There was a sentence I wrote, "Many of your deepest-rooted fears and ambitions are written into your blood, in a library that was passed down by millions of generations of successful creatures going all the way back to the single celled organisms that first spawned within the primordial ooze." that really helped me realize we are the holders of a torch that goes back billions of years, and it almost feels like a violation against nature to selfishly and willfully extinguish that flame. Who are you, such a tiny speck of dirt almost indistinguishable throughout history, to make that decision for such a long line?
This viewpoint makes us both incredibly important right now but just one little pixel on a line that goes back further than we can imagine.
This viewpoint makes us both incredibly important right now but just one little pixel on a line that goes back further than we can imagine.
In a universe where most people feel like they're completely unimportant but at the same time have delusions of grandeur, I feel like the awe of being such a torchbearer promotes a sense of real importance but also a sense of humility. Every one of us has been given the same task, and over geological timeframes nobody may even know about anything you personally did but might see the line you continued regardless, and if you don't then it ends with you.
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Even geological timeframes on earth are essentially incomprehensible to humans.
The white cliffs of dover in England are made out of chalk consisting of the shells from thousands of dead microorganisms that collected over millions of years and eventually was driven up into the air. We can tell this by looking at the material under a microscope and we can see the little shells compacted together, it's incredible.
So the idea that universal timescales are even more incomprehensible is self-evident. Our bodies are made out of dead stars, yet our own star still has a long way to go and in the history of the universe will be considered somewhat insignificant.
The white cliffs of dover in England are made out of chalk consisting of the shells from thousands of dead microorganisms that collected over millions of years and eventually was driven up into the air. We can tell this by looking at the material under a microscope and we can see the little shells compacted together, it's incredible.
So the idea that universal timescales are even more incomprehensible is self-evident. Our bodies are made out of dead stars, yet our own star still has a long way to go and in the history of the universe will be considered somewhat insignificant.