APOD: Galaxy NGC 7714 After Collision (2015 Jun 09)

[chuckster]

I don't feel small ; I feel calibrated.

That's a pretty good way of putting it.

I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?

Ann

I feel awesome about it all, too. I'm not going to let some postulated inconsequentiality of our existence bother me, and it doesn't take much effort, because it would be against a backdrop I have no reference points for. If you're religious, the implication is that we, and all alien races, are just dancing bugs in a universe where only God knows the Big Picture, and are therefore predisposed to living inside a bubble of cluelessness. Also, one must have been scarred in childhood to reach out that far into space and time for reasons to keep from feeling good about what we can see, in an effort to avoid the possible embarassment of learning we're just a fleck of dust on the surface of some higher reality. It doesn't matter. Our plate is full, we have free will, and the only way to dispel ignorance is to pursue knowledge, regardless of the Big Picture. You never know how that dust-mote-on-a-higher-level-reality-surface thing will actually turn out.

[Universal Speedbump]

I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?

I don't know if it is or is not. Say our Universe is the experiment of something else's advanced equivalent of elementary school children. Who's to say ours is the smart student's and not their version of Ralph Wiggum?

We all exist in Homer's head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVbfpFfLXPw

[Beyond]

And to think that Homer was only travelling at warped mind 1.