On Cosmicism: Part Two

Lovecraft would shockingly ask “why do you attribute to a creator when there is nothing out there other than the stars themselves?”  The wonder of the vast universe is also the shock of being, as far as we know, alone in the universe.  What's more, we are colossally ignored by the universe.  There is nothing to attribute anything to other than our bodies, behavior and consciousness.  Yet, attribution is one of humanity's strongest instincts.  Our brains are hardwired for it along with religion and magical thinking.  These are our traditional sources of meaning.  But this is always meaning based upon an attribution of some sort (whether a god or enlightenment or alleged “higher” states).

Meaning can come from attribution, but it does not have to.  Attribution is an antiquated way to cultivate meaning, an old psychological tool invented by cave men.  Yet, it is still widely used by most people today.  In the world of constant becoming, meaning comes from the behavior and activity of living our lives, not from our beliefs about life.  Purpose and meaning have traditionally emerged from what we have proclaimed to believe.   In the Modern, meaning and purpose emerge from how you live and experience life, that is, without attribution.

The generations of the Modern will accept a radically human responsibility and directly impact their behavior and brains through a large variety of neuroscience techniques that increase dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine and other neurotransmitters.  There are ways you can reduce your anxiety, increase your level of focus and contentment, motivate yourself and positively impact the lives of others around you without any attribution to anything other than your own body and brain.

Meaning can come from these techniques.  Human meaning is much broader than the primitive use of attribution which we developed habitually through religion and which now, apparently, some branches theoretical physics imitates.  In fact, meaning has nothing to do with attribution per se.  Meaning is entirely relational and contextual.  Attribution is an immature technique (psychological tool) for meaning.  It attributes a relationship.  A more mature approach is to find meaning in the relationships with persons and things within the way you live your life, beyond the childlike habit of attribution.  In terms of cosmicism, the universe is meaningless for humans but, as I said earlier, that does not preclude meaning within the expression of our humanity.

Wonder about the cosmos does not need religion or other forms of attribution at all.  I certainly have watched the skies all my life.  I remember the first time I saw the rings of Saturn and the major moons of Jupiter through a telescope (I saw it again in 2010).  I recall searching for the Andromeda galaxy for years until I finally found it.  It was glorious moment that happened in the late 1980's.

The incredible joy that leapt into my heart in those moments is something I still carry with me today.  No God required.  The universe is wondrous despite its vast indifference to humanity.  In fact, it is more wondrous because the attribution to wonder appeals to nothing other than the authentic nature of the cosmos itself.  

The universe is wonderful because of its complex immensity, not because it is the work of a creator.  Our ability to witness it is sufficient to appreciate it profoundly.  Our growing understanding of the mechanics of quasars or black holes or the Hubble Constant is subject to refinement and continued learning and growth.  That is a contextual meaning, not one of attribution (God created everything).

Whereas attribution to a god is, like those monster worshipers in Lovecraft's fiction, a failure to understand anything and historically a limitation on our ability to discover.  Creation is finished, complete and whole, according to western religion.  God (or whatever) created everything and it is finished.  It is good.  It is done.  But, in reality it is dynamic and changing.  Stars are born and they die every single moment of the universe.  It is authentically anything but finished.  It does not have anything to do with “good.”  That is a simpleton approach to reality.

Nevertheless, some will insist we are “connected” to the cosmos because the universe supposedly resembles our brains.  There are supposedly similarities between the creation of stars and the firing of neurons.  The universe supposedly is conscious and, more specifically, we share in that conscious universe to a significant degree.  Or, the scale of the universe does not matter, just to “connect” with its greatness is enough to give us significance and meaning.  Or, quantum physics leads to some sort of cosmic consciousness or whatever else we can imagine.  This is all classic bullshit, old necessary fictions.  We waste our energy operating on such terms.

Why does everything that gives us awe have to knows us and value us.  Further, we know it (whatever it is) and we value our imaginary it and that gives us purpose and significance.  Is there any more arrogant way to look at yourself than that?!  We seem to need to be of particular consequence in relation to the cosmos.  We attribute agency to nothingness.    I have long ago classified this spiritual narcissism as subtle-arrogance.  You do not have to be the center of anything to find meaning in your life.  Again, meaning comes from the way you live not from the properties you attribute to yourself or to the cosmos.  Attribution is at the root of these misguided thoughts of a special, universal human connection.

Back to Lovecraft's cosmicism.  It is far better to begin with fear and dread and then evolve into wonder and awe from that.  In this way, you end up with an understanding that needs no attribution to anything other than the fantastical qualities of the universe itself.  Even fear and dread are unnecessary, they are merely the remedy for a “happy” storytelling approach the cosmos.  There is no agency to the universe.  All that is necessary is to accept that everything is as it should be.  We are not “nestled” in the universe.  It is too gigantic for that.  We are simply witnesses to it in all its mysterious glory without any need attribution.

It is important to recall that Lovecraft's cosmicism does not make our life on this Earth insignificant, it speaks only of our cosmic relevance, which is merely pointing out a fact.  “Be true to the Earth” Nietzsche tells us in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  There is still the realm of earthly things where cosmicism is less weighty and has much less of a direct impact.  The Earth is ours.  For better or worse, we are what Dostoevsky called “the man-gods” of the Anthropocene.

Earth is cosmically insignificant, rogue asteroids are indifferent to it and will strike it at their whim.  This has already happened many times.  It will happen again.  These are the actual monsters of reality.  One way or another, our extinction as a species is inevitable but the universe will go on after there are only fossilized traces of us.  This is the solid foundation of true cosmicism in relation to humanity and the same essence as Lovecraft's fearful prose.  But...

But, within the Anthropocene we are alleged masters or at least the facilitators of technology as master of this planet and its very biology.  Human affect engulfs the Earth.  From the perspective of the Earth, we are highly relevant in everything from global warming to species extinction to creating patches of monocultures on the planet to impacting the nitrogen cycle.  We are man-gods that still have the choice about how we behave toward one another and toward the Earth.  Because that matters for us and our fellow species.  If for no other reason, it matters in tangible, materialistic ways.

Lovecraft was a material reductionist but he could never have envisioned the Anthropocene.  We are living beyond his wildest dreams, not in terms of terror and anxiety (he gets us. To steal from an ad campaign) but in terms of technology.  Nevertheless, even he left open the possibility that our lives can still “matter” even if an asteroid hits us tomorrow.  So we matter as a species to the extent that we are changing the Earth itself.  Collectively, we are powerful force.

But, our life matters on a much more intimate level than this as well.  It should go without saying that our Solar System's place in the scheme of a unfathomable trillions of trillions of other star systems, has nothing whatsoever to do with how much I love my family.  At that level, my love is vital, my family is important, and family love is the expression of my very Being.  None of this dissolves with cosmicism, it is simply ignored by it.

Why is it that we yearn to be the center of creation or, at least, significantly connected to it either directly or through a god?  Why do we have this basic human need for attribution?  Why do we find cosmicism, which was there to begin with, so menacing?  Lovecraft merely capitalized upon that basic fear with his weird stories instead of the supposedly wise ones we told ourselves sitting around camp fires for countless millennia.

EOD allows us to make these sorts of connections and stop attempting to find a place for ourselves based on our feelings alone.  It transforms us so that, as Nietzsche said, we might “think differently” in order to “feel differently” (Daybreak, 103).  I accurately feel that my love for my family is absolutely real and has a robust strength about it.  But no matter how much I feel that way, humans are still cosmically insignificant.  Why does this have to bother me?  It does not trouble me because I have properly situated Being through EOD.

The application of EOD toward the past invites and confirms cosmicism.  We only see stars and their systems as they were millions of years ago.  We see nothing in space that as it is in that moment.  We can even only see the Sun as if was eight minutes ago.  The cosmos is so immense that its physical reality is tied to time itself in terms of what we can see.  Time is a convenience of measurement created by we humans.  There is no actual “time” in space.  What we call time in space is actually entropy in space.  Outside of a human-created way to organize our day and week (and our solar system), time has no tangible meaning.  Time is a collective human hallucination.

The Andromeda Galaxy is over 2.2 million light years away from us.  We see it as it once was not as it is only because it is so far away from us that light itself cannot reach us as quickly as it does when we look at the palm of our hand.  For that reason we assign this human concept of time to looking at it but in reality there is no time at all, there is only the need for humans to see it and measure its distance.  On the cosmic scale there is no time, there is only what we understand as entropy.  

There is only space, Brobdingnagian distances of space.  That is the reality of cosmicism.  Time is entirely inside our heads.    Time merely exists so we can measure space both intimately and ultimately.  Though astrophysicists speak of “Spacetime,” they are speaking of time in and through space.  If there is a First Cause or, if Spacetime emerges out of nothing, that too is an extension of space just as a meditator realizes that everything that emerges is always only their consciousness and its contents.  Basically, all that exists for each of us is our consciousness, its contents, and space.

That is why Lovecraft's weird fiction is so unsettling and lingers with you after you read it.  The infinity of space does not equate to the infinity of consciousness and that is the source of madness and fear.  Cosmicism is meant to be terrifying.  Lovecraft uses Rubenstein's “double movement” (before she defined it, of course) to create affecting stories.  But, as I said, this is not disqualifying of “the human experience” in any way other than superstitious ones (people reject cosmicism ultimately for magical grounds).  There is actually nothing to fear about the cosmos if you understand that the vastness of space overwhelms the spectrum of consciousness and its contents and are at peace with that.

That engulfing trivialization of our humanity is no reason to fear anything.  Rather, we should acknowledge it and then take the second step in Rubenstein's double movement.  The step Lovecraft, like so many others, took all too rarely.  Take the step toward the awe beyond the shock, beyond the fear.  Accepting the shock, we are allowed to equally accept the awe.  It's power is not thereby diminished, merely contextualized.  For every shock we feel, the world is filled with wonder.  We matter to each other.  We matter to this Earth.  That's the right source of meaning and purpose available in the Modern.

Here is the secret to cosmicism.  Along with EOD, it tempers human self-perception in a positive way, a necessary way for the coming of the Modern.  Knowing we are a young and small species we can learn from our mistakes and see our importance to one another.  Our lives are not the cosmos.  Our lives are intimate moments of acknowledging all that happens in consciousness and its contents.  And to find as much wonder as possible within all that, no matter how terrible it might seem.  Nietzsche wanted us to be life-affirming and to shout the “eternal yes!”  Cosmicism is the strange fundamental step toward that.  The first move in the double movement.  Our wonder must embrace all distant stars in spite of the fact we cannot reach them at all.  

Get a sense of the vast scale of cosmicism here.

(to be continued)