The Big Picture
The Universe might be a meaningless void but is it really?
COVID has done much to shatter our preconceived perceptions of the world. It has left us isolated and has brought misery and despair to millions across the globe. Unsurprisingly we have seen the rise of many people become nihilistic and feeling that life has no real meaning. The following piece was adapted from 2018 piece I did for my philosophy class. I believe that its message of looking at the “big picture” and assigning meaning when things feel meaningless is more relevant now than in 2018. I hope it makes you ponder more about the universe and feel better during these trying times.
As a lifelong learner I occasionally spend some time in solemn contemplation asking rhetorical and existential questions about the world around me. What is reality? What is knowledge? What gives an object worth? I attribute this behavior of mine to the calling I have to be a smart, reliable, and dependable intellectual. I don’t desire it for avarice, but out of the altruistic calling, to expand the horizons of my fellow peers. However I came to realize there is one question that I haven’t asked myself recently, and that is where I want to start this diatribe with.
What do we live for in our lives on Earth, and how does that correlate to our place in the grand tapestry of existence? That is the question that will be at the fundamental heart of this inquiry. Tackling this question will be quite arduous because it invites us to think about a macabre subject matter, which to many may seem unsettling and terrifying. At the same time, this theme also encourages us to think using the vast scale of the universe, beyond the traditional scales we experience on the human level. It propels us to think critically about social norms that dominate modern life, and analyze if they genuinely advance the human condition. I hope that by the end of this piece you will become a more enlightened person, and awake to a truth that is both profound yet petrifying.
Here is a sobering fact: Everyone you will ever encounter in your life will die. Everyone from your parents, siblings, and friends all the way to the stranger you passed on the street. Everyone will meet their respective ends, and there is nothing nobody can do to avert it. A few years after your death most people will forget you, and by a few decades, the last people who still recollected you will soon meet their own demise. At that junction, there will be no one to remember you and most signs that you existed will disappear from the face of the Earth. Even your own body will cease to exist in a few years. All that will remain for the world to know you lived is a decrypt headstone in a neglected section of a cemetery. It is a sad thing, but it is true.
So what do we live for in our few years on this Earth? Let us examine this question by going through the typical life path that is expected of us. We are born, and after a few years, we are sent to school. At school, we learn how to obey other people and learn mostly banal facts. However, our worth and acumen are measured by how well we do at these institutions. Many strive to do their best in order to get a coveted spot at a prestigious university. Society judges us based on the institutions we attend despite the assurances of the contrary by our parents, teachers, or school counselors.
At these institutions of higher learning, we are once again taught how to be pedantic and are forced fed certain ideologies. The difference now is that you are being taught by someone who is deemed to be an “expert” and the exorbitant price tag that comes with it. The expense of college slowly drains you and your family of money, and in some cases causes you to contemplate the value of an education in the first place. We pay so much money and time to fill out the fantasy of improving our self-worth in society. Many will stress out over four, eight or even twelve years to get a fancy paper showing they are “educated.”
Once we leave our educational careers, many of us will go on to the workforce. Here people will spend grueling amounts of times trying to find a spot in this massive social machine. Some will get lucky and find a job they love, but many will not be as serendipitous. They will work in a job that for all purposes makes their college career look like a complete waste of time. They will be morose with their salary, schedule, and their boss. The only joy they will have is the family and friends they have and the hope for a better tomorrow. A tomorrow that for many that will never arrive.
The central aphorism of the workforce is that we voluntary enslave ourselves to a person or group in exchange for money for the right to live. Without money most in society we deem us “indolent” “ deadbeats” “dregs” and even “ waste of a human being.” Most of us will spend our paychecks on clothes, cars, homes, entertainment, and goods that serve no real purpose. However, it is a temporary pleasure they gave us that makes us addicted to purchasing more of these goods and services.
Decades pass, and soon our bodies which were paragons of strength and youth have given away to frail shells. By this time we are phased out the workforce as society filled with younger people around us now deem us “useless” and “old.” We then spend the rest of lives reminiscing about our halcyon youth and attempt to return to a world that is now long gone. As our bodies fail we pay hospitals and doctors money to keep us alive regardless of the cost and pain associated with such effort. However, the fateful time will come when you will no longer be on this Earth. Even when you die, you will still have to pay someone. You may have to pay the hospital where you died or the doctor that that declared your demise. Depending on how you seek to be disposed of, your family will have to pay for a casket to shove your body, or an oven to reduce you to ash. Then they will have to spend thousands of dollars for a spot in the ground or wall where you will lie for rest of eternity.
So what do we live for? The answer is to basically pay other people for the right to exist and then pay other people for the right to be dead. If we don’t play by the rules, we are judged to be a systemic threat and are branded as being “aberrant.” Since the masses are fearful of those, they don’t understand they are accosted by society and are ignored, mocked, and persecuted.
So regardless of your socioeconomic status, intelligence, or ability, you will one day be dead. Depending on your personal belief system death is either the beginning of a new life or a state of eternal oblivion. Regardless of the presence of a afterlife, there is one truth to death: it is final. With death, your entire existence is taken away from the world that you once lived on. The only people who will continue to keep you alive through memory will be your loved ones. However, this is finite as once they all pass you will be subject to the “second death” or the termination of any tangible evidence that can attest that you lived on the planet Earth.
Let me now entertain a opposing argument that argues that life is worth living for the sake of immortal legacies. With that inquiry, I would present you with the Epic of Gilgamesh. As an insecure man Gilgamesh the King of Uruk fears the fact that he will die, and thus seeks immorality. Gilgamesh sets out with his closest friend Enkidu to the Cedar Forest to plunder trees which are forbidden to be touched by mortals. The gods angered by the actions of the duo place a curse on Enkidu as he was one the one who chopped the trees. Enkidu dies, and Gilgamesh is devastated that his closest ally has died, leaving him empty inside.
Gilgamesh then ventures to find Utnapishtim, an elder who survived the cataclysmic flood imposed by the gods. After going through an odyssey of trials, Gilgamesh arrives at the adobe of Utnapishtim and argues for the right to enjoy immortality. Gilgamesh fails a test that is given to him by the elder but is given a plant to revives one’s youth. In a comic turn of events, Gilgamesh loses the plant to a serpent of all things and returns empty-handed. However while saddened by the fact that he someday will die, he realizes that his achievements and legacy will continue despite his passing. It is this enduring legacy that he sees as the only means of immortality than any one person can ever aspire to have.
As demonstrated in the Epic it is true that individuals such as Caesar, Washington, Gandhi, and Mandela, live on because of their high stature and leadership. These individuals fought for the right of nations to exist, or championed ideals concerning the dignity of every human person. It is because of the qualities they embodied that scholars continue to study their lives and works. These people are celebrated by contemporary society, and despite being long deceased, they are still remembered in the collective consciousness of humanity. It is this type of immortality that Gilgamesh sought and that many today seek to obtain.
Conversely, individuals such as Nero, Attila, Hitler, and Stalin remain in the human consciousness due to their gross disregard for the lives of their fellow human beings. These individuals committed some of the vilest atrocities ever undertaken on the face of the Earth. People like Hitler vividly remain in the human psyche because of the cautionary tale he offers to human civilization. If we were to ignore the actions of these of beings, we would be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Sadly many seek to use infamy and atrocities to etch their legacy into the stone of human history by committing mass murders, or other terrible acts. It is this type of behavior that continues to plague our society at large.
While many seek the same immortality of Gilgamesh, it is unlikely that any one person will become historically immortal such as the aforementioned people. Billions of people have lived on this world yet only a few thousand find themselves worthy of being in a history book or Wikipedia page. Even if you live on through history, most people will not care. Only a handful of scholars will continue to study your legacy and when they die there is a chance that you may be regulated to a dusty book in the back of a library. In the grand scale of time, there is no difference between you living in the confines of the twenty-first century and our nomadic ancestors living in the last ice age. Your entire existence is a mere few seconds in the grand face of the cosmological clock.
Everyone you have met has lived on the planet Earth. The Earth is no more than a “pale blue dot”when viewed from the grand expanse of the cosmic horizon. Yet it is this pale blue dot where you, your family, friends, people you love, and those you loathed call home. It is the place where you have celebrated birthdays, graduations, triumphs, anniversaries, and funerals. Politicians, dictators, generals, demagogues, and monarchs all have waged war to control a fraction of this dot. All the history, drama, happiness, innovation, development, and progress you and others have experienced are confined to the parameters of this dot. It is solemn to ponder that all of life on Earth can be extinguished in a blink of eye by the press of a red button on the President’s desk.
Let me now offer a thought-provoking hypothetical. As you may know, the solar system is filled with millions of little rocks called asteroids. Many of these minor planets circle the sun posing no threat to our planet. However, there are some that come dangerously close to our blue world. If a big one was to strike the Earth ( which in astronomical probability is a matter of when not if) any sign that humans existed may be scorched off the face of the Earth. Just look at the dinosaurs who reigned over the planet for millions of years. Sixty-five million years ago their entire existence was abrogated when a rock from space impacted in what today is the Gulf of Mexico. For most of human history, nobody knew of the dinosaurs’ existence until an English couple discovered the first dinosaur fossils in 1822.
When an impactor hits the Earth, it has the potential to obliterate all human civilization, all human life, and all life itself. Everything from elephants to the smallest bacterium gone in a wink of an eye. The planet that all known life has called home for billions of years may be reduced to a barren husk similar to the planet Mars. In this barren world there probably will not be any scintilla that life once existed let alone any sign of humanity’s presence. However for as bad as the end of all life on Earth sounds that is not even the bad part.
The most disturbing fact about all life being extinguished on Earth is that the universe will not care at all. It would continue running just as if humanity never existed at all. It will be just like how the Earth kept on humming along after the dinosaurs went extinct. The sun will continue shining, the Earth will continue orbiting, all without a care to the demise of all terrestrial life. There is a potential possibility that an extraterrestrial race may discover one of our old space probes. These cosmic beings may choose to look at the messages we humans have placed in these vessels and wonder about the creatures who constructed such rudimentary devices. Or they could think “ huh, a tin can, oh well, demolish it all, this route needs to be cleared for a stellar bypass.” This brings to light our total insignificance in the grand scheme of things.
However that humorous hypothetical about extraterrestrial life is predicated on the assumption that there is life among the stars. But what if, we were truly alone in the universe? What if Earth was an oasis for intelligent life in a vast barren desert that is the universe? While it is improbable that we are alone in the universe, we tempted to ask ourselves “where is everyone?” If the laws of probability lead us to conclude that alien life is more likely than not to exist why have we not encountered any sign of other civilizations? Probability may point to the existence of extraterristial life but the lack of evidence awakens us to the scope of the vast cosmic arena we find ourselves floating in.
Gazing beyond our planet, our star system is quite insignificant a fact that is harrowing. Our sun is not exceptional in fact there are trillions of stars like it throughout the expanse of space. There are millions of other star systems out there each with planets orbiting their own parent star. Even the Milky Way is not unique with millions of other galaxies dancing across the celestial sphere of the universe. The point of the looking through the lens of the cosmic perspective is that nothing in the universe is extraordinary. Everything from the largest stars to the most massive of black holes is a product of the chaotic forces that govern reality. This leads to the question of how did we get here in the first place? Was it due to the transcendent work of a god, or by fortuitous chance? However, that is an inquiry for another day…
By now you may be in the midst of a daunting existential crisis questioning your place in the unfathomable ocean which we call the universe. However the point of this piece is not to make you depressed, but to make one ponder about something that is beyond the scope of the mundane modern world. We are filled with such arrogance as society as we think the world revolves around us. We spend our lives chasing after fads, following celebrities, and trying to impress other people. At the end of the day however it is not essential. No one will care how many followers you had, the expensive shoes you owned or the car you drove. Once you are six feet under, people will only care if you were a good human being. Even then, memory of you will fade away as time itself passes.
The universe doesn’t care if you went to a prestigious university, had a lucrative occupation, lived in a big mansion, or were famous. At the end of the day, you are just one out of a total of eight billion people who live at the same cosmic address. Any one given person is a mere 0.00000000001% of the entire body of humans that have ever lived on this planet. A percentage so small that it is basically negligible. An average person at best is known by around six hundred people. Of these six hundred people, only a third will personally know you in a meaningful way. And just a fraction of this third will actually interact with you on a frequent basis. That means that when you die around 99.999999% of people in the world will never have known you existed in the first place. In fact, your death will not even be particular given that 170,600 people die each day. The world will continue to march on regardless of your death.
Again this piece is not to dishearten you about life and make you feel inane because no matter what, as long as you think you are worth something you do matter. In fact by the very fact that you are human is a unique prize that you should cherish. You can think, reason, and have self-consciousness. These are the abilities that ninety-nine percent of all life on Earth lack. Most animals have one goal which is to survive to the next day and pass on their genes to the next generation. We as humans do not have to merely endure but can expand and make the most of our ephemeral time on the Earth. We as humans can use our talents to ameliorate the world and bring enjoyment to yourself and others.
While we may live to pay other people for the right to exist, it doesn’t have to be the goal of one’s life. Instead one should make the purpose of our lives to find enjoyment and happiness in a way that is self-fulfilling. It should not be illusionary happiness that is imposed upon us by others or society. If we really want to be satisfied in life, we should break away from the myopic chains imposed on us by others. The ultimate goal of every person should be to make the world a better place than when they entered it. One does not be the next Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Theresa to fulfill this goal. The goal can be achieved by positively impacting the life of a single person. In my opinion, the one’s deportment towards others reveals the true nature of their character. It shows if they are in fact a benevolent person at heart or if they are a nefarious person hiding behind a public persona. The fulfillment of genuinely helping a fellow human being is more significant than anything that can be gained by artificial senseless means.
As I conclude this piece, I ask that all of you to ponder about the perspective you share by being part of the human consciousness. Think about how much good you have actually done to make the world make a better place. Think about how much you have really focused on yourself compared to trying to impress other people. Think about how you want people to remember you, will you be another tombstone in a cemetery or will people celebrate you centuries from now? Even with that said it is hard to ignore how tiny all of this is in the grand totality of the cosmic perspective. Though by looking at the cosmic perspective we can see the magnificent and terrifying scale of our universe. I know it it is hard to see the “big picture”, even I had trouble seeing it. But once you see it you will find there is more to life than you thought.
When you find yourself at the end of the road let it be school, your career, marriage, or life don’t let yourself and others be fraught with melancholy, be happy because it happened…..
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