Rising. Elizabeth Rush
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night as I lie in bed, I remember a Hindu fable about the origins of the universe. It says that every four billion years a flood completely dissolves the earth. Vishnu returns after the deluge in the form of a tortoise. On his back he places Mount Mandara, which serves as a churning rod around which he wraps a snake. Gods and demons grab hold of opposite ends. They tug against each other. The rod turns. The ocean roils, releasing amrita, the nectar of life. And the great earthly dance begins again.
I think then of a perversion of the story popularized during the British colonization of India. It picks up where the original left off and is often recalled as a conversation between an Englishman and an Indian sage.
Question: What does the great tortoise whose back supports the world rest upon?
Answer: Another turtle.
Question: And what supports that turtle?
Answer: Ah, sahib, after that it’s turtles all the way down.
I think the exchange is designed to poke fun at the Hindu religion and also at any argument built upon an infinite regression. But I have always been inclined to find some truth in this tale of turtles upon turtles, supporting our earth. When I hear the line “It’s turtles all the way down,” I don’t balk. Humans are nothing more than atoms come together to make life. The things we eat, the air we breathe; it is all made of the same manna. I think of the seagulls and the clams, and wonder what happens to the seagulls when the clams can’t make their shells. What happens to Mount Mandara and the sea of milk if the tortoise’s back dissolves in an acidic ocean? Perhaps when it dissolves, the world floods and the cycle starts again. Perhaps that is what is happening right in front of us, right now.
Pulse
South Florida
IN 1890, JUST OVER SIX THOUSAND PEOPLE LIVED IN THE damp lowlands of south Florida. Since then the wetlands that covered half the state have been largely drained, strip malls have replaced Seminole camps, and the population has increased a thousandfold. Over roughly the same amount of time the number of black college degree holders in the United States also increased a thousandfold, as did the difference between the average salaries of CEOs and the workers they employ, the speed at which we fly, and the combined carbon emissions of the Middle East.
About sixty of the region’s more than six million residents have gathered in the Cox Science Building at the University of Miami on a sunny Saturday morning in 2016 to hear Harold Wanless, or Hal, chair of the geology department, speak about sea level rise. “Only seven percent of the heat being trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the atmosphere,” Hal begins. “Do you know where the other ninety-three percent lives?”
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