Every nanosecond of life is more miraculous and more inexplicable that all of our made-up stories.

The universe is large beyond comprehension, cold, and hostile. Against all odds, even getting up in the morning is an incredible act of defiance.

@ani That is beautifully true. Thank you for sharing this.

@pimoore Thank you for your kind note and my best wishes to you! I feel particularly contemplative on Friday nights and Monday mornings. :)

@ani second @pimoore on this... i think we need to be way more attentive to the miracle that life is and the unedningly hitched to everything else universe in which it unfolds...

@mbkriegh @ani This is why Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan is undoubtedly my favourite writing of all time.

@ani @pimoore Carl Sagan once wrote, "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile..." Could the attribution of benignity or hostility to the universe be psychological projection? We can differentiate our models of the universe from our emotional reactions to it.

@nathanstrait @ani This is an interesting thought, as there are just as many benign and hostile places — and everything in between — right here on Earth.

@nathanstrait @pimoore It is an interesting thought. But statistically, even if we look at our own neighborhood of our solar system, there are more places that are hostile to our own form of life than are welcoming. And to speak nothing of complex, multicellular “intelligent” life. It’s also quite a sobering thought to think of the zone of habilability - the Goldilocks zone afforded by the Earth night now. Venus and Mars might’ve been in zones of habitability in the past.

@mbkriegh Indeed. It’s so easy to take everything for granted though.

@ani @nathanstrait Funny you mention Venus, as it’s the planetary example of a runaway greenhouse effect. I recall reading an article long ago that Venus once likely very different from its current condition. This should concern us greatly for the direction we’re headed.

@ani @pimoore My question wasn't quite the same as the question of how much is habitable for us, but about trying to differentiate the psychological connotations of "benign/hostile", "warm/cold", "welcoming/unwelcoming", etc., from the science. This may be worth further inquiry.

@nathanstrait @ani I agree, much of these terms are subject to interpretation amongst different people.

@nathanstrait @pimoore Thanks for the clarification. Definitely, our perspective and language are anthropocentric.

@ani @pimoore "Anthropocentric thinking" is a nice way of putting it. We do think that way, but one of my practices is asking how I can think bigger, which is where my question came from. One might counter that non-anthropocentric thinking would be unrealistic, but it could be realistic, just different from our usual way of thinking. I'm not suggesting we can or should eliminate anthropocentric thinking—we need it—but I'm interested in the possibility of maintaining psychological distance from it, adding other perspectives: e.g., anthropocentrically the universe is hostile, but non-anthropocentrically it's not. Can I think both ways? What could I gain from it?

@ani

“even getting up in the morning is an incredible act of defiance.”

Thankyou.. finally someone that understands .. now if only my partner understood this basic fact of survival.

@nathanstrait This may be a leap too far for many, but I’d urge us humans to first think in terms of other species on the planet first.

@JohnPhilpin It’s something that we have to remind ourselves as well. We’re doing the best we can. Take care!

@ani I agree—thinking in terms of tardigrades always gives me a bigger perspective on the meaning of "benign/hostile", "warm/cold", "welcoming/unwelcoming", etc. (I've also long been interested in communicating conservation of other species and their habitats.)