Today we're gonna have an existential freak-out!
[music]
Do you ever have a hard time getting through your day knowing that no matter what you do
with your existence it's just gonna fall somewhere between a very very short blink and a very
very VERY short blink in the universe's eye?
Well, I try to find comfort in the fact that there are 7.2 billion other thinking, living
human brains on Earth with which I share that feel.
But then I imagine trying to count them all, and I realize that would take me more than
three full lifetimes, and by the time I was done, there would be billions more yet to
count, and I become Sisyphus, rolling my boulder up the hill.
Then I force myself to take a deep breath, because I'm kinda starting to freak out now,
and then I picture the 10 to the 22nd air molecules currently filling my lungs, which
of course I can not do.
And since we're thinking about air I begin to feel the one ton of atmosphere above me
pressing down upon my head.
Or is that just the burden of consciousness?
We must be calm, we must stare time and size directly in the face, so that we can transform
that fear of the unknown into this!
[angelic choir]
And we do this by embracing the scale of the universe.
Here are some of my favorite ways to do that.
Links, down below.
At the magnitude of meat-space, this daily scale of meters and miles, we sit nearly equidistant
between the largest and smallest things that we know of, roughly equal orders of magnitude
between the unfathomable diameter of the observable universe and the point at which points themselves
break down into energy, waves, and even strings.
Technology and art gives us the power to journey to journey out in either direction, like we
are Alice, and this is Wonderland.
We can get very large or very small, with just a sip of knowledge or a nibble of imagination.
What about time?
What about today?
Yes, I may be a mayfly in the eyes of the universe, but I am a mayfly with a mind, and
opposable thumbs, and the internet, and an unquenchable desire to put the universe in
order.
By studying deep space and deep rocks, we bear witness to the whole of time up tot his
point.
What did the clock read when life began?
When our planet was born?
Is this clock ticking up or down?
We have hacked into channels of the universe beyond our own limited slice of spectrum,
we've peered into alternate electromagnetic dimensions using synthetic eyes from radio
telescopes to x-ray crystallography.
What is a microscope but a telescope turned on its head?
Is this helping?
Do you feel a little bit better?
I think by defining our place along this continuum of scale that we become comfortable with our
significance, and, yes, sometimes our lack of significance.
Each of us is a universe of atoms, but we must accept that sometimes we are insignificant,
and there are things that we do not have the power to change, whether that is in the deepest
reaches of space or in the next room.
I think there is freedom in that knowledge, I think it lifts away a small bit of the burden
of being a thinking, feeling, wondering human being can place upon our shoulders.
Do you choose to drown in that insignificance?
Or do you drown in awe?
A daily spoonful of perspective as medicine against fear of the unknown.
Jason Silva calls this "awe as therapy".
This feeling can impossible to describe but the Japanese have a word for it: "yugen" - an
awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words.
This feeling isn't a portal to another world, so much as a deeper connection with the world
that we live in.
Maybe like me you experience all of these things and you marvel at the scale of time
and space and you become profoundly aware of everything, yet you still can not describe
your feelings with anything except a slack jaw and a mixture of sounds that sound something
like [noises]
That means you're doing it right.
Big or small, the universe is a pretty awesome place.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Let me know what your favorite way to experience the scale of the universe is down in the comments,
and make sure to subscribe so you can get more great science every week here from It's
Okay To Be Smart.
Thanks for watching, and stay curious.