Looking at ourselves from a cosmic vantage point, is life devoid of significance?

Question

If we pretend we are gods for a moment, let's saunter out into the belly of the bEast. Let's walk into Welkin, and be among the stars. We're a prodigious distance from Earth, now.

We can look "downward" so to speak upon human beings. They live, suffer, cry, laugh, experience passion, and ultimately perish. But from this strange point of view, life is about as important as a handful of dust.

People expire, but the world keeps turning. The sun will rise tomorrow, even devoid of our glorious, ephemeral presence. So is this viewpoint real, or imaginary?

From this way of looking at things, nobody notices us. We live and die, but the clouds keep crossing the sky without pausing to reflect upon those changes.

Does this mean that Shakespeare was correct in his soliloquy from MacBeth..."tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...?"

In other words, are we just jousting windmills?

Answer 1

Yes, yes!!! Finally someone who agrees with me. I think humans are just too self important sometimes, they feel a need to justify their existence so their lives don't seem merely a waste but really, what's the significance ?? What's the significance of anything??

Answer 2

Religiously speaking life is full of significance. Whether you're living to go to heaven or to not go to hell, or you are living to be reincarnated later, it doesn't matter, you have a purpose. The way you put it though I'd have to say that I agree. Life is nothing more than a cylcle. Let's imagine that the Earth could see whats living in it. I doubt that we would be anything more than what ants are in our eyes. Ants live and they die, and when they die is it of any importance?. Our life would be pretty much the same, only difference is that we are destroying the Earth instead of helping it. Back to the point though, life in the point of view you have presented is indeed devoid of significance. One could say we live to die. However as true as this may be, I still would prefer to live my life as fulfiling as I think it can be, regardless of what the purpose of my life is or what will come after my life becomes just another death. =)

Answer 3

T.S. Eliot wrote in his play "The Cocktail Party," "You never know how good life is until you come to the end of it." Of course, from a cosmic perspective our existences have little long-term significance, other than the passing on of our genes. But we are here---sentient, self-conscious creatures. Why not enjoy the ride? It doesn't last for that long---certainly not from the viewpoint of the stars. "We are lost out here in the stars...little stars, big stars..." But we do have each other. What are significant to me on this globe are grace, charm, kindness, and yes, love. Without those, time really does "creep it's petty pace." Macbeth was world-weary---Don Quixote was delusional. We don't have to be.

Answer 4

To quote Hamlet:
This goodly frame, the earth...this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, ...What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

To quote myself:

I stand atop Camelback mountain in Phoenix, overlooking the Valley of the Sun, and I "watch the sun going down, see the world spinning ‘round."

Scientist
This is nothing but atoms and electromagnetic radiation causing the firing of neurons in my brain.

Preacher
I am just a humble vassal to the Higher Power Who created this.

Philosopher
I am just a speck of dust in the infinite Cosmos.

Pessimist
This is just a fleeting moment. Soon the sun will be down, the darkness will come, I will die.

Let them keep their atoms, their Higher Power, their speck of dust, their fleeting moment. This time and place and feeling is mine!

- http://members.cox.net/jhaldenwang/thyorison.htm

Answer 5

people could debate on that for eternity but why would we youll know when you die, or youll disaper and that lack of knowing is just like knowing,

but you might want to try the view point in the opposite way everything is made of atoms wich is made of positive negative and netural energy, so everything is made of energy but this energy is moving as the electron rotate and orbit and the protons vibrate and eveything so if we are all made of vibrating energy and so are the clouds and the stars then does death evan exist or are we the same thing as a star and all of our emotions and thoughts are just vibrating enegery so if you get as close as you can to vibrating like a start does that mean you are a star

so why debate death and signifagance

Answer 6

How very sad. Hopefully you express love or receive love each day. Is that pointless? If life is very rare in the Universe then perhaps we should contemplate the God that would take time to create us. If life is more common perhaps, we should seek to discover that God and look after one another until we meet the other lives out in the Universe.

Every life is sacred because that person can worship the Creator and search to know Him better.

Answer 7

Reminds me of an old nursery lyric:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The point being rather obvious, I hope. How many elephants have been slain (or saved) by invisible bacteria? How many bacteria have been slain (or saved) by the motion of a single atom? How many atoms have had their positions determined by smaller things yet?

Sometimes, the most insigificant of things can effect the most tremendous of things. Don't count humanity out just yet!

Answer 8

Yes

Answer 9

Eat mushrooms and deliberate these thoughts when clarity returns...you are young and naive of the world as it is..as it is. ".They said:
"You have a blue guitar..you do not play the way things are"
The Man Replied:"The way things are..are changed upon the blue guitar"..-Wallace Stevens.Some Yank poet.You.....

Answer 10

You are confused