From Survival to Understanding

Today is the winter solstice, and it is also Rush Day. If you are a Rush fan, you already know why. If not, I wrote about it last year, and I will link to that entry again because it still holds up. Shortest day of the year, longest night, and for Rush fans, 2112 Day. That combination alone is enough to make my brain start wandering, which is pretty much the entire point of these logs and possibly a design flaw.

The solstice is one of those rare moments where the universe does something noticeable on a human timescale. The Sun rises lower in the sky. The days shorten. The shadows stretch out like they are trying to escape. Then, after today, the pattern reverses. The light slowly starts coming back. This is not symbolic. It is measurable. Axial tilt. Orbital mechanics. Predictable to the minute, which is more than I can say for most human systems.

I think about this every year because it helps explain something that often gets oversimplified or mocked. Early humans were not stupid. They were observant. If your survival depended on crops growing, animals migrating, and not freezing to death, you paid very close attention to the sky. When the days kept getting shorter, colder, and darker, it probably looked like the Sun was dying. When that decline stopped and reversed, it looked like a victory worth celebrating. If that sounds familiar, it should. That basic story shows up all over human mythology.

From that perspective, ancient religions did not appear out of nowhere. They were attempts to explain and influence the most important force in a pre-scientific world. Humans did not worship the Sun because they were ignorant. They worshipped it because it controlled everything in their universe. Food. Warmth. Time. Survival. When your life expectancy is measured in decades and winter can kill you, you do not shrug at astronomy. You build rituals around it. After all, we are only immortal for a limited time.

That is why structures like Stonehenge were not accidents. You do not haul massive stones across miles of terrain and line them up with solar events for fun. That is engineering, just without PowerPoint, forklifts, or project managers. Primitive by our standards, sure, but intentional. The same goes for pyramids, temples, and calendars across completely separate cultures. People noticed the same patterns and reached similar conclusions because they were all looking at the same sky.

What early belief systems offered were frameworks for understanding a world that felt dangerous, unpredictable, and often hostile. Stories helped people explain patterns, preserve knowledge, and pass down rules for survival long before science, writing, or formal education existed. Over time, some of those stories solidified into traditions, traditions into institutions, and institutions into systems of power. That transition, from shared explanation to enforced certainty, is usually where things start to get complicated, which humans are exceptionally good at.

This idea always reminds me of a TNG episode called Who Watches the Watchers. In it, a pre-warp civilization accidentally observes advanced Starfleet technology and begins interpreting it as divine intervention. Picard is very clear that this does not make them foolish. It makes them human. When people encounter forces they can observe but not yet explain, belief fills the gap. The episode treats that process with empathy, not ridicule, and makes the same point history does: understanding usually comes later.

This is also where my own perspective tends to diverge from modern religious movements, particularly the ones that treat belief as something to be enforced rather than explored. I have no trouble understanding why belief once played such an important role in helping people make sense of the world. Where I get uncomfortable is when belief is asked to take precedence over evidence in the present day. We have learned a lot since those early stories were first told. Science did not replace meaning, but it did give us better tools for understanding how things actually work. The solstice is a good example. It no longer inspires fear or mystery, but understanding it has not made it any less interesting. If anything, it has made it more impressive, at least to people who enjoy knowing how things work.

At the same time, I understand why so many people find meaning in tradition. Celebrating the return of light, gathering with family, sharing meals, and marking time together are deeply human things, and they connect us across cultures and centuries. Those rituals can be comforting, grounding, and genuinely joyful, especially when good food is involved. Where I personally start to hesitate is when belief hardens into certainty, and certainty starts driving decisions that ignore evidence or cause real harm. That balance matters to me, and I try to stay mindful of it.

There is also a quiet irony today that I enjoy. While we are marking the shortest day up here, Antarctica is experiencing its longest days of the year. Penguins are probably just as aware of that seasonal shift as any ancient human ever was, and likely better dressed for it. They live by rhythms and patterns that matter for survival, even if they do not write them down or build stone circles about them. And somewhere along the way, I like to imagine there are a few very serious penguin scientists quietly keeping track of it all. Further research is clearly required.

So today I will enjoy Rush Day, appreciate the turning of the planet, and quietly thank the scientists who helped us understand what is actually going on out there. The Sun did not die. It will continue to brighten our skies for a few billion more years. We just needed a few thousand years to figure that out.

LLAP
RR