Hubble Bubble Trouble?

Last night I had a thought. At least I think that’s what it’s called. You know, two tiny brain cells collided in the empty void of space I call mind. A spark was produced. Here’s the thought I thunk:

Cosmology doesn’t add up.

If that is not disturbing to you perhaps it should be.

It is also a clue, perhaps an important one, in the search for soundly based meaning in our word. Here's how:

Every society is based on a mythology. The mythology tells us what things are supposed to mean, what value is and what purpose is. E.g. what is manhood, womanhood, childhood, gender, right conduct, etc.

Every mythology is based on a cosmology. The cosmology tells us where we are in the universe, it gives us our sense of scale and genesis, of where we’re from and where we’re headed.

When cosmology doesn’t add up our world falls apart. The mythology doesn’t enable sense-making anymore.

The death of a cosmology is more than the death of a world view it is the death of our view of everything and it is the ending of everything we see, the death of meaning, the end of our world.

And now as I write another thought strikes me: what’s the point of me saying how dangerous life is when cosmology doesn’t add up before I explain exactly what it is about cosmology that doesn’t add up. So here goes:

I’m lying in my bed. Soft duvet. Soft pillows. Soft light. Warm, comfortable, content.

Someone made that bed: designed it with paper and pencil, then carved the wooden parts of the frame, arranged all the fixings and so on. Same with the duvet: People collected the duck down, built and operated the machine that sewed the seams, than packed, transported and sold the finished products, etc. Same with the pillows plump and soft. And the warm glow Tiffany lamp.

And in that softened glimmer a memory arose. A memory of supposedly enhanced or ‘translated’ photographs from the Hubble telescope.

For anyone who doesn’t know it, Hubble is a telescope placed outside earth’s atmosphere and set to record the surrounding depth field of the galaxy and beyond. The internet is full of stunning photos of galaxies, nebulae, star factories in deep space. These are not real photos, however, but translations of data into visual form. It is logically possible that there is no actual visual correlate to the data at all and that all Hubble's visualisations are fictional.

Apparently, the data from Hubble suggests that there more stars in our galaxy than there are grains of sand on planet earth! And what’s more, it also suggests there are more such galaxies themselves than grains of sand on earth. And most important, it shows that all of these galaxies and stars come and go in processes of huge destructive force, explosions ten thousand times bigger than the sun are literally occurring all over the place in a universe bigger than any size can cover.

So, I’m lying there holding these two thoughts in my mind simultaneously:

A. We live in a universe full of trillions of exploding galaxies each with trillions of exploding stars.

B. I’m lying in a cosy bed with feather duvet and pillows.

It was struggle to reconcile the theory with the lived experience without resorting to bad-faith sophistic tools like naturalism. Being honest with myself, I had to admit there really is no place for duvets and pillows and tiffany lamps in a universe consisting of violent explosions in an endless void of comfort and care, in cold and uncaring space.

How do you get care and comfort in a Hubbleish void of care and comfort? It cannot be squared.

Possibilities are:

1 – Care and comfort are an illusion. In reality we are all suffering agonies all the time but can find distractions from it and we can make up stories of comfort, like meaning, value, belief and so on.

2 – Hubble is an illusion. The data is either a. accidentally mistranslated when put into visual form. Or b. it is deliberately confected to mislead us.

Remember: any society must be based upon a mythology. And remember: any mythology must be based upon a cosmology.

I can now leave it you, dear readers and listeners, to consider what possible motives anyone might have for encouraging us to regard ourselves as insignificantly tiny and remote or alone beings, trillions of miles from anywhere and totally cut off from others.

And what possible motives for wanting us to think that all being in the universe is hostile, violent, uncaring?

Last week I went to buy a car. The man tried to sell me a dud, square wheel rustbucket. I told him no thanks. Guy says ‘who do you believe, me or your own eyes?’

Experience tells us life can be sweet, cosy, good, beautiful and wonderful.

Experience also tells us we are at the centre of all we perceive around us and that all facts are only facts because they are determinable by beings like us. And because of that, the universe depends on beings in some way like us for its factuality or existence.

Therefore, experience suggests we are not remote beings at the periphery of things, lost in space on a random arm of a vast spiral galaxy in a remote void of care or value. On the contrary, experience seems to suggest that we are centrally placed at the heart of all being and meaning. Logically speaking, we are beings necessary for any meaning, value or facts to exist.

So which possibility do I prefer?

Personally I’m not sure about possibility 1. I know it is kind of what Buddha says: that all life is suffering and all mental and social imbalance stems from lack of this self-understanding. But I’m not sure he’s right. After all, there’s been moments sublime for us all I’m sure, and more in store to come sings the eternal hope. However noble some of its truths may be, Buddhism is a mass religion and as such it is an agency of social control; it could be used therefore to spread a mythology and cosmology that made people feel powerless in themselves and in some way dependent on ‘leaders’.

That aspect of Buddhist thought accords with the Christian idea of ‘original sin’ and fall of man. The idea that we are essentially bad and perhaps that is why humanity suffers infinitely, as epitomised by the messianic figure of Jesus.

Experience tells me most mentally healthy humans are naturally good, hospitable, live and let live, just wanting a simple life. Not out to conquer or destroy. Preferring duvets to bombs. We could all have a lovely life it it wasn’t for trickle-down corruption from ‘leaders’.

So I disagree with possibility 1. I do not believe the universe is a void of care or comfort and an endless factory of blind destruction. I don’t think care and comfort are an illusion. I don’t have to make up any fairy tales to experience comfort and care as real.

I go towards possibility 2: Hubble is an illusion. Accidental faults in translation of data to visual form are certainly likely. Equally likely, the ‘rulers’ of societies around the world want us to feel insignificant, powerless and dependent on them. If they do want us to feel that, they would need a cosmology to make it so, by underpinning a mythology of stories illustrating the so-ness of it.

Of course, I cannot know.

All I can know for sure is a universe made of giant uncaring explosions does not produce soft fluffy beds.

And I can know that beings capable of perceiving spirit, value, meaning and comfort, cannot be insignificant remote objects; logically speaking we are the necessary source of all factuality, of all facts, of all that is the case.

Could we be more important to the universe than we think?

For more on all topics to do with Abracadia and its work, don’t forget to check Abracadia’s weekly spoken word offering at the ‘Bit Of Soul Podcast’. Come and say hi, pass by for a try. Be great to see you there. Just roll up anytime to listen, chill and reason at the lush and refreshing oasis that is Abracadia.

Until such time - In Ubuntu

Remi