A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
You are golden.
It's quite the songwriting feat. (Joni Mitchel, but CSNY great interpretation with gospel Organ part)
"And we got to get ourselves, back to the garden"
unifies gospel of bible and humanism. The 60s, being a period of extreme oppression of US men with draft for US empire domino absurdities, had many "principled songs". This is the best one, not just specifically anti-war. Woodstock as a "principled humanist" gathering gained significance from this song.
Am I the only one who finds comfort in being insignificant in the grand scale of the universe?
I'm just a speck my problems don't matter in the grand scale of things I don't want to be significant I want to be forgotten.
I don't get why people want their problems to have cosmic importance, but the scale of the universe just makes me feel like there is so much I'll never get to see. And if there is no other life in the universe, then all those amazing worlds with utterly unique phenomena will never be observed.
you didn’t exist much longer than you’ve been alive by a very large factor
This is why I get a lot of comfort stargazing at night. So much stress or worry melts away when the realization hits that nothing really matters anyway. I don't think this is quite what Tolkien was going for with the scene where Sam sees a star up through a small opening in the gloomy sky when he's struggling, but it's how I took it.
I think the tricky part for some people is trying to figure out why living life should matter at all, then, but it's always worked for me. Just because a moment ends doesn't mean that the moment shouldn't matter to you, if you find it fulfilling or meaningful.
The rest of it is just rocks in space.
Rocks don't have problems either
in fact, living in interesting times (or interesting situations, or interesting lifes) is considered a curse in china, because of all the responsibility and stress that comes with it.
I like their expression "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down".
The tallest blade of grass is the first one cut by the lawnmower.
I am nuclear waste.
A star fart.
A cosmic anxiety generator.
A sexy machine that took 14 billions years to produce.
My body is a machine that transforms childhood trauma into profits for the pharmaceutical industry.
The universe took 14 billon years to paywall magic shrooms :'(
Pretty metal
\m/
Forged in the heart of a dying star
My brain added an 'n' to the first word of "waking universe" and I think it still works
The universe created life just so it could finally have a wank.
Checks out.
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.”
Welcome, to Nightvale
Still insignificant though!
Absurdism FTW!
I can do both of these flipping back and forth. Existential dread, awe, and purpose at the same time.
Also, Stardust takes on new meaning after Rogue One.
Yeah it should be "star-stuff" refering to this quote of Sagan:
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
And I ended up being a gooner weeb...
Truly the pinnacle of evolution 🥹
humans are buildings, and just like buildings have plumbing and wire, humans live not alone: we have a huge number of parasites in our intestines and a large number of ideas in our brains that join us in our journey. i wonder how much of our actions are actually our own, and how many are caused by our circumstances.
You might like the book Determined by Robert Sapolsky. It's very dense and I haven't gotten far into it yet but it's about the science of free will.
duh it has 500 pages, i'm not reading sth that long. if you can't put your thoughts into a short summary, you haven't truly understood much of anything, i say.
And what really controls our consciousness.
Jellyfish
"Did...did I make all of this!?"
“I am the waking universe looking back at itself.”
The waking universe: huh, no floaters this time. (flush)
The top panel is just the human ego speaking volumes. This is why we have main character syndrome, and some people think the universe owes them if they feel disappointed.
Not the other way round?
I would say the top panel can accept own insignificance while bottom panel creates a vision of grandiosity to protect the main character illusion.
Why can’t they both be chads?
Both perspectives are equally valid. The universe has no right answer. There is no correct way to live, experience or perceive anything.
You don't owe the universe anything, it doesn't owe you anything. It may very well be inherently unknowable at some levels. Live your life the best you can, everything you experience, from joy to despair, pleasure and pain, it's all just your own qualia and it's all you're here to do, so you might as well try to live in those moments instead of always looking for what's next or what the meaning is.
I was going to say I am column A and B, but I don't cry about it.
We ARE miracles, we ARE "The Universe experiencing itself" and we are insignificant on the cosmic scale. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
I need Burialgoods to read this meme.
Significance is just a concept humans made up to make ourselves feel bad.
