a requiem for the sun god

Scientific understanding as the collective project of humanity has a child-like temperament. It eagerly seeks discoveries with wonder-struck dedication until it finds a newer, shinier toy. In the 14th and 15th centuries, a heliocentric solar system was all the rage. Today, we foam at the mouth for gene editing and AI computing. But how long will it be until the next discovery becomes the next dismissal?

The average soccer mom’s scientific understanding has discarded the sun as an object worthy of interest. “It’s just a blazing ball in space that we rotate around.” Even ancient civilizations were more in touch with the magnificence of the sun, worshiping it as Ra, Quetzalcoatl, and Amaterasu. In the world before the scientific method, the sun was properly accredited as an existential feat.

Remember that the sun is responsible for your conception of time, why your brain is calibrated to experience a day as 24 hours, and why we have seasons with their silly holidays. The sun is the progenitor of all the food chains you drew in elementary school. Since before the beginning, the sun has heaved energy at our earth-rock until it blistered life into existence.

Everything that ever was, or at least everything that humans can perceive as “everything”, began with and underneath the sun. The sun brought us here and perhaps the sun’s explosion will take us out. Till then, let us bow down once again and humbly extend our photovoltaic leaves towards the one who gives us all life.