THE IDEA
WHY SALT?
THE UNSEEN BILLIONS: OUR GLOBAL FAMILY
THE SALT PERSPECTIVE
THE COLOR OF SALT
| THE IDEA |  |
The idea of the Salt Monument is simple; a clear cube holds nearly seven billion grains of salt---one tiny grain for each and every person in the world today. Every day, grains of salt are added for each of those born in the world that day and grains of salt are dissolved for every person who died that day. As such, the Salt Monument is a testimony to the global family of humanity---a focal point from which to witness, honor, celebrate, and grieve the passages of life and the realities of our world together.
| WHY SALT? | |
Salt is a universal constituent of every human body. If we were to take a drop of blood or sweat or a tear from any person and let it evaporate, we would have a grain of salt which had come from that person's individual living body. Salt has been chosen as the representative element for humanity for many other symbolic, historical, and philosophical reasons:
Salt is a naturally occurring, abundantly plentiful, organic crystal on Earth, found on every continent and in every ocean.
The ocean within us---our blood, sweat, and tears---has the same saltiness as the Precambrian seas from which life began three billion years ago. Salt is absolutely requisite to all life on the planet--- whether single cells or complex organisms. Salt is essential to human life---muscle contractions, nerve impulses, cellular health, even the very beating of our hearts, all depend on the presence of salt.
Because it is so necessary to life, every culture throughout time has deep traditions related to salt---it has affected history, philosophy, and religion, and inspired vast folklore; it has been woven into language and has even served as money. The well-known biblical phrase, salt of the earth, refers to salt as a symbol of simplicity and universality.
Specific to the meaning of the Salt Monument, the formation of salt crystals via the evaporation of ocean water can be symbolically related to birth; the uniqueness and yet similarity of each crystal resembles the paradox of both our individual uniqueness and similarity; and the solubility of salt in water has a symbolic parallel to the dissolution of the body in death.
| THE UNSEEN BILLIONS: OUR GLOBAL FAMILY | |
Combined with our first views of the Earth from space, the increase of worldwide interdependence and advanced communications technology during the past twenty-five years has made it undeniable that we are one humanity living on one planet together. Yet we are woefully lagging behind in assimilating this knowledge into our actions and institutions, continuing instead to operate from the outdated worldview of national entities, economic growth, and ecological disregard. True globalism is still largely considered a controversial concept.
Nonetheless, truly realizing the entire human population comprises a global family is neither trivial nor a mere sentimentality. In our world today and tomorrow, this realization is a necessity for survival.
How do we recognize family? By blood relationship...commonality of ancestry...shared history. According to the fundaments of biology, we know all the beings on Earth comprise a family; the DNA of all humans is universally the same. Certainly it is time for humanity to acknowledge our family-hood.
One of the primary ways a family creates identity and unity is by sharing the passages of life together--- the joys and tragedies, the hopes and disappointments. Families, tribes, and villages the world over, and since the beginning of time, celebrate the birth of their newborn into the world and mourn the death of their loved ones. A sense of family is not created by statistics and intellectual understandings. To bring unity to our global family---our global village---we need new ways to feel and express these same fundamental emotions for the members of our family we may never know and yet with whom our lives are inextricably intertwined.
How do we acknowledge the unseen billions who daily affect and contribute to our lives, who have each witnessed the same sun rise today, breathed the same atmosphere, and who each hold their own life as dearly as you hold yours? How do the few who enjoy lifestyles of security and resource consumption justify disregard for the very real hardship which billions of our family endure every day?
How can we comprehend that over 370,000 women will give birth today? How do we welcome the 135 million newborns who arrive in our family each year? How do we share in the hope each one represents and the challenges each will face? How do we pledge ourselves to their nurturance, their protection, and to the world they will inherit?
And too, how do we honor the multitude who died in our family this year? How do we realize our own inescapable mortality in the face of witnessing their passage from life? How do we mourn our inconsolable grief when, via telecommunications, we helplessly witness the brutality, famine, and disease which claim hundreds of thousands of innocent family members?
Finally, how do we responsibly prepare for the realities of a family of nine to eleven billion people in fifty years who will each need a lifetime of food and shelter, meaning and hope?
Our individual and local concerns are so absorbing, most of us simply cannot conceive of the seemingly unrelated lives of seven billion others. And if we do, we may feel overwhelmed and powerless. Yet, when we have truly seen ourselves as one ongoing family, how then might we reconceive our world? How might our actions change when we realize our indifference and ignorance today directly affects our family tomorrow?
| THE SALT PERSPECTIVE | |
Keeping things in perspective---
Ourselves as individuals;
Ourselves as a species on this planet at this moment in time;
The infinite enormity of the mysterious microcosmos;
Our existence in an incomprehensibly vast universe;
---Is increasingly difficult amidst the modern profusion of information and our personal absorption.
Using the simple symbol of a crystal of salt as a starting point,
The salt perspective engages us in an exploration of
Dimensional context and relative scale.
It is hard to comprehend there are almost seven billion people, spread out on a sphere that is nearly 200 million square miles. The salt perspective can help us picture it. When we travel in an airplane at an altitude of 30,000 feet and look down upon the landscape, we see structures and roads as miniaturized evidence of human activity. But from that distance, a human being appears incredibly small---perhaps the size of a single grain of salt. Imagine if, at that altitude, we were to take every human being on the planet, represent each one as a grain of salt, and gather them together in one grouping. We would end up with about a cubic yard (27 cubic feet) of tiny grains of salt. Perhaps to so reduce humanity and render us inanimate seems unfamiliar, but it allows an unlimited extension of understanding.
We have, for example, grown accustomed to the reduction of our huge, life-filled Earth into an inert, fourteen-inch ball. A globe has become a familiar model of our planet, which simultaneously fulfills a virtually endless array of applications.
So it is with the Salt Monument as a model of the human race. In a series of interactive exhibits and examples of scale which accompany the Monument, we can explore understandings and perspectives otherwise incomprehensible to us. For example:
Our body: If a grain of salt represented one cell of our body, it would take about ten thousand Salt Monuments filled to the current level to represent the sixty trillion cells which make up one human body.
Life on Earth: If every grain of salt in the Salt Monument today stood for one year, this would represent about the number of years the Earth has been a planet. Find the two billion marker on the cube. That would represent when single-cell life first emerged on Earth. Find the four billion marker on the cube. That would represent when sponges---the first multi-cellular life--- began. Find the 4.5 billion marker on the cube. That would represent the first appearance of human-type creatures. One-quarter cup of salt would represent the past 350,000 years of human life on Earth, long before recorded history. Less than one teaspoon of all the salt currently in the Salt Monument would represent the 12,000 years of known human history in the context of the history of the Earth.
Our galaxy: If a grain of salt represented our Sun or any average star, the next nearest star would be another tiny, grain of salt fully nine miles away! It would take about forty Salt Monuments filled to the current level to represent the number of suns or stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. To model the size of our Milky Way, we could take that 68,000 pounds of salt and spread those 260,000,000,000 individual grains throughout a circle that was 210,000 miles in diameter.
| THE COLOR OF SALT | |
An individual grain of salt is a clear, cubic crystal which appears starkly white when viewed from a distance and in a grouping. Some people may wonder: If we are representing all of humanity, all of whom come in many varying skin colors, why not use a substance of various colors? Everyone is not white. In fact, as the Salt Monument graphically and unforgettably demonstrates in the perspective exhibits, the vast majority (more than 90%) of humanity is of color! Yet, if we compare a presumably white person's skin to the color of salt, we will clearly see there is no correlation. No one's skin is the color of salt. The usage of the term white for a person is inaccurate and has arisen as a discriminatory term. Besides, the appearance of the color of our epidermis is one of the most superficial and least enduring aspects of our physical bodies.
The blood of every human being is red. The bones of every human being are white. The tears of every human being are salty.
To focus on our humanity---the very purpose of the Salt Monument---we must go deeper, much deeper, than external appearances. We must go deeper than the surface differences not only of skin color, but also the equally superficial distinctions of age, gender, occupation, beliefs, possessions, and more. None of these differentiations universally define us as human beings. We have focused on such differences for millennia. They have not, they do not, they will not, bring unity because they focus on disparity. We have many ways to categorize ourselves. Our diversity is evident, deserving of celebration and the teachings of tolerance. Yet what happens when we counterbalance our habitual recognition of our dissimilarities with the equally valid representation of our similarities?
At the core of every person's body is a frame of bones, closer in color to salt than anyone's skin and far more enduring. If you examine the remains of a million people around the world, of whatever skin color and whether from a million years ago or five hundred or fifty, you will find only their skeletons--- their white bones.
Scrape a few beads of sweat from the brow of any person in the world; let it dry and you will have a crystal or two of salt. Gather a few tears of sorrow as they fall from the eyes of any person on the planet---whatever their skin color, their age, their nationality, their religion, their economic status, their gender. When the water has evaporated, a crystal of salt will remain. Distill the blood or urine of any person, and salt crystals will appear.
It is time for us to find ways to embrace our human beingness, in addition to our unlikeness. To recognize our similarities, along with our dissimilarities. To celebrate our connectedness, instead of our separation. To acknowledge our inner depth, rather than external appearances.
