puWz5cT26Pwt_A