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Paul Staley: The Four Elements

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Paul Staley says maybe the ancients had it right about the four elements. But when they collide you get – modern California.

Ancient civilizations believed that everything in the world was comprised of just four elements: earth, water, wind and fire. I’ve always liked this idea. It’s certainly easier to remember than the periodic table. A world with only four ingredients has few moving parts and a certain stability and elegance.

In this simple scheme each element had its role. But now we live in a world marked by the havoc caused when these elements no longer stay in their lanes and instead take on the characteristics of another.

In California we’ve always known what happens when earth wants to move like water.  But in recent years our skies have darkened when fire broke free to roam freely like the wind. This winter, water has sought to emulate the earth, covering and burying everything underneath it, and we have seen the wind move with the deadly force of fire, leaving destroyed trees in its wake.

It’s hard not to feel betrayed. We have worked with these four over the millennia to make the world in which we live. Together we built our houses, grew and cooked our food, warmed and cleansed ourselves. But now things feel out of order. There are rivers in the air, lakes that emerge from the earth. Fire has taken over the calendar and declared that it now has its own season.

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Certainly, we can see climate change as the force behind many of these mutations.  The four elements are like ingredients in a sauce pan when the heat is turned up: they start blending into each other. Once that has started, as any cook will tell you, there is no unscrambling them.

And it’s not hard to see who is responsible for this. To do so we need only look into a simple object that we invented thousands of years ago by applying fire to the earth: it’s called a mirror.

With a Perspective, I’m Paul Staley.

Paul Staley lives in San Francisco.

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