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[thought-corner-blog]

The Problem with Adolescence

This essay goes out to John Ford, literature teacher at QSI International School of Astana, who inspired me to write this essay. It is the goal of this essay to illustrate the fact that the concept of “the teenager” has lead to a widespread hypocrisy in American culture, and that the concept of adulthood beginning near the age of 12 which predated 1950s urbanization in the United States should be recognized as the superior ethos surrounding entrance into adulthood.

THE HISTORY

Noted author Andrew Cherlin explains in a documentary series that adolescence is a concept which resulted from World War II veterans reacting to the trauma of war and the Great Depression by “going inward” and “marrying young.” Focusing on family values and middle class stability. Professor Doug McAdam at Stanford University adds onto this in the same documentary series, explaining that the economic prosperity of the sixties allowed older generations to focus on their children, making youth the center of suburban life. McAdam goes on to further illustrate that things like little league games and PTA meetings cemented the “uniqueness” and “generational potency” of teenagers. It was also after the Great Depression that agricultural workers began representing an increasingly small percentage of the American population. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the number of farms began to decrease from 1935 until present day, but the size of farms increased. This trend not only represents the growing industrialism of the modern age, but it also represents the growth of urbanization and the obsolescence of small farms. According to this graph, the number of small farms was cut in half between 1930 and 1950, and has been decreasing ever since. This growing trend of modern, middle class life and economic prosperity, in addition to the societal response to the traumas of war and poverty, lead to the formation of the culture surrounding “teenagers.”

This was a sudden and extreme change that took place over just twenty years. A snapshot of the era pre-dating the formation of “teenagers” is illustrated in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. For example, in chapter 12 Jem becomes 12 years old. In this chapter Jem is described as acquiring a “maddening air of wisdom” (155). In the next few chapters, Scout describes Jem’s journey into manhood in which he casts away childish things and begins taking on more adult-like characteristics. The adults in this story react to this positively, explaining that this is a natural process which everyone must go through. Calpurnia explains that Jem has gotten old enough to be called “mister Jem” (153). This entry into adulthood is also illustrated when Jem says that things are “different with grown folks, we-” before being interrupted (184). The word “we” is integral to Jem’s perception of himself and how the adults in his life perceive him. It shows that during this time there was a strict dichotomy between “grown folks” and children, and Jem falls into the former category. Assuming that To Kill a Mockingbird is representative of the culture of this time, adulthood started during pubescence. Of course, Jem is still told what to do by Atticus and Calpurnia, but he is given more respect and responsibility, and the severity and strictness from Atticus begins to diminish. John Ford, the previously cited English teacher at my old school, theorizes that when the dominance of small farms began to diminish, the idea of 12-20 year olds being adults was also abandoned.

The previously cited graph showing the number of small farms over time in the United States shows that the number of small farms peaked during the 1930s, and had yet to be revolutionized by 1950s economic prosperity. It follows that the culture and ethos of small farms would be at its most dominant during this peak, and To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during this peak. The necessity of farmhands during this time led to an increased level of expectation, respect, and responsibility for spry young sons and daughters who would be able to carry out daily functions more effectively than their aged parents. It is apparent that Atticus’s parental methods are influenced by this pre-World War II culture.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known use of the word “teenage” was in 1912, and according to the Google Ngram viewer, the use of the word “teenager” did not pick up until around 1960, increasing exponentially between then and 1980 before decreasing slightly and then levelling off. The word “teenager,” like the concept, is comparatively new.

THE PROBLEM

Michael Stevens, American educator and creator of the renowned YouTube channel “Vsauce,” cites numerous examples to help illustrate his point that the disappointment or concern from older generations, or “Juvenoia,” is nothing new (Juvenoia). Stevens cites George Orwell, who says “every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that came before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

One might ask, then, “what exactly is the problem?” If people saying “kids these days” is par for the course, why should the idea of being a teenager, or the problems facing today’s youth be considered especially disconcerting? Stevens addresses this by stating that, while Juvenoia is not a new concept, the magnitude and nature of it has changed drastically along with the formation of teenhood. While there were scraps of concern and distaste for younger generations throughout history, juvenoia turned into more of a “widespread panic” once the term teenager became more rigidly defined. Once the concept of teenhood became more precise, the societal anxiety became much more acute and severe.

The concept of adolescence fuels the direction and magnitude of juvenoia coming from previous generations, which leads to a cognitive dissonance which permeates American culture. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines cognitive dissonance as “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” In other words, holding two beliefs that directly contradict the other. These two beliefs regarding teenagers can be summarised as perceptions of teenagers and expectations of teenagers.

As previously illustrated, the perceptions of teenagers are widely negative, with a few exceptions. The aforementioned acute and widespread juvenoia is based off of views held by a majority of Baby Boomers and previous generations that Gen-Z teenagers are, on average, lazy, fiscally irresponsible, disrespectful, ignorant, arrogant, and insufferable. It is a rarely disputed claim that a large amount of people who are middle aged or older are extremely critical of younger generations, and Michael Stevens claims that in recent years this phenomena of “juvenoia” has grown as a result of the formation of adolescence.

This perception directly contradicts the expectations and pressures placed on teenagers. Teenagers must get good grades, wake up at 6 am every school day, and attend school for 6 hours every weekday. They are expected to complete all homework assignments on time at home, adding several hours to the work day. They are expected to cope with the social pressures of high school every weekday. They are expected to submit to all authorities unflinchingly, formulate well informed opinions and perceptions about the world, and treat their peers and superiors with the utmost respect. They are expected to do all of these things unpaid, and they are also expected to leave the house and enter into a higher education without accruing too much debt, which is impossible to do without first having a job, so many teenagers are also expected to do all of these things while also holding down a job (most likely a retail job which pays $8.50-$9.50 an hour). The list goes on, and is comparable to the list of responsibilities held by an adult with a middle-class job. A generous comparison would say teenagers have almost as many responsibilities and pressures as the average adult, but it seems as though the magnitude of the social, psychological, and intellectual strain of succeeding as a teenager is practically the same as the social, psychological, and intellectual strain of succeeding as an adult. The responsibilities for teenagers are different, but they even out to be roughly equal to, or marginally less than the responsibilities of an average adult. One should see the contradiction here. Many adults hold the belief that teenagers can fulfil these emotionally and psychologically draining tasks all day, five days a week, but they also hold the belief that teenagers are lazy, stupid, ignorant, and crude. If teenagers were, on average, lazy, stupid, ignorant, and crude, they would not be equipped to handle the responsibilities given to them. These two beliefs exist in stark contradiction to one another, yet they permeate American culture on an unprecedented scale. Thus the cognitive dissonance. This cognitive dissonance should be considered a problem solely because it exists, and widespread hypocrisy should be identified and addressed on any level, but this contradiction of beliefs leads to problems which are much more severe than people simply being wrong.

This contradiction of attitude and expectation leads to a contradiction of expectation and treatment. While teenagers are expected to fulfil all of these duties efficiently and effectively, the treatment they receive is not representative of this. The current culture of juvenoia acts as a tool for parents to marginalize and disregard the feelings and concerns of younger generations. Another example of this contradiction is in where autonomy lies. Teenagers are allowed the autonomy to decide a long term plan for their life, to determine where they will go to college, and to determine how to get good grades in school, but their rights are curbed in many other areas such as the political and religious spheres. Teenagers are given the expectations and pressures of adulthood without enjoying the benefits that should come with it.

This leads to even more problems for teenagers, because if teenagers are not allowed a voice in the political sphere, they are allowed very little influence over policies which directly affect them, such as educational reform and gun control. This is important, because teenagers know a lot more about how different policies directly affect them than do many adults. Wealthy bureaucrats who have not experienced high school in over 20 years should not have more say in educational reform than students who are being directly affected by ineffective educational policies. The belief that “all men are created equal” is not being represented if younger generations do not have an equal voice. If all perspectives are not represented in the area of political discourse, Americans are failing to represent the democracy their culture was founded upon.

THE SOLUTION

The solution is simple. Stop treating teenagers like their own subspecies. Laurel Taub comments in a David Hoffman documentary that teenagers in the 1950s weren’t “treated as if [they] were people. [they] were another species.” In my own experience, this is very true today. Teenagers are not treated as though they are adults and they aren’t treated as though they are children, because they aren’t given the respect that adults receive and they are not given the lack of responsibility that children receive. If teenagers are taken more seriously and treated more like adults than children, this will alleviate tension in the household and in society at large, and it will also condition teenagers to act more like adults. In addition to all of this, it will improve the emotional and psychological well-being of teenagers. This has to take place on an individual level, because it is unlikely that some sort of cultural revolution will take place. It’s more likely that the cycle of teenagers becoming adults and then adults becoming vindictive will continue, but it is important that we make a conscious decision to avoid doing this. It should go without saying that being a self-righteous and bitter person about any topic should be avoided, but this is rarely applied to the area of generational conflicts.

Works Cited

“Cognitive Dissonance.” Merriam Webster, www.merriam-webster.com, 2019.

“Farming and Farm Income.” United States Department of Agriculture, 6 March 2019, www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/.

“How 1950s Parents Felt About Their Children.” YouTube, Uploaded by David Hoffman, 4 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUorVXJ8MZE.

“In the 1950s there Were Lots of Rules.” YouTube, Uploaded by David Hoffman, 4 April 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrYX9j3Tqzw.

“Juvenoia.” YouTube, Uploaded by Vsauce, 1 Nov 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc&t=1078s.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird, Grand Central Publishing, 2010.

“Teenage.” Merriam Webster, www.merriam-webster.com, 2019.

“Teenager.” Google Ngram Viewer, Google, books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Teenager&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CTeenager%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2CTeenager%3B%2Cc0.

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WHY TRUTH IS A SPECTRUM AND I’M SCARED OF GOING TO HELL

Most people (including myself in most cases) see truth as a simple “yes or no,” and most of the time this serves its purpose sufficiently. Was John Lennon a person that was born? Yes. Did the sun rise this morning? Yes. These are situations in which a simple yes or no works fine. But there are also situations where this doesn’t work out so well. Is pineapple on pizza a sin against mankind? Yes. But wait! Some people like pineapple on pizza. So what the fuck? And why does this matter? Well some people would say this doesn’t really matter, but I disagree. The reason why it matters is because there are much more convoluted issues such as “am I going to hell for being gay?” or “Are privately owned semi-automatic rifles a threat to our society?” These are very sticky questions, and a lot of people answer them as 100% yes or no because of this cut and dry view of truth that so many hold. This, however, is an inaccurate and lazy way to answer more important questions, and in this essay I will explain why.

First of all, I admit that first question was staged to make Christianity look bad. That’s another issue with yes or no questions; they can be staged to benefit the inquirer, which is the danger of a mathematical “IF/THEN” worldview. Things are much more complicated than yes or no questions, and much more complicated than absolutely true or false. This is why I believe that truth is a spectrum of percent likelihood from 0% to 100%, in which nothing is 0% or 100% true or false.

Here’s my reasoning for this: there is an infinitesimal likelihood of literally any one thing being true. There exists a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that my family has lied to me about my origins, and I’m actually an alien disguised as a human who fell to earth in a meteor, living a lie unbeknownst to myself and everyone (except for my immediate family). This is pretty much untrue, but there’s no way to 100% rule it out. There exists a percent chance of it’s truth, no matter how small. You can apply this rule to literally anything. Invent any fictitious scenario and there is a percent chance of it’s truth that is so close to zero that you can essentially just rule it out for the sake of reasonability. That’s why the yes or no mentality of truth works for questions like “did the sun rise this morning?” The answer to this is yes, because the likelihood of anything else being true is so extremely unlikely that we can rule it out. Another way to look at this is through Occam’s Razor, which is a system of thinking in which one rules out whatever conclusion requires the most assumptions. Let’s take my previous question: “did the sun rise this morning?” Using Occam’s Razor, we can conclude that the sun did, in fact, rise this morning because it takes way more assumptions to conclude that the sun somehow didn’t rise. So according to Occam’s Razor, if it takes way more assumptions to conclude X as opposed to Y, then Y must be true, right? Sort of.

The Occam’s Razor mentality is invaluable for making evidence-based conclusions without getting bogged down by an infinite cycle of questions and doubts, but it shouldn’t lead to the assumption that truth is so cut and dry as “yes and no.” There exist scenarios in which all of the evidence points to Y being true, but the truth ends up being X. So Occam’s Razor works ⅔ times if used correctly. But that’s the best we can really hope for. And sometimes it’s not even ⅔ times if you’re a nitwit like myself. So why is this? Personal bias and misinformation are two of the most prominent reasons for the failure of Occam’s Razor, but in some cases things are just true or untrue against all odds. An example of this is the fact that some vaccinations are literally injections of the virus one is trying to defend against. At first glance, this seems like the dumbest thing ever, and many medical commentators thought so when this method was in its early stages of development. Surprisingly enough, however, this does work, and it has saved countless lives. I don’t want to give any specific examples because that would require citations and I am extremely lazy so I’m not going to do that (sorry but you’ll have to look it up).

Bottom line about the nature of truth is this: it’s very sticky, and, like many things, it should be seen as a spectrum. I generally like to think of things as “probably true” or “probably false” with differing levels of likelihood or unlikelihood. This serves the same purpose as “true” or “false” but allows a posture of caution surrounding different conclusions. I would like to admit, however, that I am a major dumbass, so that is a possible reason why I try to be cautious about most conclusions I reach.

You may be wondering “so, my pretentious and long winded friend, why are you afraid of going to hell?” And the answer is this: while I am mostly confident that there is no hell, there still remains an infinitesimal likelihood of its existence. Even if it becomes as unlikely as the earth suddenly ceasing its rotation, the likelihood still exists. The reason this is important is because hell is, by definition, literally the worst possible thing to happen to anyone. There is nothing I can think of that is worse than spending all of eternity in extreme pain. Any mortal thing to happen to me is finite, but the biblical depiction of hell is infinite and hopeless, and that’s fucking terrifying. I would feel significantly more secure knowing that there is a 0% chance that I’m going to hell, but that’s genuinely impossible (even becoming a Christian won’t do the trick because there still remains the possibility of going to hell by the standards of some other religion). The main reason this is terrifying for me is because I grew up in a staunchly religious environment, in which a reflexive fear of God and damnation were programmed into my head, so most of my anxiety surrounding this subject has been taught to me by the authority figures in my life. There’s a lesson in this (hopefully) misplaced anxiety, however, which is the fluidity of truth. The fact that I have a good deal of anxiety about the possibility of going to hell, while others who grew up in a non-religious environment have practically no anxiety about that possibility, suggests how fickle the human grip on reality truly is. If what one was taught, and what one’s personal biases are can so severely bend the individual’s view of the truth, what other things do we believe solely due to a mix of programming and personal bias? Something to think about next time you’re munching on a Subway sandwich I guess.

Also the picture above before I wrote on it is “Christmas Rat 2013” by Autum Ramsey. Thanks for reading!

[thought-corner-blog]

My Hot Take on Morality

Morality is a very very very sticky subject that few people want to fully delve into (including myself for a very long time) because if one comes to the wrong conclusion, that can be VERY stressful. What do I mean by the “wrong” conclusion? I mean an answer that explains why people do the wrong thing, but doesn't explain why people do the right thing. Or explains why people do either, but doesn't explain why one should do the right thing. Coming to the conclusion that nobody has any choice in it at all can also be quite stressful. This subject is a source of anxiety for a lot of people, myself included, but I've been thinking about it more because of some pieces of literature that I've been forced to read for school. Yes, the thing that prompted me to seriously think about the issue of morality is a high school literature course that I had zero choice in taking, and yes it is pathetic. But I'm thinking about it now, and here's what all of my thinking has got me to.

First of all, why does it matter? Now don't worry I'm still going to cover this issue (I know you were probably shaking and shitting in your boots out of fear of me not rambling on and on about an issue that only really pretentious and/or old people remotely give a rats ass about). This hypothetical question is mostly just to assuage my own anxiety. What I mean is, if we have no choice in anything, and we're just a bunch of pissing, cumming, sweating, expostulating, hugging, fucking, loving, angry, deranged animals who learned to speak on a moldy, stone space ship spiraling through the universe, why does it matter if I have all the answers? I still want to know, but it's more for the sake of sating my curiosity. Now it's more that I want the answers, not that I need them. Enough about me, though, what even the fuck is morality? What is justice? In this essay I will attempt to answer these questions.

Let's start by exploring the idea of free will in relation to determinism, because it was the conclusion I reached about this subject which lead me to even write about this at all. And this time I'm actually going to use a source (pretty crazy right? Gonna go all out and use MLA like a big-boy writer). The source is an excerpt from Not Guilty: a Defense of the Bottom Dog by Robert Blatchford, relating to a defense of “hard determinism.” There's a lot to unpack in this excerpt, and a lot of things that I agree and disagree with, but lets start with what I agree with. So Blatchford (I'm not sure how to feel about that last name cause it's kind of bad-ass but it's also sort of nonsense) claims in this excerpt that man is not responsible for having a “virtuous” or “cruel” nature, because these things are dictated and influenced entirely by “heredity” and “environment.” Before we get to the big fat and in Blatchford's claim, lets look a bit deeper into this statement. Blatchford says this claim is very difficult to refute, and I agree. No human being has any control over the different things that make them up. If different environmental and genetic factors led to a person becoming virtuous, it's not as if that person had any control over those factors. Let's take an extreme example: Hitler. Before I say anything about Hitler, I want to make it clear that I hate him. He sucks and is a very awful shitty person and he makes me wish hell existed so that he could go there. But the thing with Hitler is, he had no control over the factors which led him to become a deranged sociopathic piece of radio-active pig meat, and he didn't even believe that he was a deranged sociopath in the first place. This is true for everyone. Obviously I am oversimplifying the human condition, but you get my point: humans do not choose to be initially good or evil, and evil people generally don't even think that they're evil at all.

I don't disagree with Blatchford on this point, but I reject his interpretation of these facts. Blatchford claims that this inability to choose one's own nature means 1). That human beings cannot be held responsible for their actions and 2). That human beings have practically no free will in making moral decisions. The reason I disagree with this is because there is no way that a child molester does not deserve punishment, and there is no way that people are completely bound to a fate of enslavement to their heredity. But how can this be if a child molester was born with a lust that is stronger than their virtue? Something that is completely outside of their control? Well this is where we need to define what justice is.

And this is where my Hot Takes come in, which should be taken with a very large grain of salt because I have absolutely no philosophical expertise (but honestly, neither did most ancient Greek philosophers. A lot of them were major dipshits but they are practically worshiped by modern day thinkers. I would also like to note that this statement is substantiated by absolutely zero facts). Here is my personal definition of justice: justice is an equal and opposite reaction to injustice. It is the representation of a battle between two sides who both believe they are doing what is reasonable. Those on the side of justice are individuals who's virtue is stronger than greed or ambition, and those on the side of injustice are individuals who are won over by self-satisfaction at the sacrifice of others. Do people have any choice in whether or not their virtue is stronger than their need to satisfy the self? Sort of. This is another place where I disagree with Blatchford, and it lies in the area of free will, which is a different topic so I'm going to start another paragraph to talk about it.

Blatchford's view on free will is much too rigid. He views humans as mechanisms following out a protocol which was programmed into them through development by outside factors and “heredity.” I agree with Blatchford in that I think that human beings cannot choose what they want. I cannot choose whether or not I like tomatoes. I also cannot choose whether I initially want the best for the world or not. Nobody can control their heredity or their environment. Blatchford believes this means that nobody has any choice in the decisions they make, and his rhetoric makes it seem pretty reasonable at first. But when you just strip away all the bullshit and look at the “if then” statement made to reach that conclusion you realize that that's a pretty big leap. IF human beings cannot control the factors which assemble the parts of their character THEN they cannot make any ethical decisions at all. What the fuck? Now that's some dumb bullshit right there. In my oh so humble opinion. The reason this is some dumb bullshit is because Blatchford assumes because some choices are omitted due to an individual's nature, there are no choices that can be made at all. Let's use a much too simple and fallacious metaphor to dissect this claim. Let's say that I have the choice between butterscotch ice cream and chocolate ice cream. Blatchford is essentially claiming that because actual fecal material is an omitted choice by nature, we don't really have a choice in anything at all. Yes, human beings cannot choose their nature, and they cannot choose what they want, but they can choose to do what they want, and to change themselves however they want, and this is determined by the nature of a human being, something that human beings cannot control. It's assumed that the collective “you” is the factors and building blocks which make you, and the things which went into turning you into who you are. You have no control over these factors, but you are yourself (that's sort of a given). The collective you can choose between two paths, and can choose what to become, and can choose what to prioritize in life, and can choose between chocolate and butterscotch ice cream, goddammit!

Bottom line: humans can decide to do what they want but they cannot decide what they want. Some people are born wanting one thing and others wanting another thing. This is called virtue or lack of it, and justice is an equal and opposite reaction to injustices acted out by people who were born with lust or greed or ambition which was greater than their virtue. Thus it is a constant battle between two combating sides who both think they are doing what's reasonable.

Also here’s the name of the picture I used to write pretentious words on:  Nocturne:Blue and Gold- Old Battersea Bridge,1872-5,J.M.

Works cited:

Blatchford, Robert. “A Defense of Hard Determinism from: Not Guilty, a Defense of the Bottom Dog.” University of Washington, 1918.

[thought-corner-blog]

How Big is Big

If the organelle is a component of the cell, and the cell is a component of tissues, and tissues are components of organs and the living human body, what is macroscopic biological life a component of? There is an immense number of similarities between the human being as part of society and the cell as part of the human body. This thought was prompted by the idea of human bodies being burned and used as fertilizer in A Brave New World, because when the cell dies it is either absorbed for energy by another cell or pushed out of the bloodstream. The cell’s main prerogative is to survive as part of a whole, and does all it can to maintain homeostasis and wellbeing by protecting the human body or whatever body it serves. The human being’s main prerogative is much more complex, but people who do not have some sort of personality disorder do their best to defend the society in which they live and help those around them. While humans have more variation than cells, they are similar in that they both have a universal set of characteristics. While humans are not completely homogenous and vary in race, religion, and worldviews, the overall structure of the human body and mind is consistent. The human prerogative is to achieve the optimal situation for themselves and surrounding humans. The cell’s prerogative is to achieve the optimal situation for themselves and surrounding cells. Humans have specific jobs (i.e engineer, mechanic, plumber, teacher) and so do cells. This begs the question, what bigger picture are humans a part of? Are human beings components of a larger living organism? Are we cells in a tissue, or tissues in an organ?

Let’s say that this is true. It can be inferred that we are not part of an infinite chain of complex organisms, because the quantity of organisms decreases as complexity increases. There are more organelles than cells, more cells than humans, and more humans than whatever larger being we make up. This suggests that there is a narrowing of present living things and an expanding level of complexity, which means that there is a point at which there are no more living organisms to be a component of and no larger level of complexity to achieve. If it is true that we make up a living organism, then there is an ultimately complex organism that is the culmination of all living organisms. The fountainhead of life. If we do not make up a living organism, then the narrowing of quantity is much more abrupt, meaning we are the fountainhead of life. Both of these answers prompt a wellspring of equally puzzling questions regarding the nature of our existence.

This topic also spurs a number of questions regarding infinity. If the complexity of living organisms is finite, does that mean three-dimensional space is also finite? Or does infinity encompass both time and space? If three dimensional space is not infinite, where does it end? What happens when we venture to that end? Some subscribe to the model of the three dimensional universe as a sphere, but spheres have an interior and an exterior and area surrounding the sphere. The earth is loosely spherical, and there is outer-space which surrounds it. Is there an outer space for outer space? And is there an outer-space for that outer space? Is there just an infinite expanse of outer-spaces? It’s likely that three dimensional space is infinite because even if there is a barrier, that barrier must be infinitely thick, or if it can be broken there must be something beyond that barrier. Which means that human life on earth is infinitely small.

Let’s pretend that you’re looking at life on earth and you have a zoom out button. If you pressed it, life on earth would look smaller and you would see society. Click it again, and you would see earth, and yet again human life would look even smaller. If infinity is three dimensional, you can click the zoom-out button an infinite amount of times and human life on earth can become smaller and smaller an infinite and unrestricted amount of times, making it infinitely small. But I have another question (go figure): let’s say a cell (let’s name her Shelby) had eyes and a brain to understand macroscopic life. If you gave Shelby a zoom out button, and she pressed it enough times, she would see the human being, a culmination of cells performing various functions and ultimately making up a biological organism. Does that mean that if I had a zoom out button and an understanding of super-macroscopic life, pressing it enough times would reveal to me some kind of organism which is a culmination of humans performing a variety of functions?  It seems that there is an infinite amount of questions that can be asked but only a finite amount of answers, and this is yet another question to add onto the pile.

What I know for certain, however, is that I am part of something huge. No matter what your worldview is, whether it be atheistic, theistic, or deistic, there is the unavoidable truth of the universe’s existence (unless you’re a solipsist, in which case shut the fuck up). I am part of a huge, beautiful, terrifying, chaotic, infinite existence and that’s pretty sick.

Bonus round: if three dimensional space is infinite (which is more or less an unavoidable truth) then any given thing is not only infinitely small, but it is also infinitely large, and in an infinitely large void of three dimensional space, there is no center, just chaos. Just keep that in mind next time you’re sitting down crunching on a nice toasty Subway sandwich because it’s an important fact that has absolutely no effect on your day to day life.

(Note: the above picture without the edit or whatever is Animals in Locomotion by Eadweard Muybridge)