Why You Should Be Freaked Out By the Stars

SPACE. The Final Frontier.  A vast expanse of stars and mystery strewn across our miniscule vision, far past the reaches of our imaginations. A cold, seemingly lifeless void, stretching into infinity. A dark crevasse glaring into our souls, and us, gazing back in awe at the blackness as if facing the endless, judgmental, all-knowing vision of the hollow eyes of death itself.

Kinda neat, right?

Up to this point in history, the study of space has been the leading cause of the utterance “da fuh?” If taken in large doses, space may cause repetitive existential crises, loss of/lapses in faiths of all kinds, and confusion amongst blind people ("Wait, so it looks like what I see all the time? I don’t get it.") If administered to children, it may cause extreme boredom, blindness in those who don’t take instruction well (see warning label for "the sun"), and wedgies in those actually interested in it (similar effects seen due to interests in dinosaurs, reading, and musical theatre.) Ask a doctor, priest, or homeless UFO enthusiast/heroin addict if space is right for you.

Bottom line, space freaks us out. But often the reason why is misconstrued. Sure, scientists don’t know what’s out there, and as educated laymen, we can only speculate. But then again, we are also the species that believed putting hydrogen in blimps was a grand idea for a long time.

 

So maybe our speculation isn’t worth much.

It isn’t so much what we do not know about the form of space that knocks our helmets off. It’s big, dark, quiet, and lonely. Sort of like Michael Oher from the movie “The Blind Side.” What should really twist up our oxygen tubes is what space tells us about ourselves. For example, are we a self-made species, struggling to understand nature and develop our own technology and tools of survival? Or have we been assisted over the generations by something… unidentified?

Now stay with me here…

So maybe it’s a bit crazy, but let’s be honest, we all know they’re out there.

 

In 1561, in the dawning sunlight of a new day, the inhabitants of Nuremberg, Germany awoke to an enormous ruckus. In the light of the rising sun, massive cigar shaped metallic objects were hurling various other shapes at one another as smaller cross shaped things dodged in and out of the conflict. When one of the crosses, spheres, or cigars was struck, it would hurl into the earth and vanish in a plume of smoke. It was a battle of epic proportions, and no one had any clue what the hell it was they were watching. The picture above along with a description of the event was put in a broadsheet, which was basically a newspaper of the time. The battle persisted for hours, and was actually so easy to follow that the townsfolk could tell which side was winning. The struggle drifted further and further from the Earth until one side attempted to flee, and the other pursued, driving the anomaly towards the sun.

Ok, so it is questionable WHAT exactly happened, because obviously the 16^th century German people interpreted this battle as an event of religious significance. It's just the way things were back then. That would explain the religious iconography with the crosses and the lights, which today we might more readily compare to a fuselage with wings and firearms. But something definitely happened. What does that mean for us?

The Ancient Egyptians cut stone blocks with precision we WISH we could accomplish today. So what?

The Incas developed perfectly aerodynamic flying machine models and buried them with their kings encrypted with the words “I want to fly.” Alright.

Hundreds of paintings and testimonies from the Renaissance and Middle Ages contain stories and images about beings in flying machines, most of which look the same. Who cares?

Justin Beiber’s music is still popular.

If you can believe that one, you can believe the rest.

What I am getting at is this: there is a whole lot of evidence pushing sideways at what we believe to be true because we have opted for the information that makes US the center of everything. We’ve done it for thousands of years. Earth is the center of the universe, WE were created to rule, God is our father, the universe is our oyster, and if there is anything else out there, they must be allergic to shellfish. Us, us, us. We, we, we. Nothing else matters.

If we admit there is something else out there, it means we might not be the best, the most important, or designed for any purpose. And maybe if we were designed with a purpose, maybe it isn't the one we would like to believe in. Just a bit more dust floating through space with the rest of the dust. We have survived and thrived based off the idea that we are bigger than we really are, and we are afraid that shooting lower would be an insult to what “we can be.”

I don’t want that responsibility, and I’m not sure anyone else really does. So I say, screw it. Let the aliens be in charge, because whether it’s God, a flying spaghetti monster, or Liam Neeson that is calling the shots, the only universe I am important in is the one in my head. So yeah, space scares me, and I think it should scare everyone. But when it comes down to the existential wire, I don’t die, the world ends. The things I do, the people I love, and my longstanding effects will peter out eventually, so for now, my lifelong fulfillment and that of others is my focus. Let's revel in our minuteness, because it isn't about to change.

So why is MY universe so great and worth living in?