Seeing the Not

I was out walking the dog this morning and it was beginning to get light. Not ideal conditions for throwing a ball and hoping the dog locates it in the gloom, but better than doing nothing by staying home.

In the sky, low to the horizon, was Venus. You can, as eni fule kno, tell it is a planet because it doesn't twinkle. You can also see clearly identify it at that time of day because the point of light is obviously living up to its name as the Morning Star (or at twilight as the Evening Star, even as already explained it isn't a star) and in so seeing it we give a nod to our distant mythologies. But the thing that is sobering about seeing a single point of light in a dark-to-medium sky is that it is small. Very small, really.

Well, small is relative because while close up it is considerably larger than my house and garden combined, it is small compared with everything else around it. As a mental exercise it puts a lot into perspective to look at Venus and say "that's a planet" and then look away from it to the (seemingly empty) sky and say "that's not planet." In fact, you will see a lot of sky that is not planet. Lots and lots and lots that very definitely isn't anything you might (breathing problems and gravitational problems apart) be able to walk on. And if you can walk on it often you can cultivate it and build on it and all the rest of planet living.

But here, right in front of you -- albeit a long way off in human terms -- is evidence how small a world is compared to everything else around it. You can clearly see there is a small planet and while we know from observation to be unlikely to sustain life as we prefer it we know it is solid. Significantly here, surrounding that ball of rock and gas there is a vast amount of not-planet.

In fact, it is easy to overwhelm yourself and say that is how we may well look from Venus if that world wasn't filled with clouds. Someone there could look out while walking their nine-legged dog or whatever and see their version of the Morning/Evening Star (which is us) and say "My, there's a planet and look, there's whole lot of not-planet round it."

But switching their vision from far off to up close, when they looked away from the point of light that was Earth and looked at what Astro-Bonzo was doing, they would see what was most urgent. The mess the foul creature was leaving on the surface of their own world was very much the most urgent thing to deal with.

It's the same here, mate. The mess in front of us is pretty big compared with everything else out there. All that not-mess isn't as big, close up, compared to the immediate mess.

No, this isn't an eco-loony appeal to save the Earth even if we have at times pissed around with its resources. This is an observation of how small and therefore unimportant things look from afar, and how urgent and big they look close up. It is a matter of perspective, of filling your vision with what is near and ignoring what is far, even if it that would be substantial if you ever got up close. Also you are, even if you are seeing it as important-but-distant. ignoring all what is not-object.

You and me and the people down the road -- yes, and all our supposed leaders for that matter -- are obsessed with the big and near. Even if you personally make an effort to acknowledge the distant point of light you have to also step back far enough to say: "There's a lot out there that isn't that one thing."

It is, I admit, hard to get away from what is big and near while we are on this planet. Gravity and scale and personal issues and time demands will keep us from getting away from it all. There isn't the opportunity to see it all as the small point of light of Something against a backdrop of the infinite Not.

Your life and my life and their life has to deal with the here and now. This morning in the early dawn I had to deal with my four-legged dog's mess, and that's the deal. We see what is in front of us as big and close up, yet we hope our supposed leaders see things that little bit more remote and in the grand scheme of things judge its importance compared to other things. It's hard, but it's what we ask them even if we know their 'vision' never extends beyond the end of their political noses.

We want these leaders to see things in context, see the important even if it is distant and also acknowledge that the pile of mess at their feet is surrounded by a lot of not-mess.

It can be done. Years ago I went for a long walk in the Lake District at a time when Britain was riven by some strike or other, coming as it did hard on the heels on another strike. The papers were full of the news and it was good to get away from the nagging and the hectoring, though this was at a time when our favourite State propaganda machine tended to report rather than lecture. Anyway, there I was halfway ups mountain and seeing all that had been up close and big as suddenly not very big at all. My car in a distant car park was out of sight and any other cars and houses were tiny. Quite insignificant, really, and all the issues of one bunch of strikers and another lot of managers suddenly seemed very small and hardly worth the effort.

Oh, I'm sure all those involved in that particular dispute would say this was The Most Important Up Close Mess Ever but then, they would. That was their task (and whisper it, their livelihood) to pump it all up so they felt better about themselves. After all, no one wants to be a tiny cog in an unimportant mechanism of an insignificant machine, do they? Especially when the news industry is all around pumping furiously too.

But out there in the mountains in the clear air under a big sky (not raining for once in the Lakes) it was much easier to see it all for what it was. I could easily appreciate there was a lot on Not That Dispute in the world.

So what is the point of this blog? I suppose it is asking our supposed leaders to step back a bit, go up a mountain and view it all from a distance and say, hey, you know what? There's a vast amount of Not going on too.

Of course, there are some supposed leaders who having got there might want to chuck themselves off the mountain if they so wished and I couldn't argue, because it would be all very distant and far off and I'd be looking at the huge vista of Not to worry about that.

Trust me, in the end there is a huge amount of Not This and Not That going on. Not is everywhere, one way or another.