Our History of the World began with the beginning of time, the Big Bang. It has taken us a journey of nearly 14 billion years. Now, as humans take center stage, it's important to remember, just how small a slice of history, we actually occupy.
To make things simple, imagine compressing 14 billion years of history down to just 14 years. On this scale, the Earth would have existed only for the past 5 years. So, that's about a third of the history of the Universe. Large complex creatures would have developed 7 months ago. On this scale, dinosaurs went extinct only about three weeks ago. The entire recorded history of humans will span only last 3 minutes. Modern industrial societies, the industrial revolution happened effectively 6 seconds ago.
What that shows us is that we humans, have been around for only a very brief instant in the recorded history of the Universe.
In a similar sense, all the good things and horrible things that humans have done to each other in the past don't really matter. They mattered a lot to those involved, both directly and tangentially, and some of them mattered to successive generations, but their importance has an expiration date.
If we look forward hundreds or thousands of years, we can imagine that even the most important events of our lives, both good and bad, will be forgotten. Any individual impact we have is likely to be diluted to nothing by that time.
The argument that nothing really matters is a fair one. Emotionally this doesn't feel true at all, but looking back historically and projecting forwards, it's not much of a logical leap to say that life is futile. Given enough time, whatever you and I do will be completely unimportant and forgotten.
Some people find this depressing and use it to justify doing nothing. What's the point, they ask? There's a different way to look at it, though. Life is pointless, but that's also a reason to do everything.
Over a long enough time horizon, failure looks just about the same as success. Either one is a speck so small that it can't be individually noticed. Remove failure and success, and the one thing left is this human experience. Even if there's no real point to this existence, it is a sublimely interesting and enjoyable thing to have. The awesomeness of the existence of consciousness is trumped only by the fact that we've each been lucky enough to experience it.
We get to be in this incredible universe for a very short time, and then it's over. Since it is the one concrete thing we have, why not make the most of it?
Source:
History channel
Tynan
Source:
History channel
Tynan