A Flat Earth Manifesto

Henry Crabb Robinson [a journalist who knew William Blake was stunned when] Blake announced: ‘I do not believe that the world is round. I believe it is quite flat.’

Mark Vernon. Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination (p. 69). C. Hurst & Co., 2025 (Kindle Edition).

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All the guests that evening were suddenly called to dinner, and Robinson did not have an opportunity to ask Blake to explain himself. This anecdote hangs in his biographical record simply as one of many fantastical things William Blake said and did. Some of those Blake anecdotes are likely apocryphal, and this one--even though it is from a reliable source--is a strange assertion by Blake because it contradicts not only what was common knowledge for the educated people that he was surrounded by, but it is also contrary to what he knew to be true. If he was in earnest, and I believe he was, we can to try to understand how Blake understood the world or even what he meant by the words "Earth" and "flat," but ultimately, to understand this counter-factual statement, we must be willing to take an imaginative leap away from what we now take for granted.

Blake was hostile to many rationalist ideas about the world, but he was not anti-science, nor was he a contrarian who rebelled just for the sake of getting a reaction, nor was he a fabulist who uncritically took on niché ideas; rather, he was suspicious of people who thought that science would solve all our problems and that it could be used to answer any and every question. Moreover, Blake was a sensible man, but one who insisted on the primacy of subjective and imaginative experience and someone who gave his sense of wonder free rein. Mark Vernon says as much in his biography of Blake, and he claims in this particular anecdote that Blake was asserting the unique experience of being on earth. Blake claimed the world was flat because he thought being on earth--and all that entailed--should not be regarded objectively, as if one merely existed on this sphere surrounded by a vast number of other celestial objects.

‍ ‍And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place, standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe. And on its verge the Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow To meet the flat Earth & the Sea in such an order’d Space. The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold. And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move Where’er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss. Such are the Spaces called Earth & such is its dimension. As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner As of a Globe rolling thro’ Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.

A Flat Earth Manifesto

We no longer will live under the abstract idea of an infinite sky, nor transcend the present through a virtual existence. We will live wholly within this uniquely remarkable world with the singular beauty that the Earth presents to our immanent senses.

We reject the Anti-science “Flat Earthers” who would refute the authority of science in pseudo-scientific ways, and darkly insinuate a conspiracy as if they alone hold the truth. The Earth is flat not due to an error in fact, but due to an error in exegesis.

We reject the absurdity of living on the Moon or Mars and instead find value and virtue guarding and sustaining the quality of life right under our feet. We reject monetizing each moment and optimizing each experience. These distractions only draw us away from being within the orbit of our actual lives.

We will leave off shopping for cherries in Winter and more patiently await our own harvest. Our horizons will not stretch out endlessly till East becomes West and North becomes South; rather, we will belong in the place we now stand, and wholly exist within and love, what is given to this time.