The Night Unseen

In the documentary, The City Dark, Neil deGrasse Tyson makes a statement concerning what humans miss out on. The astrophysicist states: “You could live your life at home never looking up … [but] I … submit to you that you’ll be missing a point of view, … a cosmic perspective, because … you’ll start thinking of your own environment as all there is. And if that’s how you think about where you are, then it rises to an artificial level of importance to you, whereas, when you look at the night sky and you realize how smaill we are within the cosmos, its kind of a resetting of your ego. To deny yourself of that state of mind, either willingly or unwittingly, in my judgement, is to not live to the full extent of what it is to be human” (qtd. in City Dark). Neil deGrasse Tyson wanted to point out to everyone how important it is to actually see and know what the sky looks like at night. He says it helps people understand what it is being human.

When a person lives in the city, they don’t see the stars because of all the light. Living in a box is the same thing as not seeing or noticing the night sky’s beauty. The night sky is filled with many things. There are shooting stars, the moon, flying objects, and just the many stars that are there. The people that live in the city are so sucked up in their own environment filled with building and lighted signs. Since they’re so sucked up in that kind of environment the sky is forgotten in the mist of it all the city ruckus. The city life is so concentrated on what is the city that they forget about what is outside of the city itself. On top of that a main point on why that is concerns the sight unseen. In the documentary he looks up and sees a sort of foggy shield blocking most of the stars. In a way this foggy coat creates a bubble tomb over everything. The people living in the city get so used to it that they don’t even look up anymore to see the sky.

People that don’t see the starry night sky loose a point of view that also affects their ego. City people lose the sense of how many important things there are and how small we are compared to everything else in the universe. The view of the night sky relaxes us emotionally and physically. Emotionally the sky helps everyone see something so beautiful and calm that it relaxes us. Physically the night sky helps us as humans or any species know when it’s time to sleep. Also because the sky relaxes people it relives our stress and soothes our mind. The point of view on the night sky can also relate to a person’s ego. When the sky is seen, the realization that there are a lot of things out there and not just us helps us take things into consideration. If we don’t realize that we are caught up in our own view in mind.

The night sky is a big importance to us, but we need to see it to get the full experience.