Things are constantly moving toward other things. At this moment, our entire Milky Way galaxy is hurtling at 370 miles per hour toward the massive Hydra Centaurus supercluster, drawn by the force of gravity.
Isaac Newton discovered that gravity is relational. Objects are attracted to one another depending on their mass and their distance from one another.
Gravity is what environmental philosopher (object-oriented philosophy) Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject—something so ubiquitous and so widely distributed across time and space that we can’t entirely wrap our minds around it.
Climate change is a hyperobject. It’s everywhere. It can’t be isolated to a locality or a single event, and it doesn’t make sense as a phenomenon without taking into account its relationship with everything else—most of all people.
Desire is the most overlooked hyperobject of all. It’s so easy to overlook because it’s not external to us. It exists within us and in the space between people. Mimetic desire is the hyperobject hidden since the foundation of the world.