On the flip side of scary, it can put your problems in perspective and offer some kind of solace. I guess it's a bit of both :)
Doing this in my early 20s helped me out of a depression.
The perspective shift is massive.
I honestly find it extremely comforting. Having something so much bigger than oneself in the world is calming. All my worries, all my loves, everything that goes well, everything that goes poorly, just a tiny blip in the hugeness of it all. To me, it makes the good things better, and the worse things less meaningful. I watch DESI animations every few months for a reminder.
Yeah ... for all our accomplishments there's still a decent amount of people globally (though it's falling) living without basics (food, clean water, safe living conditions), and we still fight over fossil fuels despite having clean energy like wind, solar, nuclear and others.
I'd give the human race a C-. Let's see if in our lifetimes we can improve on this.
I find this sentiment so bizarre ... scared of what, exactly? There are real threats that people ignore, like rip tides, global warming, RFK Jr., and fascism, but those "cosmic powers" aren't coming to get us.
Love how you throw in RFK Jr. His muscular tone is certainly impressive!
I referred to real threats, and he is one. His muscles aren't relevant.
They are if you ever try to take his raw milk away
Or measles
Neither is 'fascism' or 'rip tides'!
Some of us find the beauty and power of nature awe-inspiring, regardless of our day-to-day problems.
Knowing how precious the current state of Earth is at human scale makes me fear the asshats acting like everything revolves around “progress” a lot more than knowing how insignificant we are at cosmic scales.
Exactly.
"We did ruing the only planet we ever knew, but at least for a brief moment in time we made a lot of value for Musk and his friends"