Spinning in Infinity?

Over on Spythoughts, Nick has posted a piece on the species-centrism of mankind.

I thought I had a good comment to add to his post, but then as I started to explain myself I realised my train of logic was leading me off the edge into a void. However, I'll post this anyway because it's probably just as good as any of my other silly posts recently.

Yup, I think that humans as a race tend to be fairly species-centric. Then again, cheetahs would be cheetah-centric in their understanding of the universe, just as hammerhead worms would be hammerhead worm-centric.

Mmmm, no, I won't do the dishes today...

So we view the universe in the context of what makes sense to us as a human species. This is the same for our cultures and societies. People tend to view can categorise the world based on what is 'familiar' and 'normal' to them based on their life experience.

When I was in Vanuatu last year, one of the people in the village where we stayed told me about her trip to New Zealand. She thought it was really funny that all the cars and trucks in Auckland were told what to do by electric lights that changed colour. There are no traffic lights in Vanuatu. And similarly, I, the visitor from neatly-mown suburban Mount Eden, thought it was very strange to have pigs and chickens wandering wild past my house all day. What do you when you are woken in the morning by a pig's snout pushing through the door?

I think we're often afraid to go outside out box. Our comfort zone is tiny, and it can be scary (or exciting) to realise that we're just a small part of an unimaginably vast black void that defies our understanding. The December Tsunami demonstrated that even on our tiny blue-green dot, the forces of nature can wipe us out in a moment. We are infinitely fragile, and the universe is so big. But surely this is part of what a journey of faith is about - stepping outside the spaceship, daring to peer through that telescope?

I think we tend to avoid looking outside our box because the enormity of the universe and our apparent insignificance could numb us into complete inaction. In the grand scheme of expanding quantum particles, stardust and galaxies, what's the point of taking the rubbish out, getting an education, or starting a family? None of these human activities seems to make any difference at all in this context.

But maybe a wider consciousness of our miniscule-ness (OK that's not a word) in the face of creation could have some positive effects on mankind. I found this quote from Arthur C. Clarke:

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

Another Clarke quote I found on the same page seems to sum up the awe we can sense when we start to think beyond the realms of what we know and understand.

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

OK, so this post hasn't really resolved anything does it? No. I didn't think so. Righto, I better go and do something incredibly small minded and typically human-centric. Like make a pizza.