I like watching the videos on planets and exoplanets and galaxies and nebulae, mainly because immersing myself in something like the origins of this solar system lets me have the delicious illusion of forgetting all about the thin strip of life on the third rock, and of course in particular the viral species that has come to dominate that strip in all the worst ways.

There are two errors in this perspective that make it into an illusion.

Firstly, a lot of these videos are all about various missions that have been launched in the last fifty years to study the Sol system and even beyond. These cost some millions or billions every time, and there’s a lot of people who say we should be spending the money some other way. I don’t have a strong opinion.

It’s true that megabucks for Jupiter is morally less defensible than, say, actually putting that money where our mouths are when we try to say that health care is a human right while living in a spacefaring society where that’s clearly bullshit …

But tripping off to Neptune is a better thing to do with that money than giving it to Zalensky via Raytheon, or overthrowing that government in the first place, or any of the other multifaceted misadventures of the military-industrial complex to the tune of trillions every year.

Point being–of course people and their choices are behind every beautiful picture of a newly discovered planet circling a star far away. You can’t even have ‘discovery’ without reference back to this thin strip.

The second thing is even more gnarly, and that is: even the hardest of these hard scientists is nothing more than a mythmaker in the end. Neil de Grasse Tyson can chatter all he wants about how the scientific method is, eventually, infallibly glorious and the crown jewel of our humanity. But there’s no proof, scientific or otherwise, that he’s right.

Turns out that as of last year, the big bang theory has fallen out of favor with the people at the top of science.

Just like Pluto was the ninth planet until these experts changed their minds.

Nobody knows Nothin’, baby. It does remain highly unlikely that Creation kicked off 6000 years ago, or whatever those less adroit mythmakers say. Or that the Diva known as God exists, or hears our prayers.

But that’s just like, my opinion, man. There is no god but Lebowski.

Yet … even this state of speculation and suspended certainty has some charm.

And it is soothing, to listen to the mythmakers intone and proclaim on their latest … theoretical creations.

I like going for a ride and wondering about how Mercury came to be.

I don’t know why I like it.

Doubtless the answer lies somewhere in biochemistry, eh?

No.

But that’s okay with me, this one day, amen.