A letter from Zimbabwe

On the occasion of the Tenth Anniversary

of the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp

and the launch of Project Earthrise 

“How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them.  A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.”

-                      Christiaan  Huygens  “New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants and Productions”  circa 1690

“… A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.”

-                      H.G. Wells, “The Discovery of the Future”  Nature 65, 326 (1902)

Although circumstances beyond my control do not allow me to be with you all on this auspicious occasion, I am honoured that Alan has allowed me to take the podium in spirit.

Sixty years and one week ago, an event of enormous significance to humanity occurred very close to where you all are right now.  This was the first detonation of a nuclear device, which was the culmination of the Manhatten Project.  It strikes me that it is most appropriate that another project, called Earthrise, which endeavours to bring people together in peace and harmony, should be launched from this same spot on our planet.

On June 21^st this year, exactly four years after the Total Solar Eclipse in 2001, I sat in my observatory and nostalgically opened a book called “Everybody’s Comet: A Layman’s Guide to Comet Hale-Bopp.”  The book was autographed on the inside page by Alan Hale.

The inscription read:

“To Mike

Partners in “Comet Crime”!

Keep Looking Up!”

This book was presented to me by Alan Hale shortly after the eclipse (in fact the Sun was still partially obscured by the Moon when he wrote those words).  I have been involved in the study of comets for over twenty years, so I know a fair deal of what there is currently to know of comets.

When I first read the book however, it struck me that although the style and language of the volume was aimed at the layman, easy-going and often humorous and highly entertaining, there was a deeper message that kept asserting itself throughout the volume.  There was a message of profound importance to the human race.  The entire book could be summed up in that simple message to me at the beginning…”Keep Looking Up!”

I “cut my teeth” so to speak, at an early age, in astronomy with the books of Patrick Moore.  But it was from, in my opinion, the greatest astronomy and science educator of the twentieth century, that I derived my particular conceptualisation of what the Cosmos is really all about.  That man was Carl Sagan.  Sagan had an exquisite view of the universe, of science and its role, and of humanity and the human potential.  Most importantly he was a true educator in his ability to communicate his views and knowledge and capture the imagination of minds young and old around the world.  I see these same qualities in Alan Hale.

In the early months of 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp was at its brightest, and it was seen by more people than any other comet in recorded history.  For a while, millions of people around the world from every possible background were united in that they were all sharing the wonder and beauty of this object.  But it was really the discovery of the comet that was truly important.  That’s because when it was realised shortly after discovery that it would indeed very likely become a spectacle in the sky two and a half years later, the names “Hale” and “Bopp” became household names very quickly and it afforded Alan a voice and a platform that had not existed previously.

The first part of his message is simple really, we have heard it before, and generally, thinking people know the truth of it.  The whole world and mankind are in a mess.  The second part of his message is a lot more difficult.  We have to clean up the mess and we all have to do it ourselves, and not leave it to the few who are creating the mess in the first place.

Every human embryo during the first days and weeks of its existence goes through successive stages of development, appearing as a single cell, then as a group of cells, then fish-like, amphibian-like, and reptilian appearances before it begins to resemble a human being.  This is a “play-out” of the long period of evolution that has resulted in the diversity of life on our planet. 

It’s a lot more complex then I have time or frankly the knowledge in this field to describe here, but basically the human brain  reflects this evolution too, being composed of “old” and relatively “new” parts.  The old part of our brain that is most dominant in reptiles, called the R-complex, is the part that is responsible for territorialism, lust for power and domination, fear, anger, superstition, and phenomena such as religious fanaticism and mass hysteria.  Most of the more positive emotions such as love and compassion are seated in the limbic region and are expressed as concepts and thoughts via the cerebral cortex, the seat of intellect.  In mankind, the cerebral hemispheres allow us to translate our feelings into thought and concepts and appreciate our surroundings.  These latter are more apparent in mammals and reach their highest development in primates and man.  They are responsible for self-awareness and our ability to manipulate our environment in a way that no other species on this planet can.

Each and every one of us unfortunately has the original reptilian evolutionary baggage in our heads that comes along with our higher capacities.  We needed it a long time ago to survive, but it is now very much at the point where it could destroy us, and it must be overcome.  When I look at what is happening in the world five years into the twenty-first century, I have the feeling that if humanity does not take stock of itself now, it will self-destruct, taking the whole habitable planet with it.

In my own country, Zimbabwe, there has been twenty-five years of misrule and bad governance.  In the last five years, commercial agriculture has been steadily eroded to the point of non-existence by the outright theft of the commercial farming sector under the guise of “land re-distribution”.  The economy has been eroded to the point where we have the highest inflation rate in the world.  Virtually all independent media is banned.

In December 2002 we had a second Total Solar Eclipse in this country.  Alan Hale sent a message of hope to the people of Zimbabwe on the occasion of that eclipse.  He also read it out on the only independent radio station we had left, SW Radio Africa, broadcasting from the United Kingdom. 

Thousands heard that message, and took hope.  On the 7^th of March this year the government

started jamming SW Radio Africa, and on the 8^th of May, our last “voice of the voiceless” had to cease its short-wave transmissions into the country.

Just over eight weeks ago, the government unleashed what it calls “Operation Restore Order” on the populace.  This is a thinly disguised excuse for genocide.  In the cities and towns all over the country the police and army using bulldozers have destroyed over 300,000 homes and displaced 1.5 million people, who have been either placed into holding camps with no shelter or food, or are sleeping out in the open in the cold southern hemisphere winter.  There is no fuel, and the economy is imploding.  Zimbabwe was recently declared the worst humanitarian crisis in modern-day Africa, surpassing even the Sudanese crisis.  4 million people need food aid in Zimbabwe.  All this is happening because of a small group of “elite” who are willing to kill their own people to remain in power and maintain what they call “sovereignty”.

But there is hope in a profound story that was related to me:  A lady went to her regular till operator in a shop recently and noticed that he was looking fairly dishevelled and very tired.  When asked what was wrong, she was told that his house had been razed to the ground and he was in the open at night with his family.  He suddenly asked her, “Do you know anything about astronomy?”  Surprised at this apparent change of direction in the conversation, she replied “Not much, why?”  The answer came back at her: “Well, most nights it’s too cold to sleep, so I’ve been looking at the stars.  Trouble is, I am not sure what I’m looking at, so I want to try and find some books that will help me to learn the sky.”

This conversation restored my optimism and contention that the human spirit cannot ever be totally repressed and that peace, truth and justice will prevail again in my country.

Astronomy, unlike any other science, is accessible to every human being.  All you need are your eyes. It can help us to realise now that each of us is unique as an individual and yet a small but important part of a much bigger picture, and we occupy only this one small planet. 

 As Sagan puts it:

“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space.  Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars…we are a rare as well as an endangered species.  Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious.  If a human disagrees with you, let him live.  In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

The “War on Terror” is doomed to failure as long as one reciprocates hatred with hatred.  Instead, every world leader, every dictator, every terrorist or potential suicide bomber should know the following:

That to kill yourself and others is not only a crime against humanity, it is a crime against the Cosmos that spawned you over a period of three and a half billion years of evolution.  No Cause inspired by petty differences in perception of our supposed ownership of parts of the world or religious, class or ethnic differences gives us the right to kill and destroy each other.  We are a collective consciousness, a way for the Cosmos to explore itself, and we are all in this together.

This is the light of hope that Project Earthrise would offer.  I’d like to close this letter with the lyrics of a song by Jackson Browne that I feel to be particularly in line with the whole concept of Project Earthrise:

It is One
Jackson Browne

 They shot a man into the sky
The moon and stars became his bed
He saw the sun rise seven times
And when he came back down he said

It is one, it is one
One world spinning 'round the sun
Wherever it is you call home
Whatever country you come from
It is one, it is one, it is one, it is one

It is my fervent hope that one day in the not too distant future, there will be an Earthrise installation in my country, and that the people of my country together with the rest of the human species will be able to look up at the night sky with a new-found sense of pride and freedom in the precious world that is under our tenure. Until that day, I think that I for one will “Keep Looking Up!”

M. B.

Harare, Zimbabwe

23^rd July 2005