The Universal Scale and 2022 Redux
Note: I intended this post to consist of no more than a few paragraphs followed by a 2022 recap, but I ended up writing a longer essay. Still, it’s a year’s-end sort of piece, so I’ll keep it as is. You can find the recap by scrolling down if you want to skip my philosophizing.
So passes another solar orbit, and one might be forgiven for thinking that it has been a particularly dramatic one. But that would only be true for us humans on our pale blue dot—in universal terms, the completion of an orbit is nothing special. It happens all the time, and it’s not just planets orbiting stars, either. Stars orbit galactic centres and moons orbit planets and comets, like planets, orbit stars.
Orbits all the way down, it seems—except that orbits, while everyday occurrences in the universal longue durée, are actually a little more special than the impression I gave, because most of the universe is empty space. Clumps of matter bound together by gravity are a relative rarity. 100 billion galaxies there may be, but the lonely voids within and between them make them look like specks.
Worse, even matter is mostly empty space, because matter is made out of atoms, and atoms are, in this sense, microcosms of the great universal void. Most of an atom’s mass is concentrated in its nucleus, and the nucleus is ‘orbited’ (though this is an old-fashioned and simplistic way to put it) by electrons and protons, whose mass is infinitesimal compared to the nucleus. The emptiness of the atom has been dramatised in many ways, but a very common and arresting image is to imagine the atom as a football stadium: the nucleus is akin to a marble lying in the middle of the field.
So: orbits are quotidian by the standards of the universe, and most of the universe, including me and you and your most embarrassing aunt, is a desolate waste of nothingness. Weighed against these considerations, all the dramas and anxieties of 2022 don’t seem to count for very much. Whether this is a soothing or a terrifying reflection depends entirely upon your outlook.
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And then again, my picture is incomplete. Even empty space isn’t really empty: it contains dark energy and quantum fields and probably many other things that nobody is even aware of not being aware of yet. And those rare clumps of atomic matter have allowed something very special, perhaps even unique in the entire universe, to emerge: intelligent, conscious life. (Perhaps I should clarify that I’m referring to us—humanity—here, because among us there walk many who seem to fall short of even the loosest possible definitions of the word ‘intelligent’.)
Yes, out of oblivion came, at least once, the conditions for life. First, simple replicating entities, then conglomerations of same, and after a few billion years and many upheavals (leaving the water was particularly stressful, I would imagine: moving house always is), here we are on a planet that is a cornucopia of life. Physics and chemistry and time set the stage for that great artist, the blind watchmaker, evolution, to take over, and what a wonderful job he has done.
Old BW moulded matter into amoeba and ichthyosaurs and penguins and Homo sapiens: no other performer has ever put on such a grand show. And in us, all these blind processes have somehow contrived to produce superior intelligence and the great mystery of consciousness, allowing us to inquire into our own origins, and the origins of all things, and to create art and literature and to reflect upon our nature and our place in the universe.
We may be mere apes, and we may be made of almost nothing, and the universe may be all but barren, yet we stand at the centre of it in a way. We are both utterly insignificant in the grand scale of things and the most important things in the universe. We can feel and think unlike anything else, and our parochial human concerns matter because they matter to us.
This universal view, or perhaps it is a paradox, was beautifully put by Carl Sagan in his Pale Blue Dot passage:
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.1
So the universal paradox is this: we are nothing and we are everything. This reflection should inspire in us solidarity, for we are all we have. The universe is a void and we are a tiny point of warmth and light, and we should start acting like it. All tribal and ethnic and religious and political bigotry should evaporate immediately when this is understood. It won’t, of course, because, well, we are human, after all, but it’s an ideal worth fighting for, and we have come at least some way in attaining it already.
This need not mean we will live in an air-headed flower-power utopia (nor should we desire such a ghastly fate): disagreement and argument and conflict will always be with us—and a good thing, too, for these are the fount of all progress.
For one, there will always be those who abhor humanism and for whom the Pale Blue Dot is merely the plaything of a creator or the arena of race struggle or the setting for some other such idiocy, and these people we must always, and tirelessly, oppose. The Pale Blue Dot is not a soppy call for unity; no, it is a call to arms in defence of a staunch humanism. But even if bigotry and stupidity were to be forever vanquished, there would still be grand conflicts over ideology and principles and, of course, truth itself.
In other words, there will be no utopia, and nor should there be. There is only the human (or the sentient, if you like), imperfect as it is and always will be. And so human affairs weigh for quite a lot by the standards of the universe, and taking note of this scale ought to push us, at least a little, away from all that is narrow and constipated in our nature and towards the nobler heights we are capable of attaining.
I realise that I have barely mentioned the events of the past 12 months. So let me just say, by way of ending, that 2022 was a year of horror and hope. As the bombs continue to fall over Ukraine and the resistance of the people of Iran against theocracy remains undimmed, I think this has been a good year to reassert the universal, in all possible meanings of that word.
Every year, I like to list the best books I’ve read, so here, in no particular order, are my 2022 picks:
The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution by J. Arvid Ågren (2021). A mostly accessible overview of the selfish gene theory of evolution, with some tantalising excursions into intellectual sociology. I wrote about it for Areo Magazine here. With Iona Italia, I also interviewed Ågren for Areo’s associated Two for Tea podcast. You can listen to that conversation here.
Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama (2022). Excellent—comprehensive but cogent. Mchangama’s erudition is lightly worn but clearly very deep as well as broad. I wrote about it for Areo here.
Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter For a New Generation by Roosevelt Montás (2021) (18/1-28/1). Both a personal and an intellectual defence of liberal education and the ‘Western canon’ from a progressive immigrant to the U.S. I wrote about it for Areo here.
Various by Salman Rushdie. In 2021 and 2022 I read or re-read all of Rushdie’s books, so I shall just list the very best of a very good bunch here and recommend you read everything he’s ever written anyway: Shalimar the Clown (2005), Luka and the Fire of Life (2010), Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012), Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015), Quichotte (2019), and Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020 (2021). I’ve written quite a few pieces about Rushdie over the years, so I’ll restrain myself and note only the most recent one here. It was for OnlySky and it was a reaction to the vile attack on Rushdie in August this year. Read it here.
The Trial of Pope Benedict: Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on Reason, Compassion, and Human Dignity by Daniel Gawthrop (2013). An utterly damning, not to mention exhaustive, indictment of the horrible little man who was once Pope. I wrote about Ratzinger and Gawthrop’s book for OnlySky here. (Special mention should go here to Geoffrey Robertson’s excellent 2010 book The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, also referenced in my article.)
Independence or Union: Scotland’s Past and Scotland’s Present by T.M. Devine (2015). Given the revival of the Scottish Question, which was never really resolved anyway, I decided to re-read Devine’s masterful study of the Union. It should be read by anyone interested in the issue of Scottish independence—Devine reluctantly supported Yes in 2014, but he is Scotland’s preeminent historian, and his study is as fair as it is rigorous.
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor by Andrew Kirtzman (2022). A thorough look at a man who has utterly disgraced both himself and his country. I wrote about it for Splice Today here. In retrospect, I do wish Kirtzman had been as openly harsh about Giuliani as I was in my review.
Various Star Wars books. Here’s a little confession: I like to take breaks from the serious stuff and relax by reading Star Wars books. This year, I read or re-read quite a few, the best of which were Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart (now non-canon, but a great exploration of the relationship between Count Dooku and Yoda) and Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars nonology (all very fun and very clever and full of Easter eggs).
Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane (1995). I once more browsed what is still the classic Paine biography. Fascinating subject aside, Keane’s prose is limpid and his depth of research and analysis is intimidatingly impressive.
Various by Christopher Hitchens. Well, I’m writing a book about the man, so he was always going to make an appearance, wasn’t he? But all of his stuff is worth reading in its own right, and I’ll recommend here just a few of the very best: 2005’s Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (a short but insightful biography of the third president, which garnered praise from some of American historiography’s heavyweights, including Gordon S. Wood and Peter S. Onuf), 2011’s Arguably (Hitchens’s final essay collection to be published in his lifetime, whose foreword, I think, expresses much of what is essential about his principles), and 2015’s And Yet… (a posthumous essay collection, which includes, in my view, some of Hitchens’s finest writing).
Here is where I indulge myself by listing some of what I think were my best articles this year (I’ll exclude the ones linked to above).
First, and in order of publication, my favourite Substack prose pieces (audio versions of all these can be found somewhere on my Substack):
‘Daniel James Sharp, 21/2/1996-3/2/2060’ (February 16).
‘The monarchy: should it stay or should it go?’ (July 11). A reprint of a piece I wrote for OnlySky coupled with a royalist response from my good friend Jamie Weir.
‘On the (Gay) Fear of Holding Hands’ (August 8). I also wrote about a reader’s moving response to this piece here.
‘Afghanistan Was—And Is—Worth Fighting For’ (September 5).
‘To Persia With Love’ (October 3).
‘Is Religion Good for Humanity?’ (November 5). I can’t help but note that Jerry Coyne wrote a very kind appreciation of this piece on his website. See here.
And now, in no particular order, my favourite 2022 pieces from elsewhere:
‘Keeping Confrontation Alive: “A Hitch in Time”’ (Areo Magazine, January 7).
‘On the cowardice of Cineworld; or, why religious bullying should have no veto over free speech’ (Free Speech Champions Comment section, June 8).
‘Thomas Paine’s Radical Commitment to Free Speech: A Tradition Worth Following’ (The New Taboo, December 8).
‘The Queen is dead: a republican’s response’ (OnlySky, September 8).
‘A free speech crisis in the cradle of the Enlightenment’ (the Washington Examiner, May 5).
Also, as a bonus, I very much enjoyed being the very occasional co-host of Iona Italia’s Two for Tea podcast. See our conversation with Matt Johnson on Ukraine here and our interview with Steven Pinker about his latest book, Rationality, here.
I also had fun as Mathew Giagnorio’s guest on his Modes of Inquiry podcast, where we spoke about the attack on Salman Rushdie and various other things; see here.
Finally, I made an appearance on Darren Grimes’s GB News show to talk about free speech on campus. I don’t much care for Grimes, and GB News has accrued quite a lot of low moments now, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and I think Grimes was surprised by how off-script his guests were. See here.
Have fun celebrating the end of another solar orbit and the beginning of a new one. And stay tuned: I’ll be back on January 9 or thereabouts, and I’ll be launching a new feature on this Substack in a few weeks.
On to 2023!