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On Sunlight

2019-07-02 · letter vlog · John · 3:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, recurring series

Looking out from the shore of Lake Michigan, John reflects that all life runs on sunlight, that the sun is god-like and impossible to look at directly, and that its strangest creation is consciousness; a sunset shows how small he is, yet how wondrous it is to be not just in the universe but of it.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes; the Chicago skyline and the open horizon

  • ★★ John says Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, which together are larger than Great Britain and hold around 20% of the world's fresh water. — 00:00:00
  • ★ John says people in the Midwest sometimes call the Great Lakes America's third coast, and looking at the horizon it does feel that way. — 00:00:08
  • ★ From where John stands he can make out Chicago's skyline on a clear day, some 60 miles southwest, but to the northwest there is only water to the horizon. — 00:00:15 · Chicago (city)

00:00:29 — Being on a planet: life is powered by and made from sunlight

  • ★★ John says it is reported that in 1634 Jean Nicolet, the first European to cross Lake Michigan, thought he had reached China. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · China
  • ★★★ Looking at water stretching to the horizon makes John suddenly aware he is on a planet, a ball heated by a distant light in a way that keeps water temperate. — 00:00:38
  • ★★★ John says life is not just contingent on the sun but a product of it: we are powered by sunlight stored in fuels and food, and all life runs on solar power. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — The sun as a god: solar deities, Exodus, Annie Dillard on the light we must turn away from

  • ★★ John notes Wikipedia's long list of solar deities: Egypt's Ra, Greece's Helios and the Aztec Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a bonfire to become the sun. — 00:01:27 · Wikipedia
  • ★★ John says this makes sense: the sun is like a god in its fearsome and wondrous power, and, like a god, hard or even dangerous to look at directly. — 00:01:40
  • ★★ John compares the sun to God in Exodus, who says no man shall see his face and live: so it is with the blinding sun. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John quotes Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: we have only one light, one source of all power, yet must turn away from it by universal decree. — 00:02:02

00:02:26 — Breath-giving beauty, consciousness as the light understanding itself, smallness and wonder; sign-off

  • ★★ Third-coast days close with gaudily beautiful sunsets, recalling T. S. Eliot's line that light is the visible reminder of invisible light. — 00:02:26

  • ★★★ John says it's easy to forget how beautiful the planet is: not breathtakingly but breath-givingly beautiful, as everything the sun's energy has made shows. — 00:02:34

    “Not breathtakingly beautiful, actually, but breath-givingly beautiful.”

  • ★★★ To John the weirdest thing the sun has made from its energy is consciousness: in us, the light has made a way of understanding itself. — 00:02:55

  • ★★★ A third-coast sunset shows John how small he is: the lake is small beside the planet, the planet beside the sun, the sun one star among countless. — 00:03:04
  • ★★ Walking on the beach after dark, John thought of the fact that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. — 00:03:24

  • ★★★ John says he is inconsequential, a footnote to a footnote, yet it is wondrous to be here, to witness the sunset and know we are not just in the universe but of it. — 00:03:30

    “to know that you are not just in the universe, but also of it.”

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description says the video is part of a weird series of horizon videos John has made over the last few years, listing the earlier three. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Lake Michigan · Sun (star)

Also: People: Annie Dillard · Jean Nicolet · T. S. Eliot

Works: Book of Exodus · Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Organizations: Wikipedia

Concepts: consciousness · fossil fuel · solar deity · solar power · sunset · universe · wonder (emotion)

Places: Chicago (city) · China · Great Britain · Great Lakes · Midwestern United States · North America

Myths: Helios · Nanahuatzin · Ra

Also centred on Sun (star): Flyana Boss Asks Hank Anything · how it all ends

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