The Relevance of Everything

For over a decade now I've been gazing into the night sky in awe trying to comprehend everything I see. When I was younger I didn't know as much about the cosmos as I do now but I always knew they were important. The universe is a beautiful thing; magnificent and grand. And it is so impossibly large that even the sum of all the brilliant minds on Earth would still not be able to understand a fraction of a percent of its greatness. It has been with us since the dawn of time itself roughly 14 billion years ago. Its energy helped build matter that in turn built stars, galaxies, and life as we know it here on Earth. The chemical elements that could only have been created under the intense conditions at the heart of stars (through the strong force) are the building blocks of our planet and of its life. That being said, we do not only live in the universe but rather, we are the universe.

The common man will not know about his origins or about the universe he lives in. He can live his entire life not knowing a single fact about the stars or about the importance of our sun and he'll still manage to physically live well. But what about his mind and soul? Like knowing your family tree, it is also good to know your biological roots. And though most people would say that our biological life started here on Earth, it didn't. It was the size of the sun and of the Earth, and the distance they shared with one another. It was just the right distance to create complex molecules like proteins and DNA and was just the right temperature to have an abundance of liquid water - a very important constituent of life. Thus life emerged as a result of luck and pure chemistry working at its finest.

Another thing that I've taken into account is the absence of God. The God humans know does not and cannot exist. This is because the God we know is only perceived through our animal senses (sight, hearing, etc...) and our brains. When we (humans) were young (we're still young but I mean younger than now), we needed God to help explain things we couldn't. We made God anthropomorphic (human-like) and even gave "him" a gender - much like how humans have genders. But we live in a different time now where we know that it is highly probable that if the conditions are just right in another solar system, life other than Earth's may exist. If that is the case, evolution will take its course and create other beings. And depending on their environment, size of planet, type and size of star, they will evolve differently from us. And if there so happens to be intelligent life, they will most probably look and act completely different from us. They may or may not have senses and may or may not have the "conventional" brain we do. This means that they would interpret God differently and view "him" in their image if they believed in God. These hypothetical life forms may only reproduce asexually having only a single gender. Or perhaps they would have more than two genders. If humans and this hypothetical race were to meet there would be heavy discrepancy when talking about God. The wonderful thing though is that we would both be able to agree that we both live on planets created out of chemical elements, we both orbit stars, we both get our energy from stars, and we both live in the universe (and are the universe).

Realizing this I've come to conclude that biological life itself is absolutely meaningless. It is not divine at all. Rather, it is just a possible outcome for a planet. Most planets do not harbor life but ours does solely because of our place in the solar system. Now what we make of life is different and there can be meaning to human life. But speaking strictly in the biological sense, it is pointless. This is because if we were to remove life from planet Earth or if it were never to exist, the universe would still work just as well.

Knowing that life is pointless shouldn't be interpreted as something pessimistic. It should be viewed as optimistic. This is because like all the other planets in the solar system, Earth didn't need life - it would have been just as fine without it. But it happened and went through four billion years of work just to get to extremely intricate creatures like ourselves. So this should be cherished. Knowing that you don't have to exist but do should make you realize how fortunate you are to be able to sit here and read this right now. Listening to your favorite music, holding your significant other, playing the sport you love, having the ability to have sex all emanate from chemical reactions that took place on Earth four billion years ago using the energy from the sun. In other words, the Earth went through so much work to get to you (the human being) when it didn't even have to.

The human being may possibly be one of the universe's most complex structures. We are living things; an upshot of unmitigated serendipity. Our unimaginable brilliance would lead people to believe that the human is a miracle, when it is actually and beautifully the exact opposite. The human being is the product of chemistry working the way it should. The human being is the answer to the earth's geology and its place in space.

The remarkable thing is that human beings did not always resemble and function the way we do today. We were not told or taught what to do. Humans stemmed from the same gene pool as bonobos, chimps, apes, and monkeys which in turn came from (going backwards) lizards, fish, single-celled organisms. We come from the order of primates. It was almost certain that humans would later develop intelligence because of our physical characteristics. We had opposable thumbs, we were bipedal, our eyes were in front of our head giving us accurate depth perception, our larynx dropped allowing us to make language, and we had an extremely large brain. The further development of tools and the discovery of fire helped us progress physically and mentally. Natural selection favored an enlarged skull in humans which subsequently gave more room for the frontal lobe to expand (this is because proto-humans started walking upright which stretched out our back giving it more room than any other primate's, allowing for a human fetus' brain to have enough room in the adult female). The frontal lobe is where all the high processing takes place. It is in charge of memory, voluntary behavior, and conscious thought. The brain has over 100 billion neurons (brain cells) and about a trillion synaptic connections all working under the speed of millions to billions of micro processors.

When you walk down the street today please look at the sky, check out the sun, and realize its significance and importance. For without it there would be no warmth, no light, no food, and no solar system. And when you look at yourself in the mirror tonight before you go to bed, LOOK at yourself carefully. You are an organic being. You are alive. And in the end you're just an array of billions and billions of molecules and billions and billions of atoms, just like the sun and the stars.
You are the universe.

HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD