Why? Part One

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Have you ever felt small?

I have. But I don't think we spend nearly enough time thinking about just how small we really are.

Supercluster. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Johan Richard (Caltech, USA)
Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin & James Long (ESA/Hubble)

You and I are tiny. And we would probably be pretty open about that. But when it comes to our daily lives, how about your nation? We'd normally see it as a pretty big deal. However, your nation is merely a small fraction of the Earth, and is only one of thousands upon thousands of civilizations throughout history.

But how about the Earth itself? Earth is massive! Every human that has ever lived has existed on this planet. Even then, Earth is tiny in comparison to the vastness of our Solar System, or even some of the other planets in it.

So the Solar System must be at least of a decent size, right? Not in comparison to the Milky Way Galaxy in which we find ourselves. In this galaxy, scientists have currently found 2,500 solar systems, although with the roughly 200 billion stars in our galaxy, there may be many more solar systems we haven't found.

The Milky Way itself is too ridiculously huge for our puny mammal brains to comprehend. And yet we haven't even scratched the surface of the vastness of the observable universe. There are galaxy clusters that contain 100 to 1,000 galaxies each, all the way up to superclusters like the Laniakea Supercluster that contains roughly 100,000 galaxies!

If you don't start to grasp the seemingly infinite scope of the universe by now, don't worry, you probably can't entirely. But what I am getting at is this:

You are puny. 

In a cosmic sense, you and I are like insignificant particles trapped on a speck of dust. If our species ceased to exist, it truly seems like the cosmos would take little to no notice of it, and the universe would continue as before.

Yet I don't think that we fully understand that. 

Perhaps it is a survival mechanism, but whatever the case may be, we yearn to have meaning, objective purpose, and importance in our lives. "Why am I here?" is perhaps the most widely asked question by humans the world over.

As far as I have seen, although I am no universal arbiter of truth, the universe exists. And by that, I mean it only exists. There is currently no sufficient reason to think it was created or designed with any purpose. Rather it and the descriptive rules governing it seem to just "be". No reason, no rhyme. Existence does not require purpose.

We are products of this universe. You and I are particles, arranged in a specific way. We are products of the same natural processes that make up the rest of the universe.

We exist because we are the result of how the universe works.

Really take that in, think about it. You and I are just as much a product and part of the universe as gravity, rocks, and supernovae. And our lives in essence are governed and determined by the same forces that rule the rest of the cosmos.

In spite of all this (and in one sense, as a result), humanity since its inception has crafted innumerable stories in an attempt to imbue our lives and our world with meaning and purpose. The purpose of disease is to punish sinners, the purpose of rain is to water our crops and the sun to make them grow. Oddly enough though, the majority of things in this world were seen as being "for us". Certain animals were made to become livestock to eat. Certain plants were made to be crops that we tended to. Plagues were made to show us our sins and make us repent. For the longest time, nearly everything in our world supposedly revolved around us.

This tendency is seemingly written in our very DNA. Thus, as science begins to show us just how insignificant we are, who can blame us for recoiling at it? We seem to crave objective meaning. We are important. We are special. We are the apple of the divine eye, the special objects of its salvation and attention. We are made in the very image of god.

But as we are finding out, the world doesn't look like it was created for us, or even with us in mind. Your existence is an infinitesimally puny portion of this vast universe. One might even argue that your life has less impact on the universe, and is far less impressive, than an exploding star.

Credit: Jonathan Daniels

How does this address the "why" question? 

It does this in a seemingly harsh way. There is no objective "why". There is no objective meaning and purpose. You, your life, your goals, your dreams, they are all a product of the inner workings of the cosmos, and are just as objectively purposeful and meaningful as a black hole.

Unsurprisingly, our brains recoil at this. Many of us have been sent whirling into depression when we first recognize this. Especially if you have been raised to think that you are the object of eternal attention and love from god, it is rather difficult to let go of that and not go mad.

Nevertheless, all isn't lost. It is still possible to let go of our notions of objective meaning and survive. Not only that, we can find our own purpose, our own reasons to live this beautiful life that we have.