I visited a planetarium with part of my family this past weekend as our flight was delayed and we had several hours to kill. Most of it was review of things I had studied/ read before but one thing that struck me profoundly was the insignificance of us all. Most of the things we spend our time on have little to no value on a cosmic scale. I thought about Steve Job's desire to "Put a ding in the Universe". That is a very high goal.
It seems that we as a society are functioning for the most part with a very short time-horizon in mind. It made me wonder if we too are doomed to be a failed experiment. Of the billions of civilizations that are among the stars, what makes some of them last longer than others? The dinosaurs had several hundred million years on top, what makes us believe we are going to do better? Are we any better prepared for astroids, the death of our sun or the impending collision with Andromeda? Or some other truly life ending event that we have yet to perceive?
One nice thing about these questions is that they really help put our daily activities into perspective. How many of us are working on things that are not transitory? Or more relevant is on what time scale are the things we working on irrelevant?
It really puts a bad Monday into perspective.
At least ideas having no matter or energy to decay or transform are exempt from the overwhelming juggernaut of entropy. They are the best we can do for now.
