A thousand years ago the Universe consisted of the Earth with the Sun rotating around it, some planets and some points of light in the night sky.

A couple of hundred years ago we had the Solar system. A Sun with 6 or 7 planets.

Then we discover our galaxy, the Milky Way. And other galaxies. We don’t know how big the Universe is, or how old it is.

But we eventually figure out we have not only a few galaxies but billions of galaxies. With billions of stars. And find our first planets outside the solar system.

We figure out how old the Universe is.

And now it’s being suggested there may be more Universes. That’s a big change over a 1,000 years. From a Sun and Earth to many Universes (maybe). Boggles the mind.

I CHOSE not to have children. It was not something that happened to me, it was something I decided to do, deliberately and after much reflection.

No one consulted me before they threw my young ass into this universe, and my eventual return to oblivion is also not up to anyone but me. And at best, all I can do is delay it somewhat. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, not because there is no proof, but because I have yet to see any. So I don’t owe the universe, god, destiny, fate, karma, evolution or DNA anything. I suspect I am not the center of Creation, but I have no way of proving it. Through no fault of our own, our ignorance is an infinite void. We have no choice but to try and fill it as best we can with our will and our action.

Now I HAVE chosen not to interfere with the lives of some, to aid and love those I wish to, to struggle against others, and to take part in some things, or oppose others, as my own conscience and judgement guides me. But those are all things I choose to do.

If there is a purpose or plan to the cosmos, I haven’t a clue as to what it is. So I guess I get to pick my own. That’s what I call freedom.

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All else is icing. Basically irrelevant. Disneyland. And after Disneyland we head back to find food, shelter and protection. Maybe reproduce.

One can fall in love with the extras, one can dedicate one’s life to them, and then one loses perspective. As a species our job is to keep going as a species and if it doesn’t help with that, it’s nothing we need to know.

That’s not to say those expeditions aren’t worthwhile – they are. That doesn’t answer the argument that if you can do it you should. It doesn’t satisfy those who say that since we were given curiosity we were also given the drive and permission to satisfy that curiosity.

And it does seem we were given the ability, at least in the last 500 years, to devote much time and energy into that which is novel and ultimately not necessary to our survival.

How many aborigines need to know about holographic universes as opposed to which snakes are poisonous and how far they can strike?

Our purpose in life is to make some sense of this movie, even if we don’t get to see all of it; otherwise, we’re just employees here. Actually, not even that, we are slaves. Animals spend every moment trying to stay alive, humans should spend every moment trying to make life worth living. Knowledge of our mortality not only makes this possible, it makes it necessary.

Some day I’ll wake up in a bed, feeling very uncomfortable, with tubes and wires plugged into my orifices. I know I won’t be able to avoid that, but I’ll be damned if I’ll settle for that being the PURPOSE OF LIFE. The purpose is to try and have a good time, which for me, means trying to think about what I see and trying to understand it all. As long as I’m still capable of doing that, I’m

Winning

We are at the center of the observable region, but it is so small, and we have so little time, and our vision is clouded. Still, we do have an opportunity and an obligation to enrich our lives as much as we possibly can, and there is more than enough for that.

The next logical expansion is billions of Universes. Without the slightest idea as to how it works, I’ll have to bow to those who spend their lives trying to figure it out and concede they may be right. They have peers, and don’t want to look foolish to them.

The other thought I have is that there is no reason for Man to know or understand that. Our job is to survive, find the best cave, defang the saber-toothed tiger, whoop the Muslims. There is nothing about multiverses which help us survive on this planet.

One could make the case that we need to know that for our long-term survival as a species. But that’s a product of imagination. There are so many problems with the idea of a human being as an entire organism surviving anywhere else but Earth or the solar system renders that idea moot. At least for now.

So I believe that “they” believe it. It may be that for those such as me the answers have to wait for a more complete understanding of dark matter, dark energy and gravity and whether superstring theory is correct.

But I do believe Man’s mind has reached beyond anywhere it needs to go. Which is sort of fun.

1) I don’t have the technical training to follow the discussions except at the most superficial, Sunday supplement level.

2) It may already be the case where what we need to know to understand the universe may be beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend, that is, our brains are just not complex enough to deal with the concepts and computations. After all, the mind is a subset of the universe, and therefore, by definition, less complex.

3) We simply don’t have the experimental or observational evidence to propose any meaningful, or even testable, theories. We are forced to do nothing but speculate.

4) We may never have that evidence, we may have reached natural barriers to the acquisition of that evidence; i.e., the necessary experiments and observations require apparatus which is not possible to construct due to physical law, or will require capabilities which are forbidden due to violations of physical law, or due to quantum indeterminacy. Physical barriers like the speed of light or the Uncertainty Principle may simply not permit us to make the required measurements.

5) There may be something in physics comparable to the Incompleteness Theorem in Mathematics. Some questions may have no answers because they are not valid questions in the first place.

So what remains, except to plunge into the nonsense of unfounded speculation and pop metaphysics? We are faced with one final reality, one which we can know, and one which we can understand: the reality revealed by our own senses, analyzable by our own reason and open to our own understanding. It may not be all there is to the entire universe, but it is the only part of the universe we have any guaranteed access to. All the rest is shadows.