Do you have any idea how insignificant you really are?

Question

I was at the Greenwich Observatory this weekend. And I was looking around at the space museum that they have. And I found it rather fascinating, but also realised how hopeless life really is.

The average person may live to see 70 years of age. What's 70 years in the vastness of the universe?! It's a joke! And when you think of units such as 'millions of light years', you start to realise how very little we actually know about how we got here, and exactly why we're on this planet.

What's the point of preserving a species and a planet, that must inevitably disintegrate. What's the point of life? And how can one derive some kind of meaning from such a hopeless and pointless task? because eventually everything will die...

Does it bother you that we live a life or existence that we know very little about?

Answer 1

Can't agree more..... precisely on this realization did I decide to call myself 'small'.

But that is part of the story.... my ego wouldn't let me... it would keep surfacing and show me relatively how superior I am compared to so many of our fellow being, so much more compared to other beings and incalculable times more in relation to the inanimate world. The ego has its purpose... it gives a purpose to my life overruling inactivity or surrender... but then I find that my happiness really depends on how much I can keep this incorrigible ego of mine in check.
To the arrogant person, a thought spared for the vast space and time is relevant. For the sulking person, however, the relative superiority of human beings compared to others would be the necessary tonic. In the ultimate analysis, the greatest governor of all is 'balance' and balance is the key factor for lasting happiness!!

Answer 2

"Does it bother you that we live a life or existence that we know very little about?"

Actually, I love it because I love learning new things.

I can tell you are intelligent, but there is something rather ironic in the entirety of your post. It's resides in the same "argument" which you propose about our insignificance. What it is is that you are basing all of this knowledge off of what you know about what you don't know. I agree that what we do not know expands infinitely, but we shouldn't just go hog wild and start assuming these indeed somewhat probable but certainly not guaranteed notions of meaningless existence.

In my mind, if it existed, never was it meaningless. Think of it like this, let's say there really is no profound meaning to life or to the entire universe. That means that something like serving a god or procreating is no greater than any other task. In fact, what one should do is narrow it down to the greatest common denominator, the only dominator: existing. To exist is the most meaningful thing you can ever do.

Furthermore, size and lifespan doesn't always account for the ability to affect directly or indirectly the state of other beings and objects. Bacteria that lives no longer than 7 days currently makes my life a living hell, and it doesn't even have the capacity to comprehend it.

Excellent question.

Answer 3

Sort of....
The real question is... have you any idea how insignificant the concept of significance really is?

You might live for a century.
A tree might live for a millenium.
A rock beneath your feet might have been around in that form for hundreds of millions of years.
The sun is about 12 billion years old last I checked.
And the Universe? Considerably longer.
It is huge.... vast on a scale you cannot readily imagine. Light can get around this "big" world of ours 7 times in one second... and yet takes millions of years to travel across the Universe.

And yet....
You might live for a century.
Your dog if it is lucky might live 20 years.
Many insects will have been born, lived and died within the space of a month.
A mayfly lives only 3 hours.
The spray of sparks from a firework won't even last for a minute.
Every second, billions upon trillions of subatomic particles (so small that they take up less than 0.01% of the space of an atom, which itself is already so small it cannot be seen with the world's most powerful microscope) are created and destroyed... each lasting less than a nanosecond....

Compared to them.... you are as the Universe.



Significance?
Who cares?
What do size and age have to do with anything?
What is the relevance of magnitude?
It means different things dependant on context.... different things to different people.... and the word on its own is utterly irrelevant and meaningless.

For that matter.... so is everything else.
What is the importance of the Universe?
What is the relevance of Atoms?
Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.


Human fallacy and folly.
Even considering it is futile.

We are worthless.... just like everything else.

Answer 4

Well, I feel that the realization of the whole universe is God. That's 14.7 billion mild years. We are just a little speck. But I additionally feel there may be lifestyles in every single place within the universe and all lifestyles types have souls and jointly make up the brain of God. Look at the entire superstar that experience long past Nova that we studied through the years, Who is to mention that a civilization WAS on a planet round that superstar and simply wiped it out. The universe is a sexy gigantic location.

Answer 5

Lynne Mc Taggart wrote a book about research in distance phenomena. It posits that we imprint the quantum field. That is how identical twins are often in emotional communication across time and without regard to space.
The only phenomenon we know of where time and space are demonstrably irrelevant is the quantum field.
So, if we are part of the quantum field, we are part of everything. We are a unique place in everything.
This is easy to understand from a physical standpoint with the elements from supernovas.
Individual life often seems insignificant because we cannot see the connections that cause us to be inextricably connected.
So, since you are part of the entire universe and share atoms with stars, since you imprint the universal field with your mind, and since you are connected with all life, where's the insignificance?
There are profound doctrines from India, China, and Japan on this subject, but those require genuine study.

Answer 6

I suppose it depends on how you define significance. I'm not going to tell the old story about the starfish on the beach, but significance is a matter of perspective, to some extent.

The true athiest looks around and sees the product of a statistical anomally. The true agnostic looks around and sees an enigma. I looked around one day and decided that the mathematics of atheism defied logic, and that rational thought discounts the idea that a Creator would invest resources of the magnitude it would require to create a universe and then abandon it without a second thought. From there my search led me to a variety of belief systems, but eventually to Chriatianity, which teaches that the Creator has a personal interest in the individual.

This belief system gives me a number of reason to believe that humanity has much more to addres than the 70 or so years the individual is given for corporeal life. Not only do I have to address my own persistence of personality (eternal existence), but I have to address the idea that I can potentially have an influence on how others around me address that same issue. Given that belief, my actions and activities can have enormous significance.

Answer 7

I am acutely aware of how small and insignificant I am. Its taken years to realize that I am not the center of anything....an enlightenment, if you will....
Every time I look into my child's eyes, I see a world. Every time I hear a clock tick, I hear the vastness of time. Every phase of the moon tells me how small I am.....
It bothers me not at all. I can't say why...it just don't. I am content to live my grain of sand life and hope that my grain may somehow bond with another, and another, and another until this vast existence we share gets filled.....
Meaning? Its only man, discontent to live in a world so vast, striving for understanding, that seeks meaning. Why cloud experience, being open to see, do, appreciate even the little we have with a search for meaning? We make our own meaning....we make our own happiness, our own existence. If we choose to be content, then we are. If we choose to search, we do....and somehow lose the beauty, the value, through the search.

Answer 8

You see life as pointless when I see it like a gift. You think that 70 years of life is just a tiny bit of unremarkable time when I think of it as long enough to embark my dreams.

It's sad how you take human existence as hopeless when I feel a kind of joy just seeing a newborn baby cry. All these that you say insignificant sound so meaningful to me. I got so much in this little time you say to thank God for; Good things are happening every second of every minute, enough to fill our hearts with happiness. Every day counts as a new hope dawning in our life.

Yes, there are downsides, backlogs, upends,..and yes, even an end to everything...But short as life seems, it's still the most momentous journey we're granted,.. And is 'significantly beautiful'.

Answer 9

All we can do is live our 70 or so years to the fullest.Make the best out of present lives and hope we die in our sleep.There's nothing we can do about the rest of the universe, so we should be happy we had a chance to live here no matter how insignificant we are to the rest of the world.

Answer 10

Instead of looking through telescopes, try looking through a microscope until you feel better. You get overwhelmed a tad too easily and maybe focusing on a smaller universe will help.

And think about this: it isn;t that you live for 70 years, but you do with that 70 years. You could live 7000 years, but if you do nothing with it, then what was the point?