Egocentrism, our own disorder

Humans are the most egocentric creatures on the planet. We always strive for being special, different, and most certainly better than all other living things. We also like to think that everything that we associate with is also better, this next post will explain more.

From the dawn of history, humans believed the earth to be the centre of the universe. With careful observations of the night sky, it was seen that the movement of the stars did not reflect our beliefs. More strongly believed was the notion that the sun revolved around the earth. The earth is important (since we live on it) that everything must revolve around it, people thought. Astronomers like Copernicus, knew that observations did not match with the hypothesis, but the Church persisted that this is the way the universe was set up. Anyone who dared to challenge the Church, was jailed and in some cases punished. In fact when Galileo challenged the Chruch “the princes of the Church threatened the aged astronomer with torture.”

After confirmation that the earth revolved around the sun, we (humans) started to believe that our solar system was at the centre of the galaxy, and that our galaxy is all that there is. Once again, science being harsh and straight forward, told us that our solar system exists merely on one of the arms of the galaxy, not even on the biggest “arm”, and not even in the centre of the arm. Furthermore, our sun isn’t the largest one, has no special features, and like all other stars will die eventually. It also turned out that our galaxy is one of millions randomly scattered galaxies throughout the universe.

A more recent discovery was that the universe is expanding. In other words, every single galaxy is moving away from the other. Again, since we (humans) are so special, we jumped to the thought “hey, we must be at the centre of the expansion” but as usual, we were wrong. There’s no centre of expansion, and once again we’re not special. In the world of universes all are created equal.

For now we can stick to the belief that we’re the only planet with life, since up to this point in time, we have not discovered life beyond earth. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan raises the question: with our record of disappointments should we so strongly believe that earth is the only planet which harbours life?

Why do we think we’re so special? Is this a psychological problem in all human beings? If there was life on other planets, would they think they are so special as well? When we discover that other life exists in other places, will we think we are more special than “them”?
I will admit, I would have liked it if Earth was at the centre of universe, to me, that would have been an undeniable indication of an underlying specialty behind us. But the truth is we’re nothing but inhabitants of a mind boggling universe. In the large scheme of things, we amount to nothing but a spec of dust floating away aimlessly in an ocean of matter

:(

Sources: Some of the ideas and quotes came from Pale Blue Dot
Photo above: a galaxy cluster, just to give perspective




This is a simple diagram of the milky way and where the sun lies