Optimistic Nihilism
Consider again that dot [Earth]. 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.
-Carl Sagan
Everyone you know will die. I’ll die, you’ll die. We’ll cease to exist. On a long enough timescale, no one will remember us. Before I start to sound like a teenager going through an existential crisis, none of this really matters.
Knowledge is power, but knowledge is dangerous and burdensome at times. The curse of knowledge is once you know something, it’s hard to imagine a world in which you don’t know what you currently know.
Humans used to think the world was simple. We are the apex predator, so of course a greater power created us, and it would make sense for this greater power to look over us. Then, we learned we aren’t the center of our solar system, we learned there are billions of other solar systems in our galaxy, we learned our galaxy isn’t special, and we learned there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. We’re unfathomably small. We’re also unfathomably large when you look at what we’re made of. We’re somewhere in the middle.
We only have one life. Some brilliant people are working on solving aging. I hope they succeed, but even if they do, we’ll all eventually die. The universe will contract or expand forever, and we’ll cease to exist. Maybe we’ll learn how to transfer our consciousness to parallel universes. Well, even with the infinitesimally small chance of that happening, we’ll all die one day.
That’s scary. I rather enjoy living. But at the same time, it’s not scary. I don’t remember life before I was born, so I don’t expect to remember life after I die. Time didn’t exist as a concept. Close your eyes and count to one… that’s how long forever feels.
Given the facts as we know them, it’s extremely unlikely the universe was made just for us. If it was, it’s one of the worst designed places of all time, or it’s designed by an entity who savors suffering, famine, torture, slavery, rape, miscarriages, and disease. For those of us lucky and healthy enough to climb Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it’s a cruel joke to create something so big for a species so small. We exist in the stage of history where we can’t explore most of it nor (given our current knowledge) ever explore 99.999999% of our universe. If the universe is a story, the story of the universe isn’t about us.
But we aren’t separate from the universe-- we’re part of the universe. We’re made of the same atoms, the same protons, neutrons, electrons and mass that originally formed what is now the universe.
On a long enough time scale, your– every good deed, every accomplishment, and every altruistic action will all be forgotten. On the flip side, your– every mistake, every bad thing you did, and humiliation you suffered will all be forgotten. But this misses the point.
If our life is the only thing we experience, then it’s the only thing we possess that truly matters. We get to dictate our own purpose. We dictate our own life.
There are infinite possibilities. We’re each playing our own first person adventure game with one life. Are we in a simulation?-- probably not as why make this simulation, but even so, it doesn’t matter. Do we have free will? Probably, but again, it doesn’t matter.
Sure, we will eventually cease to exist. In the meantime, we get to experience art, food, stories, love, pain, music, comedy, the entire range of human emotions. We get joy from making others feel better. Gratitude brings us happiness.
I’m a fan of Alan Watts’ belief that the universe is fundamentally playful. Life is not a journey with a greater meaning or reward at the end. Life’s a dance where each part should be savored. The ups and downs are special. Each one is unique and shapes who we are.
It may be a cosmic joke how many of us sacrifice pleasure to advance a civilization that will one day cease to exist. But I don’t think so. I think building gives meaning. It gives purpose.