What an eclipse brings to light
Monday’s solar eclipse will be a giant mingling of diverse strangers across America. The shared experience will reflect the shared values often eclipsed in the nation’s politics.
People on top of The Empire State Building in New York City watch a solar eclipse in 2017.
Reuters
Like peas in a pod, the sun, moon, and Earth will line up April 8 to cast a 115-mile-wide shadow moving from Texas to Maine. The rare solar eclipse is expected to bring more people together than the Super Bowl or perhaps the Fourth of July. Small towns are putting on their best hospitality for millions of visitors from the cities. In Ohio, the Knox County Association for Remarkable Citizens plans to bring together people with and without disabilities for an inclusive community experience (picnic included).
For just a few minutes, a cosmic spectacle across North America will create a great mingling of diverse strangers. Political divisions will seem trivial compared with the heavenly wonder. “This year’s eclipse, I pray, just might nudge our fractured nation in a hopeful, unified direction,” wrote David Baron, former chair in astrobiology at the Library of Congress, in The Washington Post.
The awe of an eclipse is known to elicit the best in viewers – who wear the proper shaded glasses. A study of a 2017 eclipse in the United States by the University of California, Irvine found people were less self-focused, more social, and more humble, based on social posts at the time.
This moment of a cohesive America, however, may reflect a reality that itself is often eclipsed by politics and the news media. Americans actually have a pretty faulty belief that they are more divided than they are told, according to deep-dive surveys of private opinion by the think tank Populace.
“Across race, gender, income, education, generation, and 2020 presidential vote, there is stunning agreement on the long-term national priorities that Americans believe should characterize America,” Populace has found.
There is remarkable consensus on priorities such as health care, community safety, criminal justice reform, and infrastructure. Action on climate change is ranked third in priorities; yet when asked what most other Americans would believe, people say climate action only ranks 33rd.
In other words, on many issues, there is a false polarization that could evaporate with more honesty. That’s not the case on a few issues, such as illegal border crossings, abortion, and a living wage. Yet somehow, Americans just do not realize that other people want most of the same things that they want.
“We have this sense of our civil society sort of breaking down and that maybe people just don’t care anymore, and it’s not true,” Todd Rose, CEO of Populace, told the Class Disrupted podcast. “I just don’t see how we solve our problems when we’re keeping quiet about the things that matter most to us.”
The Populace surveys find Americans choose character attributes over public status. By a supermajority, they want to be involved in a community – even if only a third are engaged in their community at the level they want.
Perhaps it takes the shared experience of a solar eclipse to shed light on what Americans share in values and interests. People do really want to get along. For a few minutes on April 8, they will see how it can be done.