Joseph Kreydt

Tag: nature

  • The Theft of the Night Sky: Why 1 Million Satellites are a Threat to Our Souls

    The Theft of the Night Sky: Why 1 Million Satellites are a Threat to Our Souls

    The night sky is changing faster than most people realize. Within a decade, there may be hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of satellites orbiting above us.

    Have you looked up at the night sky and seen a row of satellites moving among the stars? It’s clear they’re not stars. They move more at man’s pace than God’s. They form constellations straighter, more rigid, than nature’s. They are a constant reminder that man has left no material realm unconquered. It’s a problem, and it’s growing into a monster that will hunt the hunter, Orion, shatter the feeding spoon, Ursa Major, and violate the beautiful queen, Cassiopeia.

    By desecrating the skies with man-made satellites, we are forging the constellations that will guide us to our prideful demise. All the while, we are losing sight of the true stars, the ones that can guide us home.

    Satellite mega-constellations are not just a technological or environmental issue, though they are very much those things. They are also a spiritual and cultural issue, and an existential threat to humanity.

    I’ve been following, and disturbed by, the satellite situation for a few years now. I had, naively, hoped the problem would just go away, but it’s only getting worse.

    Sometime in 2019 or 2020, I read news that the FCC had approved companies like StarLink and Amazon to launch a total of around 30,000 satellites into the sky. Disturbed by the nightmares produced in my mind by that news, I wrote It Is So No More (the poem at the end of this post).

    The Problem is Getting Worse and Worse

    I can see it now. As if there aren’t enough billboards littering the countryside, corporations will start forming satellites into screens. We’ll see constellations of StarLink and Amazon logos among Taurus and Leo. Talk about a horoscope.

    Even if it in never goes farther than it has, we’ve already haplessly stolen the night sky’s purity. Already, when a child looks up on a dark, cloudless night, he cannot see unadulterated nature. He must see man-made satellites amidst the precious stars.

    But all signs indicate it’s about to get much worse. In mid-January 2026, PC Magazine reported that “As SpaceX Works Toward 50K Starlink Satellites, China Eyes Deploying 200K”.

    But it gets worse. As I was editing this article, more news came. At the end of January 2026, PC Magazine reported “SpaceX Eyes 1 Million Satellites for Orbital Data Center Push“. One million satellites! God help us.

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see mega-constellations displaying the faces of political leaders, the flags of nations, or the logos of corporations, across the night sky in a few years. Whether it’s a corporate logo or a political figure, the result is the same: the sky becomes a canvas for human ego.

    That doesn’t seem to be a concern of the journalists reporting on the satellite situation. It seems all they care about is the threat to national security.

    This is far worse than a threat to national security. This is a threat to spiritual security. This is an existential threat.

    Yes, one million satellites buzzing around our planet is a threat to our privacy, especially with the development of mind-reading technologies like this.

    Yes, one million satellites hovering above our nation is a threat to our national security. In this Space.com piece, there is mention of “powerful lasers” and other space-based weapons.

    Yes, one million satellites will undoubtedly contribute to the pollution of outer space. NASA admits that, “Due to the rate of speed and volume of debris in LEO [low Earth orbit], current and future space-based services, explorations, and operations pose a safety risk to people and property in space and on Earth.”

    Yes, one million satellites orbiting Earth is a material threat, but the problem runs deeper.

    The Roots That Feed This Disaster

    The people spewing these satellites across the heavens cannot see the stars. It must be so. If they could feel that wonder one feels on a summer night somewhere far away from city lights, they would surely stop this nonsense of dominating every last inch of nature.

    They can’t see the stars. They only see burning matter to be taken as a resource and sold for money. They only see complex phenomena, like consciousness and love and meaning, as systems of individual physical components and processes. They only see statistical realities. The world, to them, is a mechanism, and mechanisms must be dominated and exploited.

    But I’d like to offer a different perspective, one shared by some of the greatest thinkers in human history, thinkers like Heraclitus, William Blake, and Iain McGilchrist. Their view is that the world is not just some dead mechanism. It’s more akin to an organism. To them, the world is alive, and living things must be cared for, not dominated or exploited.

    The worldview that sees only dead matter moving in a series of mechanical processes is called scientific material reductionism. It has given us a lot: sanitation, refrigeration, the internet, protection against superstition, weather forecasting. I could go on all day. Because it has given us so much, it has become the dominant worldview in many of our Western institutions, in our educational systems, in our explanations of the world, and in our governments.

    Science is great for explaining mechanisms. It offers precise and standardized measurements, which are invaluable for prediction and control, but it cannot account for meaning, value, or purpose. It is insufficient for understanding lived reality as a whole. There’s more to the world than what can be measured.

    To science, love is not real, matter has no meaning, and suffering is just a bunch of neurons firing in the brain. Science doesn’t care about beauty or loyalty or courage. But in our lived experience, those things are tremendously important. It’s obvious in the art we create and in the stories we tell. It’s obvious when we look at the constellations and see great mythologies.

    The stars guide us. Odysseus steered his raft by keeping his eyes fixed on the Pleiades. Europeans made transoceanic voyages thanks to stars like Polaris (the North Star). Magi from the East found God incarnate as Jesus Christ because they followed the Star of Bethlehem. The Egyptians could predict when the Nile would flood based on Sirius’s rising in relation to the sun. Stellar calendars governed agriculture that stabilized civilizations for millennia. And those are only material examples.

    The stories carried in the constellations are invaluable guides in their own way. They show us what is noble and good. They teach us our purpose. From stories, we learn the meanings that science can’t grasp. We lift our eyes to the glowing firmament and encounter truths that nothing else in this world can show us. We owe the skies a terrible loyalty.

    And we’re letting corporations destroy them for profit and power.

    The people launching thousands of satellites into the sky each year are accomplishing their task. In their arrogance, they want to be our gods. They’re creating new stars, new guides. They’re deciding where we go. They’re telling us what the truth is. But we don’t have to buy into it, and without our support, they will fall.

    The Stories They’re Telling

    They know they need our support. That’s why they’re spreading propaganda.

    The current pro-satellite propaganda falls into three main categories.

    1. Bridging the Digital Divide. These headlines and articles frame satellite expansion as a moral imperative for rural or underserved populations.
    2. National Security and Sovereignty. These focus on the necessity of satellites for defense, using high-stakes language.
    3. Solving Climate Change. These frame satellites as primary tools for climate accountability and disaster response.

    Do you see their narrative? Satellites will save us from foreign attacks, bring wealth to the poor, and end global warming.

    Amazing. And the power held by the few organizations in control of these satellites will never be abused. And the people who are so rural that they can’t have wired internet, well, maybe the satellites can deliver food to them too. And so what if we destroy the once-pristine night sky to save the world from climate change? So what if we “pose a safety risk to people and property in space and on Earth”? At least we can detect that landfills are releasing methane into the atmosphere. We couldn’t figure that out without satellites, apparently.

    Seriously, though, homo sapiens have survived without internet or satellites for 300,000 years. Do we really need them all of a sudden?

    Rural connectivity, wildfire monitoring, and geopolitical communication are all good things. But the question is not whether satellites offer benefits. It is whether the cost of planetary-scale sky pollution, surveillance infrastructure, and cultural desecration is justified.

    The Costs

    It’s funny, the most obvious and foreseeable costs of satellite mega-constellations are quite opposite the benefits proposed by the pro-satellite propagandists. Power and wealth imbalances will increase, making the poor poorer. Another tool for tyrannizing a nation will be set in place, ready for the next Hitler that comes along. And the world will become more polluted with greenhouse gases and other junk. Worst of all, though, the firmament will lose its purity and we will lose sight of the stars that have guided us for generations.

    Rural Communities Will Remain Underserved

    Let’s start with the idea that satellite networks will provide new economic opportunities to rural communities, where current internet infrastructure is lacking.

    What they say is true. More remote communities will have access to high-speed internet. That is a noble goal, but is it worth the costs?

    Satellites are expensive to launch, and the knowledge to do so is specialized and widely unavailable. This means that only wealthy corporations with highly educated workers will be able to build satellite networks, creating yet another medium that will be controlled and owned by a powerful few.

    This opens opportunities for satellite providers to unjustly raise prices, especially in those rural communities that become dependent on them because wired infrastructure was unavailable or unmaintained.

    At the same time, these rural communities often rely on systems and environments that will be directly harmed by satellite mega-constellations. With a million satellites in orbit, the night sky will be permanently changed. This will fundamentally alter and degrade the astro-tourism industry that small communities, like Cherry Springs State Park, in Potter County, Pennsylvania, rely on.

    Cherry Springs is world-renowned for its exceptionally dark skies, making it a premier destination for stargazing and viewing the Milky Way, planets, and meteor showers. But with all the light pollution from satellite mega-constellations, Cherry Springs will be a very different place.

    And astro-tourism is only one example. Astronomical research, indigenous cultural practices, and natural ecosystems, all heavily intertwined with the rural communities of which they partake, will undoubtedly be impacted by such changes in the night sky.

    Yet the impact on rural communities is only the first symptom of a deeper problem. These mega-constellations trade local self-reliance for a system ripe for centralized authoritarian control.

    Turnkey Tyranny

    In 1984, George Orwell showed us how technology can be used for total state control. For the most part, we have optimistically ignored Orwell’s dystopian warning. We’ve allowed cameras into our bedrooms. We’ve built tools that can precisely digitize oral communication, making it searchable and indexable by governments and corporations. We pay for devices that can be unlocked by scanning, and recognizing, our faces. We allow anyone offering a digital service to track our location at any given time. Our technology couldn’t be more Orwellian.

    It could, however, be even worse than what Orwell predicted. In 1984, there were places that couldn’t be seen. There were hidden patches of woods and dark corners of rooms. In the US, just a couple years ago, there were cellular “dead zones” where mobile devices couldn’t be reached, where one could disconnect entirely. But with satellite mega-constellations, far less is unreachable. The places on Earth to hide from a signal are fewer and fewer.

    It’s not just cellular signals, either. New constellations are being equipped with “edge computing,” where AI on the satellite analyzes imagery in real-time. It doesn’t just take a picture. It can recognize gatherings of people or unusual movements.

    Unlike older satellites that only passed over a spot once a day, mega-constellations offer persistent views. We aren’t being watched periodically; we are being watched constantly.

    This opens the doors for greater surveillance, even to the point of thought-policing (now that mind-reading technologies, though in their infancy, exist and are improving); predictive prosecution (targeting suspects that the algorithms deem at high risk of future criminal activity before they’ve even committed a crime); and the abolition of free speech.

    When the infrastructure is built, an oppressive leader or organization only needs to turn the key and all the power is theirs. As NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, said in a 2013 CBS News interview, “a new leader will be elected. They’ll flip the switch, say that, ‘because of the crisis, because of the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power,’ and there’ll be nothing the people can do, at that point, to oppose it. And it’ll be turnkey tyranny.”

    Satellite mega-constellations open the doors to thought-policing and centralization by establishing continuous ground coverage and using AI-driven data analysis, and putting that power in the hands of a select few. These mega-constellations are a terrifying leap in turnkey infrastructure, if they don’t destroy our lives and planet first.

    Satellites are Toxic

    While the pro-satellite propaganda pushes the narrative that satellites will help us fight global-warming, the truth is that satellite mega-constellations will cause a great deal of harm.

    The concluding paragraph from a research paper titled “Dirty Bits in Low-Earth Orbit: The Carbon Footprint of Launching Computers,” makes the point.

    “In particular with a sustainability lens, computing in LEO is costly for the environment. An obvious contributor is the launch—which offsets positive aspects of space operations (e.g. increased solar panel efficiency due to missing atmosphere). However, an even larger contributor is re-entry, where both payload and 2nd stage burn, turning into NOx that is significantly more dangerous than CO2. This paper has shown that even with an improved launch technology, the orbital applications will not beat terrestrial ones.”

    The pro-satellite propaganda says “SpaceX launches $948 million NASA satellite designed to shed new light on climate change,” but the science “has shown that even with an improved launch technology, the orbital applications will not beat terrestrial ones.”

    In other words, laying all that wire for broadband internet to reach rural communities still has a lower carbon footprint than launching LEO satellites.

    And carbon footprint is only one measure of toxicity.

    Even setting aside spirituality, meaning, or politics, mega-constellations are environmentally destructive on a scale their advocates rarely disclose.

    If all of that is not enough, there’s still the loss of one of our purest and greatest wonders, the night sky. And when we lose the night sky, we lose much more than constellations.

    Losing Sight of Our Guiding Lights

    By losing the night sky, we’ve lost the last untouched, uncommoditized piece of nature. The night sky is a shared resource. Nobody should own it, and nobody should be able to treat it as though they own it. But that’s exactly what is happening.

    The night sky has been a reliable, nourishing, and powerful companion to humanity. Defiling its purity must be akin to martyring saints or massacring innocents. Yet it’s being taken over by a bunch of tech magnates in the name of progress or shareholders or some other false god.

    Maybe they don’t care about progress or shareholders. Maybe they’re creating their own constellations because they want to be gods, or because they believe they are gods.

    Beyond being a guide, a provider, a storyboard, and a calendar, the night sky is also a fundamental part of religion. Constellations are named after gods. The Star of Bethlehem led the way to Christ, and wrote his birth into the mathematics of the universe.

    In cultures across history, a red moon has meant much more than a total lunar eclipse that causes Rayleigh scattering. To the Incas, it meant a jaguar ate the moon, and would soon turn its attention toward Earth. To the Ancient Mesopotamians, it was an assault on the king. Native American tribes in California believed the moon was ill or wounded, and would chant healing songs toward it. In parts of Africa, to this day, it is a time for old feuds to be set aside. These are not rational beliefs. They’re religious.

    Religions take up the night sky in celebration of something beyond. The people building satellite mega-constellations destroy the night sky in celebration of themselves.

    It reminds me of something Carl Jung had to say about religion as a defense against totalitarian regimes (like the Nazi’s in the mid-twentieth century) in his book, The Undiscovered Self.

    “In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State—in other words, the whims of those who manipulate it—from every wholesome restriction, all socio-political movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under the religions. For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him. But religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience.”

    In other words, totalitarian states cannot be the supreme rulers if their citizens adhere to a religion because religion means believing in something beyond statistics and reason, and if there is something beyond statistics and reason, then the state can’t dictate it. And if the citizens submit to religion, then the state is not the supreme ruler (unless, as Jung later notes, the religions “compromise with the State”).

    What better way to destroy man’s belief in something beyond than to cut off access to the stars and moon and constellations? Destroy his ability to look up at the night sky and wonder.

    Jung goes on to explain what happens when man’s religion is stripped away.

    “The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world…The State has taken the place of God…Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”

    That is a sorry state. Some may say it is Hell on Earth. And it all starts when a few powerful people “try to cut the ground from under the religions.”

    If the corporations building these mega-constellations replace the stars that guide us with their own, if they usurp the night sky as a source of religious truth, we’re well on our way to that awful state.

    What Can We Do?

    I hope I’ve made it clear that: satellite mega-constellations are capable, on multiple levels, of becoming invaluable tools for oppressive tyrants to build a totalitarian state; they’re capable of further ruining our economies, our planet, and our lives; and their defilement of the night sky is absolutely tragic.

    Now, I want to offer some hope. We have the ability to stand up against these corporations. Maybe if enough of us unite against them, we can win. They need us. Corporations (at least in a free market) don’t survive if nobody buys what they’re selling. There is power in boycotting.

    For now, I will be doing four things, and I invite you to join me.

    1. Configuring the settings on my phone so that it uses satellite services as little as possible. Unfortunately, there isn’t much granularity when it comes to satellite settings on iPhone and Android, and some of the satellite-related features can’t be turned off at all. But we can do our best.
    2. Committing to refusing all services that use mega-constellations. This includes the obvious services, like Starlink satellite-based internet, but also things like in-flight Wi-Fi on United Airlines and Jet Blue, which use Starlink, and avoiding using mobile devices in areas where there is no cellular service (because cellular carriers have made deals with satellite companies to provide service when a device is out of cellular tower range).
    3. Committing to refusing investments involving satellite and satellite-related companies. Companies like SpaceX depend heavily on investments and investor sentiment. Spreading the news and refusing to invest in these companies may be our best chance at keeping a clean sky.
    4. Getting involved with organizations, like Dark Sky International, that are actively fighting for our night sky.

    If enough of us take those small steps, maybe we can change the course of history. Maybe we can leave a clear view of the night sky to future generations.

    And even if we can’t sway the corporations, at least we can live knowing we didn’t pay, or encourage, them to launch all of these damned satellites.

    If you want to do even more, there’s plenty more that can be done. Write letters to government officials, speak during public comment periods for FCC decisions, join and support local astronomy groups, pressure airlines, and support terrestrial broadband initiatives. These are all parts of the fight.

    If we allow the night sky to be rewritten by profit and power, we lose something irreplaceable, something no technology can restore. We must act while there is still time.

    It Is So No More

    Look at the pictures, young one.
    Oh, the way Orion danced across the sky.
    He danced as slow as icebox honey flows
    —In perfect rhythm, though.
    We watched him every winter night.

    He danced and glowed. Each lustrous node
    Was notched with reverie and delight.
    Oh, the way he danced so free (and leisurely),
    Unbound, at liberty, untied!

    Look at the pictures, young one.
    Oh, the sight, Orion danced away the night.

    It is so no more.

    His light has been obscured.
    Man and Mammon waged their war.

    They hid him in the sky
    Behind thirty thousand satellites.
    Stars that could be bought and sold
    Were slung like nets upon his home.

    Oh, he used to dance, child.
    We watched him move so gracefully.
    But now the night time sky is glowing
    Bright with forgeries.

    Orion’s hands and feet are bound,
    His dance no longer seen.
    He’s been uncrowned,
    His radiance drowned,
    Lost behind a spellbound screen.

  • A Poem About a Hope

    The following is a poem I wrote very recently, based on a very true event. It’s most-likely unfinished, but I wanted to share it anyway. Merry Christmas!

    I walked over the hill, at dark,
    Past the willow by the frozen pond,
    Then slowed my gait and steeled my gaze
    ‘Cause something caught my eye beyond.

    Make it newfound love, this thing I sense,
    Or a run-in with a few old friends,
    Or at least an angel singing songs, I prayed,
    And prophesying better days.

    Finally, the lamplight bent just right,
    So I could see the sad, and sadly funny, sight.
    A goose stood upright on the ice
    Alone, there in the dark of night.

    I walked as close as I could get,
    And saw the goose was frozen stiff,
    Unmoving,
    Motionless as a monolith.

    Afraid the ice would not support my weight,
    I recommenced along the normal way,
    But the goose was frozen in my foremost thoughts.
    I ruminated, thinking of the poor bird’s fray.

    Webbed feet frozen to the icy pond,
    He must have flailed his wings and yanked.
    But, in the end, instead of freezing contorted
    Like a scared, pathetic, dying thing,
    He stood up nobly like a king,
    And gave his life into a marble work
    Of Michelangelic beauty–quiet, strong, strange.

    I went back out in the light of the next day.
    The weather’d turned and a thaw’d begun.
    The pond was still half-frozen,
    But the lonesome, solid goose was gone.
    And where he’d stood, my hope had sprung.

  • The Beauty of Virtue

    Vice is a virtue these days. Indulgence, lavishness, and vanity are held up as some of the highest goods. Phrases like “retail therapy,” “guilty pleasure,” and “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” are almost viewed as positive values. On the other hand, virtue is seen as a drag. We hear, “go big or go home,” “nice guys finish last,” and “don’t be a buzzkill.”

    While there is an ounce of truth to each of these phrases, the bigger idea behind them—that virtue is a bummer or a bore or a waste of life—is a misconception. The truth is, virtue is beautiful, and it leads to the best possible life.

    Before we can see why virtue leads to a better life, we have to understand what virtue actually is—something ordered, proportioned, and aligned with reality, much like beauty itself.

    Let’s consider beauty. If you’ve ever used word processing software, you’re probably familiar with line justification. If you set the software to right-justify, all of the lines are lined up along the right side of the page. To justify lines on a page is to order them a certain way. In order for this to happen, there needs to be a boundary around the page—the margins—for the lines to be ordered against.

    These two attributes—borders and justification—go a long way in producing a beautiful representation of text on the page. In fact, these two attributes are important components of anything beautiful. Take a look at this lithograph, titled “The Good Shepherd,” by Gebhard Fugel.

    Most obviously, there is the rectangular boundary that makes up the outer edges of the image. All of the main elements within the border—Christ, the sheep, the clouds, etc—are justified in relation to both the border and to one another. When these elements are well-ordered, clearly defined, and proportional, the image is more beautiful. There is a certain balance, a certain uniformity, to the whole scene.

    The uniformity is not perfect, but this doesn’t diminish the beauty of the image. In fact, if the image was perfectly uniform, it would lack another important component of beauty: variety. According to Edgar Allan Poe, “the “Uniformity” is the principle: — the “Variety” is but the principle’s natural safeguard from self-destruction by excess of self.”

    These two central components of beauty—uniformity and variety—are aligned with the very nature of reality. Iain McGilchrist, considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists and philosophers of our time, comes to a similar conclusion about the nature of reality as Poe does about the nature of beauty.

    In an extraordinary lecture, titled “Division and Union,” at Ralston University, McGilchrist explained that both division and union are important, and that it is “the business of the unfolding of the cosmos to make [distinction within sameness] grow and flourish—an eternal creative unfolding of generality into uniqueness. It’s what we mean by there being anything at all.”

    He used snowflakes as an example. “No two snowflakes have the same structure. But interestingly, each arm of the snowflake obeys the same pattern that each other arm of the six arms of the snowflake obey…They seem to me to be a beautiful example of beauty and complexity that give rise to things that are unified and unique, and yet have interesting parts that make them the whole that they are.”

    Photos by Wilson Alwyn Bentley.

    So, in beauty and in the very nature of the universe, there is uniformity and variety. These are determined, in large part, by the borders and justification of its components.

    Let’s look at justification again. The word, justification, comes from Late Latin iustificationem. It means, “administration of justice.” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=justification) We generally think of justice in terms of laws and the legal system. A judge serves justice. But on a deeper level, it is much like justification in word processing software.

    Justice, in the legal sense, means a boundary is set and enforced, a line is drawn in a place deemed fair or right. Justice in terms of beauty is, similarly, all about forming the boundaries of the materials in the right relationship to themselves and to other boundaries, giving them uniformity and variety. Think back to justification in word processing software. It’s all about lining things up a certain way, relative to specific boundaries.

    Ultimately, though, justice is not just a legal term or a component of a beautiful document. It is a virtue, a way of being in alignment with the true nature of reality.

    It is the virtue of justice that underlies all of these other fields we call justice. According to Aristotle, virtue is “the golden mean between two vices,” and “means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose.”

    When Poe spoke of variety being the natural safeguard from uniformity’s self-destruction by excess of self, he was talking about a “golden mean between two vices.” Variety prevents uniformity from being excessively uniform, and uniformity prevents variety from being chaotic. These virtues compose beauty. Their excesses, which are vices, produce ugliness—disproportionality, injustice, disorder, etc.

    In the same way, the promotion of indulgence, lavishness, and vanity, as the highest goods is vicious. Indulgence is the excess of temperance (deprivation is its deficiency, the other end of the golden mean of temperance). Lavishness is an excess of spending and consuming (stinginess is its deficiency) while generosity is the mean. And vanity, in our culture, is the excess of self-worth (low self-esteem is its deficiency).

    On a surface level, indulgence sounds great. It means I get to eat all the ice cream I want. But in reality, it’s a shallow, unrealistic approach to consumption. Sure, limiting myself to one scoop of ice cream might feel restrictive in the moment, but the true buzzkill is the lethargy and health issues that follow excess. Temperance leads to a better, more beautiful life.

    To favor vice is really just to take a shallow view, to aim lower, to miss the bigger picture. It is to not understand the true values of things, or to understand them but still fail to put them in the right order. To live virtuously is to put things in their proper place just the way a painter does with strokes on a canvas. To live virtuously is to live beautifully.

    To do so, we must learn the nature of reality and align our actions with the highest values. Then, we are in a position to live our best lives. It’s time to stop settling for less. It’s time to raise ourselves beyond the limited ways of vice.

  • Blue Jay Mimicry

    Walking yesterday evening, I heard what sounded like baby crows cawing in the tops of trees around a little grove.

    When I finally spotted one of the birds making the noise, I realized it was a blue jay. It turns out blue jays have been known to mimic crows, hawks, and even dogs.

    Nature is full of wonders and surprises, beauty and encounter.

  • My Contribution to Journalism

    There’s a lot of journalism about the dark things. That’s important because we can’t be whole until we integrate what is in our shadows and we can’t integrate what is in our shadows until they are illuminated.

    But I have something else to report. This can be my contribution to journalism.

    There are beautiful walkways cloaked in fresh air. And as the sun sets, the clouds have turned pink and purple and orange at the same time. And there’s a sycamore tree that has seen more sameness than I ever will. And two fawns are having a bedtime snack in a field. And the air is cool, but not enough for a sweater. And the moon is half, and the color of half and half.

    Broadcasting from just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I’m Joseph Kreydt. To all the dark places and to all the light, good night.

  • Why I Deleted the Weather App from My Phone

    Why I Deleted the Weather App from My Phone

    I deleted the weather app from my phone. Then I got caught in a storm. But that was the point. I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to rebel against our modern tendency to control and predict everything.

    Prediction, especially if it’s accurate, gives us a sense of control over something by taking away its ability to surprise us. We try to love the wild, unpredictable world, but only on our own terms. We try to control what is not meant to be controlled. But true love and deep relationships, whether with a person or with nature, cannot exist under the weight of conditions and control. The myth of Davy Jones and Calypso (Pirates of the Caribbean) expresses this painful truth.

    Calypso, the goddess of the sea, and Davy Jones, a mortal sailor, fell in love.

    Calypso rewarded Davy Jones by giving him the sacred task of ferrying souls who died at sea to the world beyond. Jones agreed to set foot on dry land once every ten years. If the love between him and Calypso was true, his task would be complete.

    Calypso, like the seas, was fickle and unpredictable. After ten years, Jones went ashore, but she was not there. This meant Jones would have to ferry souls for another ten years. He refused.

    Years later, when Calypso was imprisoned, the lovers finally met again.

    Davy Jones approached her cell and said, “Ten years, I devoted to the duty you charged me. Ten years, I looked after those who died at sea, and finally, when we could be together again, you weren’t there. Why weren’t you there?”

    “It is my nature,” said Calypso. “Would you love me if I was anything but what I am?”

    As painful as her words are, they are beautifully honest. Only free things can be loved. Machines, things under our control, cannot. We can only truly love beings, and beings are unpredictable.

    If we refuse to love a person unless they’re predictable, we’ll never love them. People are inherently unpredictable. And to truly love someone is to love them as they are.

    True love is unconditional. The moment it becomes conditional, it ceases to be love, and instead becomes a transaction; I’ll give you my love only if you are predictable. True love is far greater. True love is given without any expectation of repayment or even the expectation that it will be accepted.

    While Davy Jones’s story is a cautionary tale about conditional love, the ultimate example of unconditional love can be found in Jesus Christ’s Passion. Christ gave his life to redeem the sins of humanity without any expectation that humanity would accept this redemption. We’re entirely free to deny it. He knew many would deny it, and gave it anyway.

    Davy Jones was the opposite. He ferried souls to the afterlife not as an unconditional gift to Calypso, but so that she would be with him. When she wasn’t there, he stopped ferrying souls. His “love” for her was closer to the love a client has for his prostitute. In other words, he didn’t love her. He was paying her for an intimate relationship by ferrying souls to the world beyond.

    While it’s definitely not cool that Calypso didn’t hold up her end of the agreement, it also was against her nature to make such an agreement in the first place. And if Davy Jones had truly loved her, he would have loved her true nature, not her as he wanted her to be.

    So, what does the weather have to do with all of this? Well, for one, we saw weather as fickle and unpredictable, like Calypso, until we developed meteorology. And like Davy Jones, we refused to accept the unpredictable nature of it. Instead of loving it as the living thing it was, we took away its ability to surprise us. We turned it into something that could not be loved.

    By forecasting the weather, on-demand, we can be inflexible and unrelated to it. If it’s going to be hot outside, we can plan to be in an air-conditioned room all day, ignoring the heat. We don’t need to adapt as much. We don’t need to be surprised by it. We can, to a large degree, disconnect from the weather as it truly is; wild, natural, beautiful.

    Of course, we can’t totally control the weather. We can’t make it rain. By avoiding the heat, we’re still reacting to the weather. But not as deeply, not as personally. We don’t have to go outside and look at the sky to guess if it might rain. We just look at some data on a screen.

    It’s a subtle change in the relationship. But relationships are everything, and subtle doesn’t mean negligible.

    There are different levels of relationship. One of the deepest levels is what sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls resonance. At its core, resonance is about the quality of our relationship with the world; whether with nature, other people, art, work, music, ideas, or even with ourselves. Resonance is a level of relationship that opens us to that sense of awe we feel when we really see a beautiful work of art or someone helping a neighbor in need.

    According to Rosa, when we resonate with something, it calls us. But if we control a thing, then we cannot be called by it. It can only do what we allow it to do, and so it can never surprise us. And if it can’t surprise us, it can’t call us, and then we can’t resonate with it. We can’t relate to it on that deeper level. Instead of relating like lovers, we relate transactionally, like Davy Jones and Calypso.

    Weather is a wild, living thing, but by constantly knowing what it’s about to do, we blind ourselves to its ability to surprise us the way a wild or living thing can. It’s a shallow way to relate to anything, but especially something as wonderful as the weather.

    That’s why I deleted the weather app from my phone. Not because I’ll never look at a forecast again, but because I want to deepen my relationship with the weather itself. I want to be surprised by it. I want to resonate with it.

    Davy Jones made the mistake of demanding certainty from something that was never meant to be certain. He only wanted love if he could predict its shape. But love, whether for a person or for the living world, is always given into mystery.

    Weather is like that. It’s wild, fickle, alive. To stand in its presence without trying to reduce it to a chart or a number is to allow wonder back in.

    We might get caught in storms, but we’ll also be caught by awe.

    That, I think, is the better forecast.

  • Beauty or Comfort? How a Conservatory Visit Changed My Perspective

    Beauty or Comfort? How a Conservatory Visit Changed My Perspective

    A trip to Phipps Conservatory and the wonders of real world beauty.

    I almost stayed home last night. I almost spent the night in front of my laptop, being “productive.” My sister asked me to visit Phipps Conservatory. I said, “no.” But after the idea bounced around in my head for an hour or two, I changed my mind. After dinner, we ventured out into Phipps’ world of natural beauty and wonder.

    But first we had to get through brutally cold temperatures, winter’s darkness, and a little snow. Those discomforts initially deterred me. It seemed easier to keep hibernating. I’m glad I braved the winter weather because, well, the incredible beauty waiting inside was worth every shiver. Here’s a taste of what I was in for.

    Yet, if I had seen that picture before I went, it probably wouldn’t have swayed me. It’s a cool picture, but it doesn’t capture the incredible smells in each of the conservatory buildings. The one where trees were in bloom smelled like a spring day. The one full of ferns smelled like summer trips to my grandfather’s cabin. The air was fresh and light, a reminder that digital media simply cannot capture the fullness of such beauty.

    It makes me wonder if, by spending so much time in the digital world we are losing something important. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the internet and cool productivity tools and connecting with old friends online. But there’s not much room there for real, tangible experiences, moments that fill life with awe and wonder. I must have said, “I wonder…” thirty times while my sister and I walked around the conservatory.

    The dessert room, with its strange cacti creeped me out a bit. I wonder what’s inside those big round ones.

    The intricate bonsai trees left me in awe. I wonder how many years the artist spent shaping such masterpieces.

    My sister said these orchids look like those jumping frog toys. To me, they look like alien spiders. I wonder what planet they came from.

    I wonder, when was the last time you stepped away from your screen to experience something real, something you could see, smell, or touch?

    For the past couple weeks, I had been hibernating, working on projects, working hard to become successful and wealthy, reading books and blog posts, watching YouTube videos, organizing my task lists and goals and bookmarks and files, listening to lo-fi music, and hibernating. And all that stuff is great. They even had lo-fi music playing at the conservatory too. It set the vibe nicely. And while no photo can replicate the smells and textures of real life, sharing this experience online reminds me how both worlds can intersect to inspire and connect.

    But, man, am I glad I ended up saying “yes” to visiting the conservatory with my sister. The real, tangible experience of beauty touches the soul in ways that bits and bytes cannot. Not only did the little trip refresh me, it reminded me why life is such a wonderful gift. It renewed my heart. It gave me a fresh perspective.

    I hope you have the opportunity to get out into the world and experience real beauty sometime, and soon. Maybe you can take a trip to a conservatory near you. Or maybe you can visit a museum. Or maybe, at least, you can go for a walk and pause for a moment to wonder, to let awe and curiosity renew your heart, just as it did mine.

  • Our Bodies Are Not Just Avatars

    Our Bodies Are Not Just Avatars

  • The Drive Home

    From city to farm,
    The horizon tears open.
    The blue sky spills out.