Total Eclipse of the Sun
I am a hunter-gatherer.
In my small band, we find what we need nearby.
This is a satisfactory lifestyle for the most part.
I have time to gossip and play with the kids.
A PBS documentary captured how we work together.
Although of small stature, we brought down an elephant.
All the hunters did not make it back,
But we shared the life-sustaining meat with everyone.
The beginning of the agricultural revolution was the end of contentment.
We invented money,
written language and laws to manage complex relationships.
Then came empires and governments. Some distrust our own
inventions,
Fearful of the deep state pushing levers of power out of
sight.
We were terrified by that first total eclipse of the sun in our
primal African home.
But then, the sun reappeared. We thanked our gods for making
nature whole again.
Today, science explains it all, as we put on our protective
lenses.
Einstein was right: light bends as space-time warps.
Many millennia later, some of us feel an atavistic terror,
Not from the movement of celestial bodies, but actions of
people in power.
Will the sun continue to shine on our liberal democracies?
Or will fascism’s dark clouds again threaten to blot out the
sun?
