The Altars of the Earth

Matterhorn, 1927 | Fortepan / Schermann Ákos | Public domain

There is nothing more dismal than a dead God.
Julia Kristeva

How can people in a secular society, trained to ignore the invisible, go back to recognising it?
Roberto Calasso

If we were still pagans, we would be cultivating the veneration of that yellow dwarf that makes all forms of life on planet Earth possible. The ancient practice of Sun worship, present in all cultures since prehistoric times, has shifted into an increasingly rigorous, disenchanted and hegemonic scientific analysis.

During the Renaissance, Nicolaus Copernicus destroyed the myths surrounding our place in the cosmos. As was already know by Aristarchus of Samos several centuries earlier, we revolve around the Sun. We are not the centre, and we never were. With Galileo Galilei and his telescopic observations began the study of sunspots – those peaks of solar activity that strongly impact the Earth’s electromagnetic fields and leave their fine chronological imprint on the circular rings of trees. In the 19th century, Joseph Fraunhofer discovered dark lines in the spectrum of the Sun, leading to the study of spectroscopy and a better understanding of the workings of this star, where the equivalent of millions of atomic bombs explode every second, converting hydrogen into helium and spreading light and heat throughout the solar system.

However, despite all we know about the sun, we have forgotten the intimate gratitude that we owe it. Over the centuries, we gradually stopped viewing it as a deity and came to understand it as the result of a nebula of gases that collapsed to form a star 4.6 billion years ago. We are able to explain the origin of the Sun, but our ability to celebrate its existence has evaporated.

Who of us gives thanks every day for the light in our home in the galaxy?

If the Sun could speak in the first person, as it does in one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels, it would remind us that it is a god and it is not a god.[1] On the one hand, it keeps us alive, but we can never look it straight in the eye; we are its creatures. One day it will devour us; for the moment it nourishes us. However, we can rest assured – we still have five billion years to go until it becomes a red giant and engulfs Venus and Mercury, continuing its metamorphosis to eventually become “a beautiful and kindly old woman, remembering old battles and splendid journeys, surfing through the milky way.”[2]

Pantopias, grief and resilience

We do not know whether, in the more or less near future, ecotopias, pantopias, utopias and other variations of a hopeful future will manage to form a critical mass capable of influencing globalised cultures. What we do know is that, undetectable or evident, subtle or tenacious, a trend is unfolding to cut a path through the winter of our befuddlement. It cannot be easily defined, nor delineated, as the sheer number of teachers, schools, cults, prophecies, gurus, self-help books, spiritual advisors and snake oil peddlers makes it is difficult to think clearly about a hypothetical “secular sacredness,”[3] something that will always seem like a contradiction in terms unless we are able to reflect on it together and reach some agreement on what modern science – in its most ethical, critical and evolved forms – can tell us about what (without idolatry or submission) can be considered as “sacred.”

The pantopia proposed by Michel Serres in his autobiography[4] is one of the many possible paths. We should recover the mythical-poetic dimension and try to reconcile it with our most advanced scientific knowledge; to rethink and reinvent the connections that have always been there. There is no need for any creed or blind devotion, the confirmation is provided by our ever-evolving earthly sciences. We are told that we are ready for “multispecies relations,” that the distinction between culture and nature no longer makes sense, that deep ecological thinking is essential, that the knowledge of aboriginal cultures is an invaluable resource, and even the most heterodox cognitive scientists are speculating about a “new animism.”

However, the fact is that we cannot cultivate a clear hope unless we tackle the absence of a “natural contract”[5] which, unlike the social contract, we are only just beginning to understand. The extreme interdependence between all species (including humans) is a fact on which we still need to reach a consensus if we wish to effect change. To this, we could add our vulnerability in the face of “ecological grief,” our need to come to terms with it and the doubts we may harbour about the resilience of nature itself.[6]

The Salar de Uyuni

Among the many landscapes that could epitomise the theme of this three-part series of essays on planet Earth understood as Laboratory, Habitat and Altar, to quote Michel Serres, I have chosen the Uyuni salt flat. I discovered it by chance; the stimuli for the evolution of knowledge are innumerable, but there are some that draw us in, insistently invade our minds and demand our full attention.

The Salar de Uyuni, in the southwest of Bolivia, is the largest continuous high-altitude salt flat in the world, covering an expanse of more than ten thousand square kilometres. If we look closely at the photographs that can be found on the Internet, the first impression is one of astonishment at this watery mirror with its reflections of clouds and mountains – like something from the realms of fantasy literature, the perfect setting for a terrestrial and alien saga. How was it formed? How old is it? How should we understand it? What crucial reserves are at stake here? What is it used for? What are the factors that threaten it? This fascinating Andean desert is a reflection of the reasons, obstacles and contradictions involved in our understanding of terrestrial ecosystems, the “altars” of a secular sacredness.

With its giant cacti, bushes, eighty small islands, flamingos, foxes, rabbits, birds and pillars of salt that weigh in at twenty-five thousand tons per year, it is also the world’s largest lithium reserve, a destination for thousands of tourists every year and essential for the calibration of the Global Positioning System known as GPS. It has long been a clear candidate to join the list of World Heritage Sites, but the official decision is slow in coming. In the meantime, it is a mirror of our situation – essentially torn between the push towards extractivism, untethered exploitation and all those initiatives that try to shape less catastrophic scenarios. Too many wonders, resources and solutions for this altar of the Earth to be disregarded. When the sun exerts its power, cracking the Uyuni salt pan, it applies an efficacious geometry, turning the flats into a tapestry of strangely beautiful hexagons, as well as a natural and efficient solution for organising space and saving energy. How could we fail to be amazed by the wisdom of this aesthetic order with its masterly geometric patterns?

An optimistic coda

If we were to think of ourselves as a planet, as Kim Stanley Robinson suggested, all terrestrial ecosystems could be conceived as the altars of a secular sacredness, even in the face of enormous obstacles. Considering the gradients of scepticism and denialism, these reflections may seem utopian, naïve or fanciful, but to dismiss them without reflecting on their urgency will eventually leave only preachers in the desert. And if we are preaching in the desert, it may already be too late. The desert is growing,[7] but pessimism, cynicism and indifference are luxuries we can ill afford. Those who deny or ignore the extent of the wound we are inflicting on Planet Earth fail to realise that it is still our only possible habitat, the great laboratory of a pacified humanity, the high altar where we can venerate the life and intelligence of all terrestrial species (human and non-human). There is no planet B. We need a crosscutting local and global consensus. Is there still time? We should not devise any more dystopias – almost all of them have already come into being.