Triumphant returns: For me AND dirt.

I am back!  woot, right?

On to it then:

Twice in the lsat two days I have been reminded of a very basic fact of the universe… one which I tend to forget and which I believe that the human species should maybe be reminded of.

You see, the Orionid Meteor Shower is happening right now, little pieces of dirt and dust and ice left over from the tail of a comet discovered by haley in the eighteenth century (but has been a periodic visitor to our sky since at least the seventh).  These little bits of interplanetary detritus slam into our atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour and vaporize in a spectacular blaze of fire and energy , making trails across the sky apt to be wished upon by romantic dreamers  for centuries.

Now, I am not one to wish upon flaming dirt, but I am one who realizes that these little pieces of universal genesis allow us to place ourselves in the correct context, and hopefully help us to orient our attitudes about a great many things.

Many people do not realize – mainly because I am one of the few people who care about such things – that the vast majority of matter in the universe is not compromised of things like planets, stars, trash cans, great-walls-of-China or Eva Mendez’s… not that we wouldn’t benefit from a preponderance of that last one.  In actuality most of the stuff out there in “space” is small pieces of rock, dust, and lots and lots of gas.  What this means for us is simply that our material existence in the universe makes up but a small fraction of what is actually out there.

The overall effect of this is the same as the effect that the Ocean has on me.  Thinking about things like this make me realize exactly how rare and how unique we really are.

Now, for those of you out there who read this who are really scientific people don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to say that life is unique or that we are alone out there in the universe or any of that lame-assed rhetorical drivel.  What I am trying to say is  that the fact that so little of the stuff in the ‘verse combined to create the possibility of life is very similar to the fact that so little of the Earths surface remained above water and habitable for apes to be able to think about the fact that they are above water.  Within this framework we can look at our existence as a special thing, but not in any way one that can be taken for granted.

Since I have a great many friends who are either dreamers or, lets face it, Hippie-ish, I know many people who get this feeling when they look at the ocean.  Such a huge, completely uncontrollable force makes them feel small and insignificant.   It’s the same for me when I think about flaming space rocks.  Im not saying that we are insignificant, far from it, but in the grand scheme of things I think that we would do well to realize that our arrogance and our belief that we are the penultimate result of the Universe’s evolution are not only unfounded, but against our best interest.

Now I have rallied before about how people don’t understand our tenuous position on a little tiny (really) piece of rock spinning through a vast, vast void, so many of you already know where this is going.  That being said, I honestly believe – and this is where my romantic ideals come in – that if people could look to the night sky like I do and see that little piece of flaming dust, so significant in its reminder of our own insignificance, that they would also realize that so many of the problems that we fight about and worry about and divide ourselves about really mean squat.

I beg anyone who reads this to think about that and apply it to your ideas about the world, please, for all of our benefit (especially if you are or know any politicians).