the weight of the world, the size of the universe, and the purpose of man. uneddited

A couple of weeks ago I was doing some tree work with one of my friends. On the jobsite that day was me (the ground man. It is my job to keep the climber’s ropes untangled and to clear the branches after they are cut loose from the tree), Allen (the guy that owns the dump truck, the chainsaws, and the insurance) Tim, the tree climber, and there may have been one other guy that day. I don’t really remember.
We had cut a large branch down and Tim, the climber, was still in the tree, resetting his ropes and preparing to cut another branch down while Allen and I were cleaning the ground. After the brush of the freshly cut branch was cut away and hauled to the truck, we cut the branch itself into smaller more manageable logs. The logs were still quite heavy even after we cut them down since we had to use a 44 inch blade to cut them in the first place.
As I got ready to squat down and lift one of the logs from the ground and carry it to the truck, Allen looked at me and said, “Is it too heavy? Do you need me to cut it again?I smiled pretty cynically and said, “You know, if it’s not bigger than me, it’s probably not heavier than me and if it is not heavier than me, I can get it.”
He laughed and I picked up the log, took it to the truck, and we finished the job. Now obviously, my theory was flawed. First, a two hundred pound log weather it is smaller than me or not is quite a bit more than I am going to be able to pick up, carry, and lift over my head to put into the bed of the dump truck. (We didn’t have a chipper.) A one hundred pound chunk is no problem.
But of course the most flawed part of my statement was, “if it is not bigger than me it is probably not heavier than me.”

[edit on 11-7-2010 by president]

I pondered that for quite a long time. It seems that that statement is relatively true of wood, but if I use another thing, like Iron for example, the statement loses its validity.

The more I thought about that, the more it occurred to me that there are more heavy things than iron. Hell gold, even though I don’t know much about gold, is heavier than iron. And then what about atomic weight?
There are probably some things that are smaller than a grain of sand that are heavier than me. Even though I don’t really know much about atomic weight, which explains why I don’t know much about gold. The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that there are probably things smaller than me that weigh more than the earth itself. There are probably smaller things that weigh more to infinity until there is a thing smaller than a grain of sand that weighs more than the entire universe.
Oh. Then things really got interesting in my head. Of course the tree guys told me it was a waste of my brain. That’s o.k. I only rarely work with them.

Anyhow, I dwelled on the idea of the grain of sand for a while. I remembered hearing one theory that the entire universe was created from a thing that was smaller than a grain of sand. That theory had very little interest to me. But I also remember hearing that there were more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the beach. Actually, I think it said all of the beaches on earth but I narrowed it down to only one beach for the sake of my small mind and I started comparing our sun to a grain of sand.

If our sun and all the stars in our galaxy are merely grains of sand, then our galaxy must be represented by only a handful of sand. I wonder what is going on at the other end of the beach.
Then of course I thought that if our sun is a lonely grain of sand on the beach, what must our earth be? Is it a simple speck of dust in between two grains of sand? And then what about us? Are we such a small thing on such a small speck of dust in between two grains of sand that we would be literally undetectable on such a scale?

I began wondering how small we really are. I realized that if our sun were a grain of sand and Alpha Centauri were the other grain of sand, and we were traveling at the speed of light, it would take humans two solid years just to get to the next grain of sand on the beach. And at the speed of light, it would take several generations just to get out of the one handful of sand. We could never get over a single dune.
And that is traveling at the speed of light. We haven’t even reached that yet. Not even real close. The speed of light is 180,000 mps and the fastest we can go is roughly 27 mps (satelites).

It would be like walking into the yard, looking at the dirt around your feet and thinking that some being one hundred billion times smaller than the smallest particle of the dirt were the only living thing on the planet.
The more I wondered about these things, the more I wanted to know. I went to the library and did as much research as I could on things like weight and speed and distance, to no avail. My research skills are relatively weak. Hence the logs into the back of the dump truck.

But I could not help but wonder if we, the humans on this one insignificant speck of dust are the only ones wondering anything. Are we the only pondering consciousness in the infinite universe? Is this undetectable speck of dust between two grains of sand on the beach totally unique? Are we the only life? If so, what do we do? Do we do we do the best we can with what we have? Do we look inwards and try to devote ourselves to faith and belief, or do we, for whatever reason, try to reach the next grain of sand?


[edit on 11-7-2010 by president]

I think that if you believe that humans are existing in this universe, then you should accept that there would probably be other beings out there aswell.

I too have had thoughts about the unimaginable scope of this universe, you used a simple grain of sand analogy, I have thought deeper. I was once discussing with my friend how everything on our planet is made of particles, and when you look around our galaxy, it resembles a blown up version of the particles which are microscopic to us. Could it be that everything is made out of the same things infinitely going smaller as you go down the scale and infinitely at the other end of the scale; outside of the universe we know, there is just a more gigantic universe.

I hope this makes some kind of sense to you, it is definately a mind boggling concept. I personally don't like to dwell on these issues too much, as I just want to enjoy my life as an energy being occupying a human body on this rock we call home, after all the only real purpose we can attribute to ourselves being here is just to experience this glorius creation. I would like to wish you well on your path to knowledge and truth.

Ciaou

very thought provoking and interesting, i love to think about this stuff, it makes me feel so lost in this infinitely crazy experience, and that's when i feel good. the realization in where we are now is confusing chaotic and wondrous beyond belief, we must not let our selves to try and become comfortable and complacent. we need to allow our selves to be come confused chaotic and scared to feel what we are. (not scared to submission) but to enjoy the comforting confusing wondrous experience we are realizing right now. thanks for the thought friend.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by allinsane666]

reply to post by allinsane666


I like your insight here man, are you trying to say that we all as a whole should allow ourselves to become scared of the unimaginably huge plane of existence we reside in? In a way this is how the whole game of life becomes exciting, because we all have a front row seat and we have no idea what is about to happen. All we can do is try and live every day as if it could be our last, but above all just enjoy this ride through the cosmos.

I am so confused,


you gotta move on with life man