I learnt it the hard way that not everyone appreciates the beauty of our cosmic insignificance. Most people are fully immersed in this tiny world we built and I sometimes envy them.
From a cosmic perspective, however, it is rather insignificant.
Of course, the idea of “significance” is pretty meaningless without context or a perspective, so naturally it ends up being quite subjective.
If so there’s a strong chance that Earth is the most significant place in the galaxy at least. It’s possible we’ll screw ourselves up before we make it to other star systems, but of we do manage self sustaining interstellar ships then within a cosmically tiny amount of time humans, or the evolved dwacwndents, will occupy every star in this galaxy.
Maybe that’s common, maybe that’s insignificant on a universal scale, maybe reaching the level of development humans have is quite common, but it’s quite possible that Earth is, or will be, very significant on a galactic scale if nothing else.
Even if we’re significant on a galactic scale, that’s a long way from cosmic significance. Even our galaxy is pretty insignificant on that scale.
People here flippantly conclude whether something is significant or insignificant without defining what significance is and how to determine it. Question begging and bad assumptions abound.
"Pale blue dot" talk is ultimately an intellectually vacuous appeal to confusion and emotion. It strives to seem profound, but it only manages to approximate a silly deepity.
Compare with a hypothetical universe consisting of a million-kilometer-diameter crystal sphere with the Earth at its center. Again not proof, but absent any further information, one would reasonably conclude that Earth is much more significant in that universe.
If I lived on such a planet, I might say, well, I’d need a big sun-like outer gas giant in order to prove we’re significant. As it is, we’re just a little crystal sphere in a huge universe.
That you find such things suggestive entails dubious presuppositions of value.
When you talk about significance, you have to bring in considerations of value and worth. And at that point, you have to bring in the individual. Significance is only significant to someone.
A good place to begin is to define significance and to identify and explain what causes something to be significant.
My problem with these immersed people of this world is that it’s like being residents of a terrarium, entirely at the mercy of the Lord to keep the A/C on. We need few people to wonder what is out there - who is maintaining the terrarium temperature?
This is why, despite current controversy and how fun it is to mock Katy Perry, space tourism is so important, particularly when it gets to the point of Low Earth Orbit.
Being able to see the whole entire planet in detail right out the window apparently has quite the psychological effect.
Maybe we really are so insignificant that ultimately it doesn't matter. So, we might as well make the most of the time we have here!
Speaking for myself... Some of us care about this little spec of dust, so we try to challenge those who want to destroy the planet. We like making cool stuff, building little empires, and also making our communities fun and thriving!
Here's some Borges:
"Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.
(and I could say the same on any day, and it would still be true)
But ok... usually one person's daily actions aren't significant enough to be noticed by more than a handful of others.
Space is barely even real to us earth critters lol
If the rest of the universe cares about us, we need to live our lives for the rest of the universe. If we're cosmically insignificant, then what's here and now is what matters, and what we have to live for.