It All Starts With A Bang!

Until it doesn’t.

What: The observable universe.

When: 13,800,000,000 years ago.

Who: ?

Where: ?

Why: ?

How: This thing called the Big Bang(?)

In our perpetual condition of cosmic uncertainty, the universe presents as one giant riddle, an astronomical tease of incongruity and insolubility, which invites a humorous element to the universe. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (#2), Douglas Adams captured this perfectly when he wrote:

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The Big Bang theory is the best model we have for the nascency of the universe as we know it. A watered-down version of the events goes like this:

1. Seemingly out of nothing, a big bang happened and the primordial universe was formed. It kept on expanding, rolling out a sea of subatomic particles like neutrons, protons, electrons, positrons, photons, and neutrinos. The Big Bang left the universe in a state of high density and high temperature, and as time and space were unfurled, so was the universe.
2. The universe cooled down, which brought on the initial ingredients of celestial formation: the neutrons either combined with protons to form deuterium or decayed into protons and electrons. The universe continued to cool down and eventually atoms were formed.

The real problem lies in the very first step of the Big Bang: the bridge from nowhere. This poses a more metaphysical question: how can anything come from nothing? What came before the Big Bang? And before that? Ad infinitum.

This question has rightfully attracted its own deluge of speculation. Some say the bridge is a quantum one, others say it’s divine, and still more say it’s divinely quantum. The only thing we can ascertain is that, for now, all of these options remain inexorably unprovable, or at best indiscernible. The modern divorce of religion and science can perhaps fundamentally be attributed to the differences born of this single question. William James said it best when he asserted that “The question of being is darkest in all philosophy.”

In this branch of metaphysical cosmology, figuring out the meaning of the universe is less difficult than learning the means of its formation; once the latter is crystallized (if ever), then by default so will the former. To simplify, we can esteem the creation of the universe as to distinguish two ‘hows’ — a physicalist ‘scientific how’ and a ‘metaphysical how’. Along a certain line of thinking, the metaphysical how can, of course, on some level be derived from the scientific how. However, the former cannot be entirely explained by the latter.

In an attempt to synthesize a more meaningful understanding of the universe, literature has derived its own metaphor.

Rumi says: “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

Our universe is composed of thoughts and subsequent actions, sparked by electrical impulses spread across a blanket of 100 billion neurons. Thinking lies at the intersection of consciousness and some level of free will, paving the way for our conscious and subconscious apperceptions to manifest. How we conduct our thoughts is, in a scientific sense, known, but how our ideas come about is, in a metaphysical sense, not.

It all starts with a bang! An idea presents itself — a Eureka spark, that ‘aha’ moment, the flicker of an inner light bulb that kindles our passions. The puzzle is finally complete, all the slots are filled, and everything clicks. We wait for that great idea to come to us and pursue it relentlessly, but sometimes it never does. Sometimes, when our thinking is occupied with another unrelated event, we are hit by the idea we have been waiting for — out of nowhere, out of nothing. The universe’s inveterate bridge from nowhere is again apparent in ourselves. Of course, this can on some level be rationalized, but once again, our ‘scientific how’ is answered while our ‘metaphysical how’ is not.

We each contain within us our own individual universes. By extension, realizing that this holds true for others as it does for ourselves is the key to empathy. The meaning of life is the meaning of our lives — the meaning of the universe is the meaning of our universes. We may live in an absurd, arbitrary, capricious, tragicomic, and magnificently egotistical universe. However, recognizing the power of our inner universe can help assuage this existential dilemma.

The Bridge To Happiness

The most elusive of states, and perhaps the weightiest of them all, is what we call happiness. Rather than defining happiness as a pleasant state of mind, let us instead define it as being the best possible state of mind. If we are to regard philosophy as fundamentally being the process of figuring out the best way to think about things, then we should also turn to philosophy to help lead us to the best possible mentality, or happiness.

Philosophers across the different eras provided us with their methods on attaining happiness: Plato said it was through the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage), Aristotle held it was through goodwill, and Epicurus through his own brand of hedonism and ataraxia. Nietzsche believed we could alleviate our ‘suffering’ by searching for some meaning in the suffering. Camus stated that we are morally obligated to be happy.

“Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inner equanimity stems from knowing that no external event can disturb us if our inner world remains unperturbed. To come as close as possible to an absolute contentment, it is essential that we identify and become familiar with our own thought patterns. In other words, it may be wise to avoid falling into an existential trap of questioning whether or not we are happy and instead direct our thoughts so as to aspire to lead our lives in the best way possible.

Scientifically, we have been provided with how to achieve happiness: through the active practice of gratitude, volunteering, charity, and more. Again, answering the ‘metaphysical how’ of happiness immediately becomes a much more complex question when taking into consideration our own individual complexities.

The bridge from nowhere is not a bridge to nowhere. Perhaps, then, happiness is also like the universe. It is true that the bridge to happiness is a nebulous one. However, we must also realize that the end of the bridge becomes reachable only by braving to take the first steps to cross it.

Further reading:

1. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time
2. The Bridge From Nowhere by Nautilus
3. Was there any before, before the Big Bang? an Aeon video
4. Ethan Siegel’s blog