The Scale of Things

If the news overwhelms you, re-evaluate what’s important.

From this distance, Sol, our sun, would only be visible with the most powerful of telescopes. Our insignificance is astounding. Yet I suspect it is this very feeling which drives our madness on Earth today.

Whenever I need to gain some perspective, I try to remember where our solar system lies in the overall scheme of things. In the artist rendering above, all that we are, all that we know for certain is within the boundaries of our solar system. Everything outside of that is merely our suppositions of the Universe, as best we can guess from what we have touched here in our tiny corner of it.

The knowledge of humanity, no matter how amazing we like to thing we are, when you see the galaxy represented in this fashion, it reminds me our entire planet is little more than an organic film on the surface of a tiny, muddy, planet which is trying to imagine just how amazing the nature of the Universe truly is.

Have you ever touched something with an algae film on it if you left it in the ocean for a day or so? That’s us at the scale of our galaxy. A slimy byproduct with delusions of grandeur.

Dinosaurs existed on Earth for over 180 million years. Scientists are no longer attributing their reign to being amazing. They suspect dinosaurs were just lucky conditions on Earth supported them evolving so slowly.

And all of our accomplishments could be wiped away in the time it takes our solar system to revolve around the galaxy just one time. 250 million years ago (one galactic revolution from where we sit), we were in the Triassic-era where dinosaurs who would eventually lead us to the highly successful species of the later eras such as the Velociraptor were just evolving; coordinating their efforts, taking down larger prey unaware of their impending demise. They would live long enough to become the apex predators on the planet during the Jurassic-era, who though they had a limited thinking process, most assuredly would have thought, if they could have, there would always be Velociraptors on Earth. 185 million years later in a singular event brought the great dinosaur experiment on Earth to a rapid and relatively permanent end.

Understand this is an incredible span of time for the dinosaurs to have existed. All of human history is still far shorter than even the time from the Triassic-era until the last Triceratops bit the dust in that intervening 185 million years. Humanity has literally existed for the slow blink of a dinosaur’s reptilian eye. 250 million years before that, our planet was in the Cambrian Age and had just evolved into multicellular life.

In the last two trips circumnavigated the galaxy, this trilobite was the premiere form of life on Earth in the Cambrian Age. If you had visited the Earth then, you probably wouldn’t have been impressed…

Our knowledge of all we see, understand and presume is always open to new thought, new experimentation, new ways of dealing with our place in the universe, both real, virtual, augmented, and in ways as yet unimagined.

In one way, nothing we do truly matters at the scale of a galaxy in mind.

But in another way, we can opt to image our efforts could be the most important thing taking place in that moment, since from where we sit, in our current knowledge, there may be no other life in the Universe…

Sit with that for a second.

In the entirety of this vast thing we call the Galaxy, over 100,000 light years across at its widest, 35,000 light years at the thickest points, 100–400 billion stars comprise all that we will likely ever hold significant, this island of stars in a fast receding, ever-expanding Darkness. It is theoretically possible we may be the only life in our galaxy at the moment.

A sad thought, to be sure, given our volatile and mercurial natures. It may be that our efforts to be better, more humane, more civilized, more artistic, more magnificent every day, matter more than you realize. Made more significant because these acts of kindness, of concern, of brutality, of loneliness, of cruelty, of trust — are all built upon a Universe which is trying to see itself.

The very nature of the Universe has come together over billions of years to go from unthinking unfeeling stuff (assuming atoms and molecules are truly unintelligent) to stuff which has reorganized matter, energy, and the transformation of either, until it can perceive itself and wonder exactly what the Universe is capable of being.

You are made of the stuff of the Universe. The atoms of any element in your body heavier than carbon could have only come from the violent death of stars in an act of becoming a supernova. An act of destruction and creation.

This is in all of us. The very power of destruction and creation. We were born from it.

Out in the vastness of the Universe, we are a sentient slime on the surface of a planet looking out into the Darkness and screaming into it:

We are here.

We are alone and terrified. We have invented things to preoccupy us from our fear of being alone. We engage in them ceaselessly because it keeps us from our own understanding of our insignificance.

You are here in the vastness of the Universe, you are unique. You can and do create a statistical difference every place you choose to act.

Say to yourself daily: I am here. For fifty to seventy five years you can make a difference for someone.

You can say: I’m not just a greedy, self-made millionaire who became rich exploiting the labor of my less intelligent, potentially moral coworkers who believed what I said when I told them we were going to change the world but I really just wanted to be rich and party my life away, lording control over my fellow Humans. I am fearful of my insignificance and do everything in my power to push that fear away until the cold hand of Death claims me.

Be free of that fear.

Change the world because you can. Make a difference in the lives of someone in a way that does not demean you, nor devalue them.

It’s possible. We are just too afraid to let go of our preconceived notions about our space in the Universe. We are insignificant. Our notions are too.

What matters is what you do in service of your fellows. Because any action which has a net result in there being the possibility of less life on Earth, less diversity, less beauty, less significance, less meaning, less love, is by definition a failure to the ambitions of an entire Universe.

When enough of us understand this idea, you can make a lasting and meaningful difference in the world. Your words, your actions, your belief, you compassion, you understanding of each other is the action which validates the existence of our slimy film on a planet on the edge of the Galaxy trying to see itself, to understand itself.

To validate itself.

Make a difference because you can. Changing the world is just that simple.

Do it.

The Universe demands it.

Thaddeus Howze is the Answer-Man. He is also a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding.

You can donate to my Paypal at ebonstorm@gmail.com. If you are experiencing a love affair with my work and who doesn’t, you can donate long term to my Patreon account at http://patreon.com/ebonstorm.

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