The Iron Sulfide World Hypothesis Solution to a Lingering Depression
It’s an ailment of aging. It’s the melting polar ice caps. And/or it’s the suburban sprawl that seems to extend forever and relentlessly, right to the property line of an ancient canyon like Zion National Park. The bus line of selfie-taking knackered tourists to access the scenic view doesn’t help either, nor the plastic wrappers on the ground.
I’ve found myself depressed in recent years from a culmination that is both internal and external.
I’m sure it’s inevitable, as we age, and the glitter of new experiences wears off of adventurous travel, wild outdoor objectives, epic sailing adventures, and late nights with friends. Much of that subsides as I focus on the next chapter of my life (parenting and ensuring I get a full 8 hours of sleep) and greatly diminishes those capacities. So I know it’s half me.
But it’s also an external observation: I’ve slept on glaciers as a kid in the California Sierra that are no longer there. The direct flight from my home city to major hubs around the world makes me feel like I’m being ushered through the corridor of some industrial complex when I land on the other side of the planet to find a Starbucks, McDonalds and it all looks the same (especially if I didn’t get a window seat). The remotest of mountain summits, or far away exotic countries and I’m met with the road that goes up the back, or my hometown neighbor drunk and chanting USA, USA, USA. There are less visible stars each year and a meat-eating complex that is ravaging the world’s lungs (the Amazon).
The childhood dreamer in me, the Indiana Jones version, fantasized this wild, expansive and vast world. A place where life formed in a primordial soup of lava pools, of dinosaurs eating dinosaurs, of ancient cultures to be found chanting ancient songs as they captured their wild venison or buffalo with a bow and arrow no less. It was mine to go find and to revel in.
The further I went searching for the wild, and the longer time passed, the more I saw a world that felt less tame. A destructive culmination both of my own, and not of my own.
All of it made me sad.
In an effort to find resolve, exploring meditation, learning awareness, finding gratitude and reading more – I came across a book (Deep by James Nestor) that epicly concludes with a final chapter, a scientific discovery of only 20 years or so called the Iron Sulfide World Hypothesis (ISWH). Turns out, scientists know our modern life emerged from the ocean, but what is unclear is how or where that even began. Was it aliens? Was it single cell organisms on a meteor that crashed into Earth? Was it cooked in the crucibles of some ancient primordial soup that has since gone cold?
What ISWH uncovered is that when an iron molecule (rock) and sulfide molecule (molten lava, aka rock) are pressed together with a force that is only possible at the very bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean (like the Mariana Trench) they produce an organic molecule compound.
Did you catch that?
In other words, right now, at this very moment, on this very planet, on this very boring Tuesday, or whatever day it is – two rocks are smashing up against each other and metabolizing (or reproducing?) to create a compound that may be the basis of all life on planet earth.
If the unguided events of 3 billion years were to end today right now, the recipe for creating it all over again (granted some massive meteor crashes helped us smaller mammals over dinosaurs, and we humans are making it very compelling for cockroaches and jellyfish of the future)… That recipe is with us right here, at this very moment, happening right now.
This is the wildest thing imaginable, the beginning of life on planet Earth isn’t locked up in some prehistoric era when the world was primitive and it is now somehow lost in the tameness of the modern age. But rather, despite constant bleak news, a feeling of crapulous singularity or the homogenization and destruction of diversity we see in the present, at this very same moment, the conditions are ALSO present for the most unimaginable magic to occur: The basis of life, the basic building blocks, the grandparents of a billion diverse living things that would be born in the billions of years to come are with us right now right here.
This is a revelation to me, that has helped me transform. Help me to be re-inspired, and reengaged with what the world is. Despite the canopy jungle being a concrete jungle now, it’s a wild and sacred jungle nonetheless.
The world is what we make it. We are unaware of so much, but it is irrefutable that we are swimming in the ancient living guts of an exploding and dynamic universe. I don’t need to travel next spring to see the Eiffel Tower to affirm this.
And that has made me happy.