The Eagle and the Mole

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands…”

 

So goes the first stanza of Tennyson’s wonderfully alliterative poem, The Eagle. One can feel the bird’s grasping claws in the sounds of that first sentence, feel his solitary majesty in the “lonely lands” of the second, feel him surveying the blue world around him, standing erect, tall, and proud in the third. 

 

Recent neurological research suggests that when we look outward to a far horizon, our brain chemistry changes. The grandeur of the eagle in us is activated and fills us with a sense of nobility and expanse of spirit. That’s why we crave views and vista points, are willing to trudge up mountains for that moment when the world lies spread out before us. 

 

What has happened to us, we who now spend our days like moles, with our head down and snouts buried in our tiny phones? If we’re lucky, we might find one fat, juicy worm amidst the creepy crawling creatures of our muddled mediated existences. We become smaller and smaller, rooting around in the dark while the blue sky shines it invitation unheeded above us. 

 

Amidst all the other arguments for regulating our use of our own technological creations, consider the Eagle and the Mole. Who do you want to be today?