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Comment by illithid0

10 hours ago

This may sound misanthropic of me, but it has helped immensely for me to view all of humanity as insignificant. Maybe even an anomaly as far as the scale of the universe, or at least an extreme rarity, capable of building societies and machines with more power and influence than our brains and bodies ever evolved to handle.

Perhaps many of us are indifferent because that is our default, and there is no reason we were "meant to" survive this long. If the universe's age scaled down was the length of a human lifetime, we almost went extinct the day before yesterday[1].

Beyond at least that moment, we are very lucky to still be around. There is nothing about us that is special against the vast indifference of the universe. While we may feel special ourselves, against our own atomic understanding of our surroundings, we are not, and that gap could very well be a primary source of our suffering.

That said, it does not stop me from enjoying my time here in this beautiful place and, as Camus put it, raging against the absurdity.

1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-ancestors-n...