Many of us spend what to me seems, an awful lot of bandwidth in the form of time – and perhaps other valuable resources – thinking that we must have some kind of purpose. Before commenting further, I’d like to juxtapose this with the concept that evolution and natural selection have hard-wired us to recognize both risk and reward signs which pay benefits, even in today’s First World – provided we pay attention. I raise this last point in an effort to explain why we each need to stop spending one more moment on trying to determine our “purpose” and many other non-material matters, as the sciences are on them. As such, I say we’re better off focusing our attention elsewhere, such as on a paycheck or individual improvement.
In other words, if there ever comes a day when – using the scientific method – those experts determine we have a purpose beyond our determining whether someone we are faced with is a friend or a foe, or if whatever we find ourselves faced with requires a fight or flight response, they will let us know.
Unless you are in the fields of biology, chemistry, math or physics, and are one of those on the front lines of these disciplines theorizing and discovering, then rigorously testing, evaluating, re-testing and re-evaluating results that are completely free from our biases, then you can relax.
Unless we have solid evidence to prove otherwise, or until such time that we are informed otherwise, we can assume that the universe and all it encompasses, which is everything, is a disorderly system operating under the orderly laws of physics. We simply found ourselves here due to incidental and indiscriminate activity, taking place over an unfathomable amount of time on an incomprehensible scale.
Those among us who have “made more monie” by determining this, have figured out that over the past fifteen billion years – give or take a billion – our solar system was formed in the Milky Way galaxy, an infinitesimally, microscopically small part of the Virgo Supercluster, which, along with the other 10 million superclusters of galaxies that we have discovered, were breathed into life by the Big Bang. What this means, aside from the fact that once numbers get so big they don’t really matter, is that we can thank our lucky stars, both literally and figuratively, that I’m able to write these words and you’re able to read them.
Anyway, the above activity all took place during the first ten billion years or so, followed by a billion year-long cooling-off of our planet, which, by the way, just happens to be rotating at exactly the right speed at just the right distance from the sun, enabling conditions favorable for basic life. And by this, I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about nothing more than simple reproduction-capable hydrocarbon molecules formed and fashioned in the oceans and which, over the most recent three billion years, evolved into progressively more complex forms of life via natural selection, resulting in very slow but steady genetic mutation and adaptation, culminating in the first primates 50 million years ago.
Since then, the planet has witnessed the emergence of the first proto-humans 5 million years ago, followed by various other forms of homo-hominids, leading up to those that built shelters and used spears about half a million years ago, with our own species becoming the dominant prototype after about 300,000 years, with human advancement eventually coming in leaps and bounds commencing 50,000 years ago, and with modern humans becoming the sole survivors of the once diverse human evolutionary tree over the first 25,000 of these years.
Now, here in the present, we try to exert dominance over the entire planet, of course, to our own peril, resulting in almost 8 billion people alive and living today, and are able to look back on the deceased 100 billion or so that have come and gone. To think that but for the precise placement of our planet, not just location-wise but time-wise, not only would we not be here, but that primordial soup in which we were born and nurtured like an embryo surrounded by amniotic fluid, would have never been the source of our amazing, astonishing and astounding existence. With each of us having such a short window of opportunity to “make more monie”, time, in no uncertain terms, really is of the essence!
Disclaimer: The information contained herein should not be construed or considered professional advice. Nonetheless, thanks for reading! If it resonates, there’s “plenty more where that came from” on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ‘n’ Twitter.