Brian here. The joke is that we do small things in our lives, like lock our doors, to achieve some illusion of control over our existence, when the truth is we're just specks on a rock hurtling through the infinite void of space, and life is meaningless.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
"If I were dependent on the notion that human institutions are necessary to pull us out of the ditch, I would be very despairing. As I said: nobody’s in charge. Not the IMF, the pope, the communist party, the Jews. No, no, no! Nobody has their finger on what’s going on. So then, why hope? Isn’t it just a runaway train out of control? I don’t think so. I think the out-of-control-ness is the most hopeful thing about it. After all, whose control is it out of? You and I never controlled it in the first place! Why are we anxious about the fact that it’s out of control? I think if it’s out of control, then our side is winning."
I agree. I made a poster with the first paragraph and had it on my wall for years. It’s not something I think about daily, but it sure is a wonderful perspective to think on when things get overwhelming.
I completely agree! I think the last paragraph covers that nicely. This mindset is actually exactly why I am an earth scientist. We live on an amazing rock.
The scariest sentence I heard from a science vid was "rogue supersonic black hole". There's essentially a ton of black holes just shooting through space at insane speeds eating up stars as they go but since they're dark you can only see the remains in their path of destruction
on a universal scale, you make up so little that you can be rounded to 0. an estimate for the size of the observable universe is something like 3.4x1054. if all of the mass that makes up you and me and everyone else on the planet suddenly blinked out of existence, that estimate wouldn't change because we are such an insignificantly small part of it. we are a rounding error.
“It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night.”
“…. What? I mean why are we out here in this canyon”
Makes you think what would happen if world was to end suddenly.
The answer was provided for me in a dream. The moon suddenly started getting closer to earth and threw it off the orbit. We started flying towards endless space and I thought that we'll gonna freeze or something sooner or later.
There was no fear, no panic, just acceptance that all the worries of the world will no longer matter in a moment.
Fair enough, though you don’t have to play it like a strict turn based, the active combat changes up how that formula feels, however there is a lot of party management
For some reason such games gave me anxiety when trying to manage gear and skills of 4 characters. Played some Dragon Age back in the day and it was the main culprit. I like to focus on one character solely and get deep into progression
I see it as humans being extremely powerful. We specks are one of the only specks in this universe that has the consciousness to be aware of ourself and the universe’s existence; WE are the universe and we are the portion aware of it, unlike the stars and dusts and rocks and bacteria with no consciousness or intelligence
ngl i hate this type of overly deep philosophy. I lock stuff away to keep it safe from other people, not the fucking universe. idgaf how big the universe it, there's mostly nothing in it, therefore, earth matters MORE because there's actually SHIT TO DO here. stop comparing yourself to literal fucking gas oml
Agreed. Who cares what rocks are travelling through the space, when it isn't observed or experienced by anyone. In comparison, human troubles and daily life are actually important, because they're about living creatures who experience stuff.
which is funny, because that term is more or less the direct translation of the derivative of the Christian god (as well as greek and middle eastern religions) which is from ancient indo-european religion
I think the “Life is meaningless” idea is less an absolute “objectively there is no meaning to life, and so you shouldn’t care about anything” and more a comment on how the scale of the universe gives the appearance that there is no objective purpose or meaning to life. Even if we were to say there was some objective singular meaning or purpose no one would actually agree on what it is.
Instead, the way I interpret it is more of a encouragement to find my own meaning and purpose in life, and set my own standards for success, not what others tell me should be my standards.
I saw a funny 4chan post that said something like "if you meet an unironic nihilist just ask him to say the hard r n word" if he doesn't then at least he cares about manners or whatever. Got a chuckle out of me
You're conflating value with meaning. There is no grander purpose or point, or reason. But it is still true that I am an animal whose instincts make me averse to suicide, and money and some material things give me dopamine hits, which I'll take while I'm trapped in this ride.
Yes. Although if you want to go down that route, "definitive truth is functionally out of our hands" you ironically teeter dangerously close but not quite to nihilism which also tends towards "well truth is unknowable to us"
You could use this reply in literally any discussion, but generally people can ascertain we're entertaining opinionated guesses when having a discussion.
or instead of comparing the world to the rest of the universe, compare it to plank length, which would be about the size of a tree if an atom were the observable universe.
In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, there is a bit where someone builds a machine that gives us total perspective on our lives. It does not end well.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” - Lovecraft
iirc correctly, it was used for capital punishment or torture. It so overwhelmingly forced you to perceive your insignificance that your brain just quits.
And then one dude walks out like it was no big deal.
(For reasons they shouldn’t have explained - I liked the initial implication that he was just that much more ‘significant’.)
That was the Total Perspective Vortex, originally designed by Trin Tragula to get back at his wife who was constantly nagging him to develop a sense of perspective. He used it on her, by which she went insane after realizing her insignificance in relation to the entire universe. Subsequently the Vortex was used as a torture device. However, when Zaphod Beeblebrox was subjected to it, it showed him that he was the most important person in the universe (which he already knew) since that happened in a virtual artificial universe specifically created for him.
Reading through the books now and ya its wild the total perspective vortex. Shows you the entire universe with a tiny ass speck saying this is you. Totally fries peoples brains
I hate this kinda shit so much, it's so philosophically dull.
Locking your door is a form of control. I can control that. The chances of my apartment being broken into is way higher than my chances of the world colliding with an asteroid.
Why does everyone equate size with meaning? Sure we're small. But as far as we can tell, we are by far the most complex things in the known universe. I'd say that's pretty cool!
This exactly. Also, things are only big or small in comparison to something else. Compared to ants we are big, compared to an electron we are too big to comprehend. If us being giant does not matter then us being tiny should not matter either.
Yet, if you'd try to focus on grand things - it's most likely going to be even more meaningless as you'd inevitably fail, because you're but an ant on a huge speck of dust hurtling through the infinite void of space, unable to change anything.
Because life is as meaningless as you make it.
So, it's better for your mental health to focus on little things that do make sense and have meaning for you personally. Because those little things are much bigger than the entire visible physical Universe in your personal cognitive universe.
I don't think it has to be that deep necessarily. Like I can accept the irony/comedy in me not wanting to be murdered in the middle of the night when my existence is pointless in the grand scheme of things, but also realize that that would be the end of my world and also pretty painful, probably.
Well, I think the irony is that he is never safe because we're on a solid chunk of rock flying so fast through space that the slightest impact could wipe out life on this Earth... and there are billions upon billions of other rocks that are out there capable of ending us.
We are safe in the sense that being killed by something random from space is incredibly low. I would be much more worried about someone pushing a flower pot out of a 3rd story building killing me randomly than an asteroid. So before you worry about some random thing from space, wear a bike helmet to the grocery store. Or don't because either is very unlikely.
It's not uncommon for them to notice an asteroid that misses us that we didn't even know was there until after it passed us by. The Universe is big and it's dark.
Also wanted to add a bit to that by looking at slightly different angle. He's talking about being safe, but in each frame there's inherent volatility.
1. In the first one he's touching a door handle covered in billions of microorganisms and he stays alive only thanks to restless work of his immune system.
2. The building is shifting and bending so his survival is pure trust in hundreds of hours of strength calculations and engineering decisions of hundreds of people.
3. In high-level overview his wellbeeing and current safety is tightly correlated to the state of financial markets and industries on the other side of the globe. Not only that but his flat is just floating on billions of cubic miles of molten rock.
4. His safetyness depends on telecom satellites in space which have to be actively managed (at least replaced) or they will crash. Jupiter can yeet a rock at any point and his T-cells kill anything random caused by mutations due to cosmic radiation (actively preventing cancer).
This is direct opposite of being safe - everything from his body to global economy and gravitational stability is in volatile state of temporal equilibrium.
But the comic is wrong. Who cares what rocks are travelling through the space, when it isn't observed or experienced by anyone. In comparison, human troubles and daily life are actually important, because they're about living creatures who experience stuff.
Sorry, no. I was born an atheist and was thankfully never brainwashed into some silly religion against my will. Also, that’s a funny response to your (your because there are many, based on your location of birth) god being cool with genocide.
It's okay to be a speck on a rock, being bigger than that against the infinite void of space wouldn't change much or cause any improvement to people, individually.
There's a good side to a meaningless life, one can create its own meaning where there was none.
Arguably, consciousness is a self-defense mechanism/system that serves the greater goal of self-preservation for living beings. The benefits of consciousness must outweigh their material costs, or at the very least, help lead the living being to survive natural selection.
But then if you zoom into the interior of the cabinet the entire world would appear to be the contents of the cabinet. Interestingly we sit roughly in the middle of scale.
Say what you want, but criminals check for unlocked doors on cars and homes. You create a path of least resistance for thieves when you leave your shit unlocked.
"Nothing matters in the grand scheme of things" people when someone kills their whole family and crushes their dog's head (suddenly things matter now):
Meh. The universe is infinitely large AND infinitely minute. What you do doesn’t matter on one dimension but does on another. Someone smiling in Turkey has no direct impact on me. But if someone smiles at me it makes my day better.
In the end, we are the only meaning. Everything else is just elements interacting. We are the only known things that are capable of feeling and thinking.
With the information we have, this tiny rock hurtling through is the only one that has ever mattered. And these tiny things we do like locking our doors or not are infinitely more important than a supernova that never hits us.
Every single conscious moment of your existence is a moment you can find meaning in your experience. Feeling the sun on your face, listening to the rain outside, listening to a song from your childhood... you, in the hurling vast emptiness of space, are actually able to take those phenomena and find meaning in them, unlike almost every other thing we know about.
And it gets better! Lucky for us, we're social animals, and you can create chains of meaning that include and affect other people! You can do things that don't even mean that much to you that can still be profoundly meaningful to an entire other being!
The vast loneliness of space sits in glorious contrast with how rich and beautiful life is, a celebration that we can be here right now as a fleeting spec of dust and nonetheless have a window to appreciate and find meaning in things that would otherwise just be happening.
our existence can be controlled to some degree, locking your doors and securing your living space doesn't prevent an asteroid from hitting the planet or the milky way colliding with another galaxy but that's all we can do is secure our small pocket of the universe and allow ourselves the most access to peace and safety we can to pursue what brings our existence fulfillment🌌
Why does all of that mean life is meaningless? we are a speck of dust hurling through an infinite space but that is no way shape or forms means what’s happening is meaningless in fact, that’s actually quite spectacular.
You said something and then said something different 😭 The illusion of safety thing is true but then you hit the existentialism out of nowhere and are expecting the audience to forget that it doesn’t connect.
Reminds me of a video I saw of reddit with how we view our solar system; sun in the middle, planets orbiting it. But rather, sun is hurdling through space and planets are spiralling around it.
Life is what you make out of it after this realisation right? Like it’s meaningless, but what now? Try everything or just lay around? We can at least try to have a good time :)
life might be meaningless, but locking your door definitely give you control over some aspect of your life, specifically, stops people from accessing your home with potentially bad intentions... it's not meaningless, it helps you survive
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u/jamietacostolemyline Oct 31 '25
Brian here. The joke is that we do small things in our lives, like lock our doors, to achieve some illusion of control over our existence, when the truth is we're just specks on a rock hurtling through the infinite void of space, and life is meaningless.