Last night I watched the Nova episode "The Milky Way" on PBS. I recommend it highly. At a certain point, the continuing refrain about billions of years and billions of galaxies each with hundreds of millions or billions of stars, and yet each galaxy being mostly empty space, and being flung about at more than a quarter million miles an hour gets your attention for the sheer crazy implausibility of it all. When we happened to tune in, we heard about the initial invisible structures of dark matter and energy than allowed stars to form and galaxies to be born through their gravitational pull, the invisible responsible for the visible, as it always is.
In a universe of mainly empty space, floating gasses, exploding stars, and hard rocks of all magnitudes hurtling along, it's difficult to imagine the emergence of fragile life forms like plants, bunny rabbits, and us. And yet, the fine tuning of these massive forces around us had to be just so in order for any of this vastness to exist. We should view ourselves and each other as wonders, as true marvels, and extend loving kindness to all, as fellow creatures of this massive improbability, this universe, this galaxy, riding through space, astonished at our existence and grateful for each moment we're here. To treat others poorly, or even as they treat us, isn't proper leadership or a healthy autonomy. Cosmic leadership and real freedom is finding, and helping others along, the high moral path to celebrate our miraculous existence together.
Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. The love of wisdom, the pursuit and embrace of it, begins in wonder. When we lose the wonder, we lose the love I suspect we're here to have and live. Let's be the cosmic leaders we're capable of being, in any small way we can, today, and tomorrow, and all along the amazing path.
