The planet in one day
Every large living thing is a latecomer, showing up after dark. Nine p.m. brings jellyfish and worms. Later that hour comes the breakout––backbones, cartilage, an explosion of body forms. From one instant to the next, countless new stems and twigs in the spreading crown burst open and run.
Plants make it up on land just before ten. The insects, who instantly take to the air. Moments later tetrapods crawl up from the tidal muck, carrying around on their skin and in their guts whole worlds of earlier creatures. By eleven, dinosaurs have shot their bolt, leaving the mammals and birds in charge for an hour.
Somewhere in that last sixty minutes, high up in the phylogenic canopy, life grows aware. Creatures start to speculate. Animals start teaching their children about the past and future. Animals learn to hold rituals.
Anatomically modern man shows up four seconds before midnight. The first cave paintings appear three seconds later. And in a thousandth of the click of the second hand, life solves the mystery of DNA and starts to map the tree of life itself.
By midnight, most of the globe is converted to row crops for the care and feeding of one species. And that’s when the tree of life becomes something else again. That’s when the giant trunk starts to teeter.
Richard Powers
In Richard Powers poetic reading of the evolution of our planet embedded in a day, each image vivid, alive, compelling. He reminds us of humanity’s late arrival and imminent threat to the planet: “four seconds before midnight…most of the globe is converted to row crops for the care and feeding of one species.” Our domain, in the tractor’s seat, determining the planet’s fate.
In his final line, Powers takes us to the core of the moment: “when the giant trunk starts to teeter,” one of the planet’s oldest species is speaking for the earth. How do teachers in their classrooms convey his urgency without seeding hopelessness.? To open students to choose to take action, to look for ‘can do’s,’ not to despair over impending doom? One option, encourage them to join the decentralized youth-led network of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future strikes. Invite them to discover other possibilities.
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How do we come to understand the threat of the teetering giant tree trunk? It can begin with teachers enticing students to pay attention, hoping for them to become wise before it’s too late. They could turn to Carl Sagan’s visual Cosmic Calendar, in which he gives the history of the universe in a calendar year, which might be easier for students to grasp.
You might think it is too late to count on the young to save us, and you might be right. But remember when we were young we took on challenges facing us. We need to encourage and support the young to take the reins. And when the young awake, they speak to all of us hoping that we will pay attention. After all, they will inherit our world.
Teachers choosing to dig deep with students, to take them to unsuspected places, is essential. Tasting reality invites them to think. Invoking AI can be a fatal mistake. Thinking takes time, focus, engagement. It’s where learning takes place. They can’t afford not to.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard)
I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Substack or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
