: What is cosmic indifference?
In: Planetary Science
It means that space or cosmos is so big that it doesn’t matter if we are here or not.
If our whole planet disappeared or exploded or whatever it would make no difference to the universe.
If we all died, if all life died on Earth it would make no difference to the universe. It would continue to exist.
We are not special to anyone but ourselves. We aren’t some great being that keep things in a ballance.
Our whole solar system could disappear and it wouldn’t matter to the universe. Our whole galaxy could disappear and it wouldn’t matter. There are millions of other galaxies and nothing would be affected in any way that matters because the universe is so damn big.
There are two broad ways to categorise cosmology and earth’s place in the universe. Either earth is special, or it’s not.
For the bulk of history, we believed that Earth was really special. Earth was unique – why wouldn’t it be? Earth has ground, while everything else is just a light in the sky. We generally believed that someone or something put us here, did it deliberately. Our existence was special and unique and probably meaningful. There’s a purpose, a reason, a cause.
This is all very reassuring. This is comforting. But the more our measurements improved, the less special we looked. We made telescopes and found that some of those lights in the sky have ground and are just like earth. We found that some of those lights have their own moons. We found that some of them are suns, some of them with their own earths. We looked inward too, finding ways that we could’ve come to be without any gods, without any intervention. We found that those ways could have happened elsewhere, on all those other earths. Rather than special and unique, perhaps we are just a random blip. Maybe the only thing special is just that we *are* rather than aren’t. We rolled the dice and they all came up six, and that’s all that distinguishes us.
We might not be here because there’s a grand cosmic creator who cares about us. Our place in the world might not be special. We might just be a tiny little corner of an uncaring, indifferent cosmos progressing from one moment to the next on the basis of simple physical rules, applying them the same whether it’s the inside of your gut or the surface of a very distant comet.
It’s easy to look at this and despair – but at the same time, there’s a lot of joy and wonder that you can take from it. Our lives belong to us. If the only reason we have meaning is that we assign meaning, then we can assign meaning as we desire. If we weren’t put here for any particular reason, then we can fill our lives with whatever purpose we want to. We are the same stuff as everything else in existence, united by those same physical processes moving forward and governing our lives. Yes, we are specks in an uncaring cosmos, but so is everything and everyone else.
The universe doesn’t care if you live or die. You are not here for a special purpose, or reason. You exist because a series of coincidences happened to align such that you were born, and if a single one of them had been different, you would not have been born, and nothing of great importance would have changed.
It’s generally a bit less scientific than that – it’s more in the realm of philosophy or literature – but the point is that you don’t matter to the universe as a whole. You can still have meaningful impact in your life and the lives of those around you; it’s just that you aren’t here specifically for that purpose. You exist because you exist, and nothing more.
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