June 5, 2012
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Why do we make it cosmic?
JDN 2456085 EDT 14:48.
I realized something today. I was reading some websites like Atomic Rockets which scientifically challenge most of the major tropes of science fiction, and it made me feel sad somehow, that the stories we like to tell of space opera are probably completely unfeasible. I also thought of Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” which I had read last night; it too made me sad somehow, reflecting on the ultimate fate of the universe.
And I got to wondering: Why should these things make us sad? Why does knowing that we are probably alone in the universe (or if not alone, then the aliens who exist are far, far away and so vastly different from us that we cannot relate to them in any way) make us feel so lonely? Why does knowing that long after we are dead, and everyone we know is dead, and everything we’ve built has rotted away, the universe itself will die, make us feel so hopeless?
I think it is because we project upon the universe itself our own hopes and fears; we do not want to be alone as individuals, and so we hope that we are not alone as a species. We do not want to die as individuals, so we do not want the universe to die. But why do we do this? Why does it feel so important? Why do we make it cosmic
And so I try to trace these feelings, see what thoughts and beliefs ultimately drive them. Why does it make me feel more lonely about myself as a human individual to reflect upon the cosmic loneliness of the human species? It seems to project somehow—like the two are correlated because they are causally linked, that solving one would solve the other. In fact this is completely untrue; but it feels true sometimes.
Likewise, my own ultimate fate of death seems linked to the ultimate death of the universe, and yet they really aren’t. Both have something to do with entropy, but that’s their only similarity. In fact, entropy would have killed me long ago if I didn’t keep taking in energy; and there will still be plenty of energy left to take in when I die, I just won’t be able to use it. Indeed, it seems I should be more concerned with the death of the universe if I think that I won’t die long before it; I should be worried that I might actually have to watch the planets burn and stars fade. As it is, I won’t; when eternity comes at last, I will be “anesthetized”, to use Dawkins’s word.
And nor can it be that I think this ultimate death will mean the death of all I hold dear; for I already knew that death was coming, sooner or later, maybe a thousand, maybe a million, maybe even a billion years—but surely no more than that. I already knew that one day there would be no art, no science, no literature, just as one day not so long ago these things did not exist. I think I had almost come around to accepting this fact, rejoicing in the fact that we had these things at all, as most possible universes—and most planets in this universe—surely never will. We have them for the blink of an eye, but better than not having them at all.
But then I made it cosmic, and it came to feel that the ultimate death of the universe matters somehow, maybe even matters ultimately, that something so big must be important. I feel like young Alvy in Annie Hall: “The universe is expanding!”
This may be why most people aren’t deep thinkers. It’s disadvantageous to think about such things, because it takes you to dark places. As Nietzsche said, “stare too long at the abyss and it stares back at you.” How much easier it would be to live blissfully ignorant of all these terrible facts, and delude yourself into thinking God is in charge and we’ll all live forever in Heaven. That way when you make it cosmic, you don’t feel bad, because you’ve convinced yourself that the cosmos runs just like you’d want it to.
But of course Alvy is wrong, isn’t he? It shouldn’t actually matter all that much to us what is to happen billions of years from now… right?
