8 years ago
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How the Concept of Deep Time Is Changing
The idea that humans are ephemeral compared to the workings of nature isn’t as persuasive as it once was. By David Farrier.
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https://www.theatlantic.com
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Deep time will still be there when we're gone. We're just a catastrophic blip in the history of Earth.
Sometimes, given the scale of the universe, I like to imagine it sees humans like bacteria, who are now learning to travel from one organism to another (planets), infecting them with the virus of life.
Other times I just like to think that this whole universe is just energy evolving and propagating itself forward however it can. Today some of that energy is keeping me alive, tomorrow it will probably be part of something else entirely.
Regardless, we're so much less important than some of the members of our species like to believe.
For some reason that brings to mind those few bugs that have made particularly nasty splatters on the windshield. The kind that you can clean, with enough effort.