Pale Blue Dots and Stuff

So, uh. It’s been a while, guys. Most prominently, I’ve been moving to college. But today I feel comfortable enough to start blogging again. (Plus, I just met a cool girl who has a blog, and I need to build geek cred, neh?) Much of the following was written in early August, so that’s when I was actually in Florida.

I’ve just been to the Kennedy Space Center, which is an amazing place, and the closest thing to a pilgrimage I’ve ever made, as you could probably guess from my previously stated views on manned spaceflight. Few things make my eyes fill with Carl Sagan-esque tears quite as well as that particular scientific endeavor. Speaking of Dr. Sagan, this post will begin with an address from him:


It’s among the most humbling statements available to humanity. Every time I hear about a war or territorial conflict, the bit about “fractions of a speck” runs through my head. Hearing this affected me to the point that Sagan’s Copernican argument against normal religion has become my favorite—claiming that Earth or humanity occupy a key place in a cosmic struggle is more reasonable when the priests only knew of one planet. Now, however, we know of seven other planets around this star, millions of other stars in our particular clump of stars, and billions of other clumps. With this more modern (“more correct”) view of the cosmos, it becomes less and less tenable to assert that humanity has any privileged place, and it seems ridiculous to maintain that such a great expanse of space, time, and matter exist for our benefit. We are less than grains of sand before this infinity, and yet arrogance remains, arrogance monstrous enough to proclaim that our planet, our star, and our very universe was created solely so that a particular race could, for a few pitiful seconds of history, emerge and offer their worship to a being vast enough to compose this universe. Richard Feynman declared our gods too provincial, laughing at the idea that a personification of a cosmic architect would personally descend to our particular speck—he was right. (As usual. Feynman was always as correct as he was sexy.) In that sort of emptiness, nothing human really counts. If we were to leverage our nuclear might and incinerate this planet, all that would change is that a particular sphere would become a little more radioactive and a little quieter. A person could die the day they were born, a person could die after conquering the world, a person could die after writing dozens of plays and over a hundred sonnets. The universe does not care or notice.

It might be said that the preceding paragraph does not wholly square with a humanist outlook. I will be the first to admit that, if you wanted to start your day with a booster shot to your belief in human dignity, you should not read that. On the other hand, it is hard to argue that it qualifies as untrue—the universe really is that big. Yet I would argue that the classic humanist viewpoint that values humanity, both on the whole and as individuals, and considers both their lives and their quality of life as paramount important ethical considerations can interface well with an existentialist, absurdist viewpoint in which death is inevitable and there can be no hope of evading that truth. (I reread The Myth of Sisyphus on the plane. Great book. Will have to do a Camus post someday.) The trick lies in the placement of value.

You see, I was never religious, even as a child. So, when reading a paragraph about how the universe ultimately doesn’t care about us, my ultimate consideration is that I never expected it to. How could I? Without a belief in an overriding sympathetic intelligence which works essentially the same as my own, I never latched onto any belief in the meaning of life. This consideration brings up an important one: What would it mean for my actions to matter to the cosmos? Would I want that? Would it matter? Adding in a bit of agnosticism: How do I know they don’t? The simple uncertainty undermines the entire exercise. For all the angst about whether the universe cares, it seems we can’t even tell. (I’m still on the “not” side, personally.) After all, the universe seems to be unconscious. The concept of it caring for or about me isn’t really a coherent one.

You might see where I’m going with this now. Only conscious beings care about anything. And, in the strange, self-referential sort of way that seems to lie at the heart of many great conclusions, that loop holds a very important piece of information. The word “matter” is transitive—when someone says “it doesn’t matter”, the question is always “to whom?” A few paragraphs above, it was the universe. But, as we’ve seen, that’s not really a coherent concept within the secular humanist philosophical framework. “Mattering” only matters (to humanists) when the object is an entity capable of understanding and assigning value—when the entity is a conscious being. Importantly, that makes conscious beings unique in the universe. Not to sound chauvinistic, but it means that only a conscious being matters, from our perspective. Mankind would be perfectly justified to destroy a dozen lifeless suns for the sake of saving consciousness. The ability to value is valuable—and rare.

I keep using the word “consciousness” above, rather than “human life” or the like, because I think that that derivation has important ethical implications. First of all, it more or less serves as the basis for humanist ethics. In the sterile void of the universe, we find our own salvation—our own reason to consider ourselves bound together. In another sense, though, I don’t want to be too human with my humanism. If you’ll pardon the oxymoron, I’m talking about other forms of consciousness. Not just aliens—which have pretty awesome philosophical implications—but animals. Most of us eat meat. I eat meat, for example, because I don’t consider the lives of cows, pigs, or other animals as valuable as human lives. Obviously. But why don’t I? This framework offers some understanding—it also hints as to why I don’t feel the same way about higher apes or dolphins. It also opens fascinating avenues for discussion—how do I know that animals aren’t capable of valuing? (Just so you guys know, I grew up on a cattle farm, so it’s not like I’ve only ever experienced meat in the form of prepackaged steaks.) How sure can I be? How much doubt-benefit do I hand out? Honestly, I’m not sure I have as many answers for these as I should. It’s something to think about—and I'm always thankful for those.