Mostly Harmless
You may remember a time when I blogged on our nature, how we didn't actually have things so bad, we didn't really matter that much, etc. The time when I used to this blog to sound like a smug know-it-all ass instead of writing about stupid things like 80's TV, ghosts and writing. Or you may not. Doesn't really matter.
As some may have guessed by the title, I've been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It starts with one of my favourite ways of starting. The description of Earth. I always love it when I read it like that because it puts everything into view. I'm not going to type it out, because I'm lazy, but instead give my own version.
We're the small blue rock (well, the rock isn't blue, but it looks it from space) orbiting the small yellow star in a solar system of nine planets. We're not the biggest planet in orbit. Nor are we the closest. We're not the furthest away either. We're not even in the middle. We're third. Three out of nine. At best that means we're the square root of the total of planets. Rather lame really. The only tiny thing that possiblity makes this planet significant in anyway is that a group of reasonably intelligent apes have evolved far enough to be aware they exist, and by convinient coincidence, have also evolved with posable thumbs and so have been able to form a civilisation based on constructed means. There are also lesser creatures inhabiting this tiny planet, ones that are too stupid to have figured out they exist yet. And dolphins. Apparently they know.
So, we're one tiny planet in the solar system on the far outstretched arm of the galaxy. What a place to be. I mean, nothing particually significant has ever happened on this arm. Hell, to be honest, the galaxy itself is rather insignificant. Who's ever heard of the Milky Way who doesn't live on that insignificant speck of a rock?
Now, the galaxy is huge. Full of thousands of stars and planets, and we're on one tiny little one, not even near the middle. We're in the unfashionable outskirts of the galaxy. But the galaxy is just a tiny part of the gigantic universe. And, if new theories are correct, our universe is just part of the mulitverse anyway. To be honest, we could be in a rather insignificant dimension.
When the universe, which is unbeliviably huge, is cast as insignificant, it makes you think. Our little blue speck is then so insignificant I don't think a word exists which isn't just the word 'very' repeated alot of times in front of the word 'insignificant'. And then you have us. Myself, for example. I am one little tiny reasonably intelligent ape sat in a tiny room on a tiny planet in an insignificant solar system on the edge of an insignificant galaxy in a possibly insignificant universe.
If anything it makes you question whether there is life out there, considering many people believe there isn't. But it made me think. What if there's not. What if in the entire universe, and the entire multiverse, the only sentient life that exists is us on this rock. What was the point? A bit of a waste of space really just so a few billion people could realise they exist and be profoundly miserable for it.
It kind of makes all my drama work seem really insignificant when put that way.
So what if there isn't a point to the universe. It's all one big coincidence. Everything out there exists by complete coincidence. And it doesn't matter because there's nothing out there to appreciate it anyway. It's just rocks flying through nothing, with the odd blazing fire in the way. And if this coincidence hadn't happened, coincidences wouldn't have existed because nothing would have. Not even time. Makes your brain hurt to think that there was the risk of nothing ever existing, and only by pure coincidence does such a thing as pure coincidence exist.
Well, I like that way of defining our existance, anyway.
As some may have guessed by the title, I've been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It starts with one of my favourite ways of starting. The description of Earth. I always love it when I read it like that because it puts everything into view. I'm not going to type it out, because I'm lazy, but instead give my own version.
We're the small blue rock (well, the rock isn't blue, but it looks it from space) orbiting the small yellow star in a solar system of nine planets. We're not the biggest planet in orbit. Nor are we the closest. We're not the furthest away either. We're not even in the middle. We're third. Three out of nine. At best that means we're the square root of the total of planets. Rather lame really. The only tiny thing that possiblity makes this planet significant in anyway is that a group of reasonably intelligent apes have evolved far enough to be aware they exist, and by convinient coincidence, have also evolved with posable thumbs and so have been able to form a civilisation based on constructed means. There are also lesser creatures inhabiting this tiny planet, ones that are too stupid to have figured out they exist yet. And dolphins. Apparently they know.
So, we're one tiny planet in the solar system on the far outstretched arm of the galaxy. What a place to be. I mean, nothing particually significant has ever happened on this arm. Hell, to be honest, the galaxy itself is rather insignificant. Who's ever heard of the Milky Way who doesn't live on that insignificant speck of a rock?
Now, the galaxy is huge. Full of thousands of stars and planets, and we're on one tiny little one, not even near the middle. We're in the unfashionable outskirts of the galaxy. But the galaxy is just a tiny part of the gigantic universe. And, if new theories are correct, our universe is just part of the mulitverse anyway. To be honest, we could be in a rather insignificant dimension.
When the universe, which is unbeliviably huge, is cast as insignificant, it makes you think. Our little blue speck is then so insignificant I don't think a word exists which isn't just the word 'very' repeated alot of times in front of the word 'insignificant'. And then you have us. Myself, for example. I am one little tiny reasonably intelligent ape sat in a tiny room on a tiny planet in an insignificant solar system on the edge of an insignificant galaxy in a possibly insignificant universe.
If anything it makes you question whether there is life out there, considering many people believe there isn't. But it made me think. What if there's not. What if in the entire universe, and the entire multiverse, the only sentient life that exists is us on this rock. What was the point? A bit of a waste of space really just so a few billion people could realise they exist and be profoundly miserable for it.
It kind of makes all my drama work seem really insignificant when put that way.
So what if there isn't a point to the universe. It's all one big coincidence. Everything out there exists by complete coincidence. And it doesn't matter because there's nothing out there to appreciate it anyway. It's just rocks flying through nothing, with the odd blazing fire in the way. And if this coincidence hadn't happened, coincidences wouldn't have existed because nothing would have. Not even time. Makes your brain hurt to think that there was the risk of nothing ever existing, and only by pure coincidence does such a thing as pure coincidence exist.
Well, I like that way of defining our existance, anyway.
posted by Li at 9:51 AM
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