Why do we exist? The meaning of life isn’t to be found in the stars

We are tiny specks of beingness successful a vast, indifferent cosmos – but to accidental that decreases the worth of our beingness is to measurement ourselves against the incorrect thing

Life 17 November 2021

By Tiffany O'Callaghan

Wenmei Zhou/Getty Images

WE CAN effort to reply the question of wherefore we beryllium successful a literal sense: by tracing our quality communicative backmost done the whorls and rifts of evolution, done the contested origins of beingness connected Earth and the collapsing unreality of particulate and gas that became our location satellite 4.5 cardinal years ago, backmost to the commencement of our beingness immoderate 13.8 cardinal years agone – and possibly further inactive (see “Why is determination thing alternatively than nothing?”).

Yet nary of this communicative of happenstance helps america successful uncovering the kind of meaning we crave: meaning successful significance. “Now we cognize that the cosmos contains astatine slightest a cardinal cardinal galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, astir of which person planets astir them. In 1 of these zillions of planets, arsenic astir apt successful galore others, chemistry became analyzable and evolved successful each sorts of critters, 1 of which, not peculiarly bully successful surviving, is humankind,” says physicist Carlo Rovelli astatine Aix-Marseille University successful France. “It is wide that immoderate ambition of this humankind to beryllium peculiarly important successful the expansive strategy of things looks silly.”

That realisation was surely a large woody erstwhile it archetypal brought gods and mythologies we created crashing down, says Victor Strecher, who studies the value of intent for our well-being astatine the University of Michigan. That started successful earnest successful the 1700s, arsenic technological enquiry began to upend our assumptions astir our cardinal spot successful the universe. Simultaneously, the concern gyration archetypal saw radical leaving long-established agrarian communities and venturing retired into a wider satellite successful ample numbers.

The mistake, says …