The Fate of the Universe And Why Should We Care
Our current educated guess on the fate of the cosmos is an excessively elaborate description on the meagerness of humanity. The details are discussed earlier. How are we going to respond to it? And why even bother responding to it?
We humans throughout history have emotionally responded to this science based ominousness in multiple ways. The first is survival oriented. Failing to detect flaws in the theory for the time being, the long term priority of humanity would be to refine space travel and double down on scientific research in hopes of overthrowing these unsettling predictions. This is the hype offered by Elon Musk as he preached SpaceX as a potentially civilization changing business on par with the advent of trans-Atlantic cruise ships that enabled European expansion to the New World. He also tangentially touched on the issue of our unsettling cosmic omens by emphasizing the necessity to boost up processing power and efficiency of mankind as a whole so we can tackle qualitatively more profound questions. Hype or not, his pitch epitomizes the rational, survival oriented response, the belief in our intellectual capacity and perseverance to conquer insurmountable odds. As for the reason and justification for this response, the value of survival and self perseverance is evolutionarily developed and often treated as categorical, i.e., unquestionable. In short, this attitude is the starting point and ongoing goal, if not the end point, of their existence, and challenging its necessity alone brings existential angst to its adherents. Its flaw lies in its obviously circular nature: in effect they are automatons surviving for survival’s sake, no matter how much they emote on the value of continued existence.
The second route manifests in the form of acceptance. Though expressed in esoteric terms, Buddhism explored the infinitely larger scale of the cosmos and the volatility of existence long before the formulation of modern science. Buddhism has its charm as it has a penchant for describing awe-inspiringly complex cosmos, it even roughly coincides with science on the matter of reincarnation. Based on our understanding of entropy and quantum physics, it is infinitesimally unlikely but still possible that a dead universe will recreate itself randomly after 10^10^10^56 years. There are many varieties on this route of response crystallized in various maxims, e.g., “living the moment”, “cherish the day”, which all share more tolerance to human futility in face of inescapable change. The attitude is well captured in the movie Matrix Reloaded, in which sentient machines affirmed their willingness to implement certain mutually destructive strategies to enforce dominance over humans, saying, “there are levels of existence we are willing to accept.” To the machines, though obviously less than optimal, being powerless dead servers is also considered a form of existence that can be nonchalantly embraced if no feasible alternatives exist. A human that fully follows this route of response would be completely apathetic to the cosmic omen above and go by his day unperturbed.
On its face, the Buddhist and accepting attitude to our likely inevitable doomsday as part of the volatile nature of the world is more consistent with reality, less exhausting, and brings more inner peace. But willing our will away or, as a variety of it, expressing it away is not the end of the story. In an episode of Star Wars which touches on topics of twist of fate and prophecy, the protagonist Anakin Skywalker consulted what was in effect a space-monk Yoda on what to do as he was in pain due to the impending death of his illegitimate lover and he desire to save her. Yoda’s response was a wise sounding but inhumanly cold “just accept it”, and find rejoice in her reunion with the spiritual world. Yoda’s inability to bridge Anakin’s earthly angst with his well organized yet unapproachable heavenly philosophy later turned out to be the seed of obliteration of his religious order. The difficulty of a student to digest difficult lessons here is simply overlooked as his lack of wisdom to be rectified by himself. On this ground, Buddhism fails to reconcile with humanity’s experience: our ancestors don’t develop the ability to philosophize on these deep problems by accepting everything inside their cave. It rejects the earthly side of humanity as a temporary illusion to be forsaken eventually.
Both approaches have their merits but neither is complete. Survivalism is fundamentally rooted in evolutionary motivation and there is something wrong in blindly and endlessly following an instruction as it in itself leads to inadaptiveness — paradoxically an evolutionary drive has to be rebelled in order to ensure continual evolution. Acceptance goes against our human experience and fringes on surrender disguised as transcendence.
Why bother with all this? Because there seems to be something wrong no matter how we respond. There is something jaw dropping about the scale of the universe; its fate is a matter of life and death and it triggers us; if we choose to do something about it, the endeavor would seem hopelessly futile and backfires to challenge our own existence; if we do nothing about it or numb the discomfort with entertainment or chores of life, we are blinding ourselves to something important and potentially threatening.
We have yet to find a satisfactory response to it. What we experientially know is that it is our attempts to reconcile seemingly completely separate and alien entities that drive human progress. In multiple separate disciplines like law and physics, it is our wish to bridge, to connect incompatible views that are in themselves consistent, not to eliminate one side based on whatever criteria of “better” that we come up with, that broadens our understanding about the world and ourselves. It is not wrong to say all that humans have been doing throughout these millennia is to make the incompatible compatible. On this endeavor, our greatest project of all is to reconcile life with death, the infinitesimal with the infinite. The rage of self preservation and the nonchalance of acceptance are but partial responses of this overarching theme of humanity.
Surprisingly evolution is in support of this seemingly esoteric activity so remote from paying the bills. The human brain is hard wired to experience pleasure when in exploration or pattern finding. On our deeply rooted drive to find compatibility in the incompatible, psychologist Jordan Peterson puts it in this way:
We are very good at imitation. We imitate all sorts of things that aren’t even human. You view the expanse of the night sky. A sense of awe fills you as you confront it. It calls to something inside of you that can master the infinite. That’s a form of imitation. To look into the darkest place, the widest expanse possible, and have something in you that responds, that is capable of dealing with that. That’s calling the best of you. Not only are you good at it, you cannot live without it. This expanse can be in other forms like music. What is it calling to precisely? A harmonious interplay of patterns. Music reflects that and you orient yourself and your body manner to those patterns along with the world.
So to answer the question at the beginning, space is a terrible place indeed. We respond to it in all sorts of ways throughout history: by working hard to survive it; by working ourselves to not care about it. We still care about it because it’s so in your face and so blindingly important that no matter how powerless we are and how hard we try to tell ourselves not to care we feel an urge to do something about it, and it triggers us to think about and do all sorts of things. The more we do it the better we become, as supported by both human history and our reward mechanism which is trained by evolution for generations. In more technical terms, we cathart with the cosmos. We cathart with other stuff too like music.
