[Aztlan] Importance of the Pleiades

[Jules Siegel]

eschele at mail.utexas.edu wrote:
> In response to Edward's question and his statement that these stars are "hardly
> visible", it should be remembered that observation of the stars was much easier
> before "electric light pollution".  
You strike to the heart of the translator's dilemma of living in one 
culture while attempting to reproduce the thoughts of another. This is a 
very important point. I hope you will be patient with me while I belabor 
it. If in a hurry, click on 
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14aug_1.htm to feel directly 
what I can only hint at here. I'm not sure if sky shot you will see is 
enhanced and intensified, but even if it were, it hints at how the sky 
looks on certain nights in the northern hemisphere where the air is 
still clear. Do we go into the field mainly for knowledge, or mainly to 
see that? Anita Brown (my beauteous bride these thirty years) and I have 
spent our time off the power grid on the pretext of researching a book 
called "The Real Mexico," but the truth is we are beach bums who were 
partially domesticated by Cancun, our compromise with civilization and 
its discontents.

Living in Cancun for the past 24 years, Anita and I have noticed the 
diminishing number of stars on view since we first arrived here in 1983. 
A few weeks ago, we visited a friend's mini-hotel south of Tulum, off 
the power grid right where the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve begins: 
http://www.vialaktea.info . The shock of seeing all those stars was 
truly awesome, one of the high points of our trip. We had a similar 
experience after Hurricane Gilbert, 1988, when all power was off for a 
few days. The first night after we returned home to Puerto Morelos the 
stars were so bright and the night sky so blue that we woke up. I wrote 
about that experience in "How did it go with Gilberto?" 
http://cafecancun.com/gilbert.shtml.

Those of us who have spent any time off the power grid can testify that 
outside industrial civilization the night sky is an entirely different 
and far more intense experience. On clear moonless nights, the stars 
dominate everything, revealing the degree to which we have been 
desensitized by our life-support system. I would also argue that the 
ancients were considerably more sensitive than we are because they were 
not subject to the numbing effects of environmental pollution, 
especially carbon monoxide and other byproducts of incomplete 
combustion, as well as the decidedly depressing effects of modern 
child-rearing practices (which I discuss in my current work in progress, 
"The Human Robot, Understanding the Emotional Effects of Industrialism," 
free download at http://www.lulu.com/content/109203.

I think that it is difficult sometimes to appreciate the very great 
likelihood that life before industrialism was an entirely different 
emotional and sensory experience. By comparison, we live stunted lives. 
As Herman Kahn put it, we suffer from the educated inability to 
understand. Members of privileged, educated, elite classes tend toward 
condescension in order to feel good about our position in the food 
chain. As I have argued here and elsewhere, the presumption that 
pre-industrial peoples were intellectually unsophisticated -- noble 
savages, at best, superstitious brutes at worst -- is a prevailing 
symptom of cultural imperialism that attempts to rationalize the 
Conquest. Mel Gibson's "Apocalipto" (not even a Spanish word) is a prime 
example of this process in our time. In "1491," Charles C. Mann 
pointedly analyzes how the erroneous perception of native American 
peoples in what is now the United States and Canada as always having 
been food-gathers and hunters supports modern property rights. This 
cultural imperialism extends to the choice of language used for 
translation. I discuss that process in "The Origins of Gaming and 
Operations Research in the I Ching" 
<http://newsroom-l.net/newsroom/?p=204>, where I argue:

"The idea of a popular song written about a power station seems 
ludicrous when the title is translated literally as “Great Stalin 
Hydroelectric Project Number 6.” A song about some railroad train -- 
“Wabash Cannonball” or “The City of New Orleans” -- produces no such 
laughter. It is part of your tradition. You can hear the music. It fits 
perfectly."

The association of the Perseid meteor shower with the hints at a 
possible root of the origin myths. To what extent were the ancients 
aware of the connection between meteors and meteorites? Did they know 
that "falling stars" really did fall on Earth? If they did, would they 
have theorized that humans (and/or life itself) fell to Earth regularly 
from the Pleiades sky zone?

---Begin forwarded text---
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14aug_1.htm

The Extraordinary Geomagnetic Perseid Meteor Shower

/A geomagnetic storm triggered dazzling aurora during the peak of the 
2000 Perseid meteor shower./

August 14, 2000 -- An interplanetary shock wave from the Sun struck 
Earth's magnetosphere just before the peak of the Perseid meteor shower 
on August 12, 2000, triggering a powerful geomagnetic storm. Stargazers 
across Canada and the United States were treated to the rare spectacle 
of a meteor shower seen against the backdrop of colorful Northern Lights.

Right: Daniel Hershman captured this dazzling picture on August 12, 
2000, at Sunrise Point in Mt. Rainier National Park, WA. The three 
bright lights near the right side of the image are Jupiter, Saturn and 
the red star Aldebaran.

-- 
JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764, 77501-Cancun, Q. Roo, Mexico
http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts

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