Why Are We?

L

Laggy Lagiacrus

Guest
Original poster
Think about it.
You're just one person, in one country, on some third-rate planet, in a backwater galaxy, in the back end of some pathetic part of the universe. Your life isn't even a blip in the vastness of time. All of our squabbles and problems and whatnot, whether large or small, are nothing in the grand scheme of things. No human alive could possibly comprehend how miniscule - how insignificant - we are. We humans think ourselves so clever, but in reality, we're still dragging sticks around in the dirt.

So, Iwaku, I ask you this: Why do we matter? I'm not asking how we came to be. That's a completely different kettle of fish. What I'm asking, is what actually makes us perceive ourselves as being worth something?
I'd wager that it's instinct. We're all animals at heart. We naturally assign ourselves aa feeling of worth, because we need it in order to survive. And what's the most basic of instincts, for any animal?
To survive.
 
If we didn't think we mattered, why would we continue existing? I think that's one of the things that drives people to suicide is thinking that they don't matter or they aren't important. That sort of emptiness is extremely soul crushing.
 
  • Love
Reactions: 1 person
What Zen said.

Thinking in this way is only destructive to yourself. In fact, reading the post was a bit of a downer. We may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but we're still alive and we're still able to feel things and experience. That is what matters.
 
Actually, I think that we are worth very much.

One act of random kindness can cause a flood of change. One word, one touch, one thought, one action, one life has a great significance. One thread in a tapestry can't make a whole picture, but if you take out that thread, the whole thing can unravel. Everyone has worth and everyone is unique and important. No two person is EVER going be exactly the same and that ONE person is never going to be replaceable, no one is ever going to do what that one person could in the same way, with the same affect.

We matter because there is no one like us - not just as a species, but as an individual. Every person has choices to make and things to accomplish, lives to touch, and the future to change. Maybe that sounds cheesy and cliche and too generalized, but it's true. Every life matters. The smallest thing in the world, in the universe, matters because with just one tiny aspect missing, everything would fall apart.

Every life matters and to quote a movie-line that seems very appropriate: "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
 
I think you are zooming out a bit too far. In several ways, humans are exceedingly important. Let's start with fully zoomed out. Given the amount of time we have spent looking for habitable planets (this is a major NASA goal) and the fact that we are specifically looking for life out there, then if there is intelligent life out there they might be looking for the same thing in planets themselves. Thus, all we are doing, all our indicators of life and innovation become exceedingly important and might be the thing that lets us reach out to others and bridge a gap in the future. Even if that doesn't happen, think about the fact that one of the tools for identifying habitable planets has to do with light frequencies generated by plant life. If plants are so important, imagine what would happen if we got a frequency that clearly indicated artificial lights. Just imagine how important that would be. If it is so important that way, why can't it be important on it's own?

Now zoom in. Every day, as humans, we shape our planet. It's practically given now that we've had massive impacts on this world. To say that no one person makes a difference is not only disheartening when it comes to the good things we've achieved but also alleviates us of responsibility for the bad shit humans have done. We make an impact. Each of us."Good" or "Bad", we craft the world around us in our human desires.

Zoom in more. Everyday we color the lives of everyone we interact with. We hold an elevator door for someone who is tired and has their hands full. We help someone who has fallen. We choose to give to this charity or that homeless guy. You never know when that one act of kindness and caring will save a life, will be the one thing that person needed to go on and turn things around. I'm not bullshitting here, smiles save lives. Complimenting a stranger can save a life. It's real, it can happen. One conversation can change the world, can inspire someone to go make a difference.

Zoom in one more time. Science is starting to unravel epigenetics, which is, loosely stated, a collection of factors that impact what parts of our genetic code are turned on and off and how they are affected. These aren't genetics but some of these factors are seemingly tied to environment. In addition, they are now finding that things that impacted our ancestors, such as famine, illness, depression, are remembered through the generations by our bodies. So by helping one person make their life better, you are changing their entire heritage that they will pass on.

So yeah. One person is important. And we don't just see ourselves as such to survive. We are vital, we know it, and we may not be any more important than a bacteria, but look at just how much change a bacteria can do over a small amount of time. Don't limit yourself by thinking you have no impact. There's every chance that you'll save the world and you won't even know it.
 
I'll let Neil DeGrasse Tyson handle this one. In an interview with Time Magazine, the interviewer asked astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson what the most astounding fact about the universe was.

This is his response. The Most Astounding Fact

Transcripted:
Neil DeGrasse Tyson said:
"The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth: the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core, under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy; guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems, stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself.

So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up - many people feel small because they're small and the Universe is big - but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

There's a level of connectivity. That's really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant. You want to feel like a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That's precisely what we are, just by being alive."

Every time I watch that video, it nearly brings me to tears.

Regardless how small we are in the scale of the universe, we matter. Regardless what you believe, whether you believe we were created by a deity, or if we were created through evolution, we exist. And to our knowledge, sentient life doesn't exist anywhere else. Could it? Maybe. Probably. But until we find out if it does, we are the only ones with this power. Us, floating on this one tiny grain of sand in the ocean that is the universe.

So why are we? I don't know. But I do know that we each, individually, decide our own fate.
 
I don't think the human race matters. If anything we are an accidental abomination.
 
Because you've been given a shot at something so incredibly rare in all that big universe you've really got to give it a try.

I mean, fuck, stop and think about the odds of every one of us even just being here right now. Your parents had to meet at the right time in the right place, as did their parents and their parents before them, stretching back hundreds of thousands of years. The right evolutionary chain had to occur, the right ancestral being finding itself in the proper environment where it could thrive, just for our species to exist. And then you've got this whole planet thing. In all the universe we've managed to see so far our little ball of water and land-mass is completely unique, the right mixture of gases and circumstances allowing for life to begin in the first place.

Those odds are pretty fucking astronomical. We probably, by rights, shouldn't even be here.

Yet here we are.

You won the cosmological lottery. Make the fucking most of it.
 
You won the cosmological lottery. Make the fucking most of it.

Not to mention, each of us was just one of several hundred billion little swimmers to be first to the finish line.

So bear that in mind folks! Just by being alive, you have won at least one competition in your lifetime. ♥