Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
Un-conditioning our minds by taking a few big steps back from the canvas is freeing
We are pretty remarkable as a species, despite the fact that we are genetically 99% chimpanzees. Not only have we managed to conquer the planet but we have also unraveled many secrets of the multiverse. It requires both a ruthlessly self-involved and humble primate to achieve those feats. This post is about breaking out of that self-involvement to live a more thoughtful life.
TOO SELF-INVOLVED
In a capitalist world order and the age of constant over-sharing enabled by mobile computing and social networks it is really easy to lose track of what is really important. Constant invitations to try and buy as well as unending feeds full of selfies, ostentatious material displays, and humble brags seem to bombard us from all sides. It's only natural that we cave in and drift off into the ignorant misapprehension that life revolves exclusively around our little world of superficiality and excess. This cycle of egocentricity and consumption forever continues through the constantly reaffirming nature of these platforms and the popular media.
Of course, we are meat bags after all - minds manifested in physical bodies with primal needs, so a certain level of self-involvement is built into the machine. I am not suggesting we should live a completely selfless and ascetic life but taking a few steps back would help us to be less egocentric or dare I say less anthropocentric. With this in mind here are a few truths that I remind myself of on a daily basis to help me gain some perspective.
TIME
This Universe is 13.7 Billion years old. Our planet is 4.5 Billion years old. Homo Sapiens has been around roughly 200.000 years. Civilization is roughly 50.000 years old. The average life expectancy in the developed world is around 80 years. We are but merely a fleeting blip in this cosmic symphony.
SPACE
This Universe is pretty big. Our Sun belongs to the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone. Outside that, there are millions upon millions of other galaxies. It's hard for primate brains to visualise such numbers so let’s leave it at: the universe is ridiculously big and the little speck of dust that we call home is pretty insignificant in light of this scale.
COSMIC EVOLUTION
Billions of years of random cosmic physics has given rise to stars and planets. On these planets the elements that have been created in baking ovens of stars start reacting, thus giving us chemistry. On even fewer of these planets this chemistry through a process yet unknown to us somehow becomes so complex that is gives rise to biology in form of single celled organisms, which eventually evolve to billions of so called conscious beings. The universe through a very long chain of cosmic and biological evolution gave rise to us. This is the greatest story of all and should make us feel special.
RANDOMLY LUCKY
The fact that we are alive and exist is very very unlikely and we are extremely lucky to be here. This should by no means invoke the belief in a personal God but rather remind us that our existence is a cosmic accident. 99% of all species that have lived on mother earth have gone extinct and we have to be careful to not meet that same fate.
BABY CIVILISATION
Following from all this is that the universe is not made for us. Homo Sapiens is not the goal of this cosmic experiment. With modern civilisation being around for 14.000 years we haven't really proven that we are going to stick around forever. So it’s quite absurd to assume there has to be meaning in any human sense for anything.
MOTHER EARTH
We are living on a rocky crust that is floating on a molten core surrounded by a faint but life preserving atmosphere hurling through the dark vacuum of space at around 100.000 km/h. There isn't much around us that we can easily reach that looks very inviting, so for the time being we are stuck on this wonderful blue planet. While most of the climate change debate focuses on "saving the planet", we should be real and know that it’s actually about saving our civilisation. That is what is at stake here! As a matter of fact, if we disappeared tomorrow the planet would rebound in a couple of million years and be in better shape than ever - without us. So let's thank mother nature for our existence (figuratively speaking) and understand that we can only survive with a healthy eco system that can sustain our parasitic race.
CIRCLE OF EMPATHY
At this stage it's quite hard to debate the legitimacy of the theory of evolution without looking like a fundamentalist. Taking into consideration the remarkable journey of life and the fact that all life on this planet, yes all life, has descended from that first magical cell which lived 3.5 billion years ago, one has to question our treatment of other species. There are numerous studies that show empathy in mammals including chicken, pigs and cattle. Yes, animals that humans eat actually feel emotional equivalents of fear, aggression, pain and maybe even love. The reality is that our global industrial mass production of meat is not only environmentally prohibitive but also equates to cross species holocaust. We should instead celebrate our kinship with animals and expand our circle of empathy beyond cats and dogs.
WE ARE FAMILY
Every human being that we see in our every day life is related to us. Our most recent common female ancestor, the Mitochondrial Eve, lived just 200.000 years ago. What's even more remarkable is that every human being's DNA is 99.9% identical. A measly 0.1% of genetic difference creates the beautiful diversity of our primate race. Further, the concept of six degrees of separation suggests that we are connected to every other human being through six steps (according to a Facebook study the more accurate number is actually 4.7). That means we know both the street kid in Mogadishu and Barack Hussein Obama through 4.7 links. Given this level of connectedness no one is actually really a stranger and we should be a lot nicer to one another.
RESPONSIBILITY
You are reading this while sitting in a house with electricity and running water. Even though you might doubt the credibility of the political leaders in your country, you hopefully feel safe on the streets of your city and do not fear to be persecuted for reasons related to your sex, ethnicity, skin colour, denomination or sexual orientation. The sad reality is that you are among the privileged few: 2.4 Billion live on less than 2 USD a day. What's even more depressing is that 20.000 people die of hunger every day (that's about 6x the casualties of 9/11 a day), most of which are children. We are a lucky few, we should be aware of it and we should accept the responsibility that comes with it.
LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE
While for a bunch of primates it might really seem as if we know a lot about the world and universe we live in, this could not be further from the truth. There are many important and essential things that we still don't understand. By the way, this is the amazing thing about the scientific method, we can be honest about lack of knowledge and try to create hypotheses and models that are based on experiments to prove those. So even though we might think we know anything about something remember it's the mark of an educated person to know the extent of one's own ignorance. That ultimately makes the pursuit of knowledge one of the most worthwhile things to dedicate ones life to.
CONCLUSION
Reminding ourselves of all this on a daily basis might be initially daunting. I assure you that after a while it becomes relieving. In a capitalist system that is based on creating dissatisfaction so that we buy the newest unnecessary thing to fill the empty void the rat race leaves us with, our view of reality is constantly distorted. There are some real problems that we are facing as a global tribe and we can only solve them with a lot more awareness and a lot less narcissism.
Un-conditioning our mind by taking a few big steps back from the canvas every day to raise to the full height that is demanded by our dignity and intelligence will make us better human beings.