Sometimes, we hear news about astronomy, cosmology and physics. As I understand it, as recently as the 1920 (yikes, they are getting close to being 100 years ago!), scientists thought that the Milky Way galaxy was the whole universe. Several contributions by women scientists helped show that it is much more local than they thought. Sean Carroll of CalTech says that you can memorize "100 billion": 100 billion stars in a galaxy and 100 billion galaxies.
Sometimes, people point to astronomy's expanded world and humanity's shrunken place in it, biology's code of connection and descent from algae and apes to humanity and psychiatry's links between our infant selves and hidden adults fears and urges. The pointing is a way of explaining that it is no wonder that humanity can despair, lose hope and confidence and accept being a temporary, insignificant drop of nothing much in a very big, complex world.
Every now and then, a person can get the feeling, in the light of the above ideas and from other sources, that "nothing matters." Existence can be seen as pointless. Ecclesiastes said long ago "vanity, vanity, all is vanity". He wasn't referring to ego but to a conviction that there is nothing worthwhile, nothing of value, that everything is in vain, futile.
But it seems to me that there is a simple demonstration that such an idea is quite wrong. I usually start the demo with the question "Will you give me your shoes?" I can follow up with "May I have your wallet?" and "Please give me your car keys". Chance and nature can accomplish the same thing by breaking the lines delivering power to your house. Your tv and your computer have no power. Your washing machine can't work. The food in your fridge is all spoiled. Any of these requests or situations may make you unhappy but surely they show there are many things in our lives that we value. We do care about many things. Ok, my desire to see another episode of Longmire is not on a par with the Pope's desire to help the poor of the world but there are, in fact, dozens of things, ideas and activities, as well as dozens of people that I know personally, that I care about. The universe and all of time may be rather cool about me and my desires but I do have them and they matter to me.
If you want to feel bad, you can probably manage it but you can't have it both ways. If the basis of all suffering is desire, then desires, purposes, plans, hopes even, are always with us and our world is not without meaning and value.
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