I believe in the universe! I think that everything can be balanced, equated and appreciated in the universe. Even if some things cannot be fully understood and if we sometimes feel huge pain, there is an outcome that eventually works for the best. And this isn’t just giving in, accepting your destiny, and not fighting for anything.
Some indigenous people believe that what is written in the stars is our destiny. I don’t believe in destiny, I know nothing about the horoscope, I don’t believe in pixie dust, and since the ultrasound was invented and biology became a regular part of the school curriculum I admire anyone who can still believe that a virgin can give birth.
I also don’t think the universe is in harmony; no, the universe is complete chaos, and our lives are just a fraction of an infinitely small moment. Compared to the life of the planets around us, and the rocks and seabed on our Earth, our lives are infinitely short. Nothing is set to happen, and everything is just the singularity of time, hence the difference between ‘internal time’ and general time.
Balance comes out of chaos. If there was no chaos then we wouldn’t know what balance means – we can only think of its existence if we compare it to the opposite.
When people challenge me and say that everything has an end, I argue that this is not true. Only things with a beginning can have an end, so what about a circle? Can anyone show me where the beginning of a circle is, and where the end is? No one can say that a circle doesn’t exist, also no one can prove that a unicorn doesn’t exist. We all know what a unicorn looks like, we all know its shape, we created it! Has anyone ever seen a unicorn? I don’t think so, but we still know so much about it.
I managed to read 10 books in November. I can’t read just one book at a time. So I jumped from one to another, and as you can imagine they were not dramas or love stories. I read philosophy books instead; among them ‘Astrotopia’ by Mary-Jane Rubenstein (published in 2022). This book undermines at every step what the space community is doing and the purpose of the new ‘space race’. The author is a professor in ethics, but sadly she doesn’t talk at all about the ethical norms of humans living an extraterrestrial life. Instead she attacks prominent figures like Elon Musk and Bob Zubrin, accusing them of creating a toxic religion that promises a new life in space. She undermines the fundamental virtue ethical human condition (I am deliberately borrowing the noun ‘human condition’ from Hannah Arendt), which is in technology.
Shannon Vallor rightly says that you can’t imagine humans without technology and technology without humans. We all evolved from the Kenyan valley, we can now live in the North and South Poles (without fur!), we invented bows and arrows, we were able to feed more people and survive better, we began Industrial Revolutions, and now we are going extraterrestrial.
There have been many pioneers along the way, who were usually heavily criticised for their inventions. For instance, the word ‘atom’ was invented by Democritus in about 400 BC; Ancient Greeks already knew about the smallest particle. But it took us more than 2,000 years to discover it, break it and fuse it. But then something very bad happened. The atomic bomb on one hand finished WWII, possibly saving millions of lives, but on the other hand it killed millions of people on the spot and in its aftermath. Should the discovery of the atom have been prevented; the answer is no! Not by the Ancient Greek civilisation, nor by the current one.
People who think that Elon Musk, Bob Zubrin, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and so many other pioneers are toxic and destroying humanity should ask themselves what kind of Satan is hunting them.
Another incredible inventor, Alan Turing, who contributed selflessly to peace and the end of WWII, ended his life because people couldn’t understand that time always goes in one direction, no matter the internal time of individuals. We are not trapped in time; we are part of the great chaos of the universe and each one of us must find our own equations.
Instead of judging scientists, inventors, and remarkable people, critics should ask themselves: what does a unicorn look like? I am sure they know very well. Also, they should show us where the circle starts. It will take thousands more years to find out about that… by then we will most likely know the equations of a black hole and live extraterrestrially, at least around our solar system if not further out. As you can see, my November was all about deep thinking…