In an age where our newsfeeds are choked with the detritus of a civilisation in decline, a timelapse of the Aurora Australis from the International Space Station is a welcome, if fleeting, respite. British astronauts, those modern-day adventurers in their metal chariot, have shared footage of the Southern Lights dancing over the Indian Ocean. It is, by all accounts, a stunning visual: a curtain of green and red unfurling across the black velvet of space, a reminder of the sublime forces that govern our planet.
Yet, I cannot shake the suspicion that this cosmic distraction is a metaphor for our times. We gaze upward at the lights while the foundations of our society crumble beneath our feet. The Victorian era had its own celestial fixations: the Great Comet of 1882, for example, drew the gaze of a public grappling with industrial strife and imperial overreach.
Then, as now, the heavens offered a temporary escape from the rot below. But make no mistake: the Aurora Australis, for all its beauty, does not solve the housing crisis, nor does it arrest the erosion of our national identity. It is a pretty bauble, a gilded cage for our attention.
We should enjoy it, certainly, but with the grim awareness that it is the opium of the elites. The astronauts, bless them, are our modern-day priests, offering a glimpse of the divine while the peasants starve. The Fall of Rome, you see, was accompanied by a flourishing of astrological texts and celestial portents.
The intellectual decadence of the late Empire was marked by a retreat into the abstract, a turning away from the gritty reality of governance. We are not so different. Our obsession with space, with the extraterrestrial, is a symptom of our inability to face the mess we have made of our own world.
So, yes, watch the Southern Lights. Be awed. But then, turn your gaze back to Earth.
There is work to be done before the lights go out for good.
