Two Views: It seems I struggle to reconcile two disparate view of the universe:
- The Copernican View: in which I am but a mote in a vast universe of motes interacting by laws laid down before time.
- The Personal View: in which I am the universe, at least the universe I can know anything about. I am the center of sphere with incoming radiation and the center of expansion of the universe, all points are the center of expansion, so you are too the center of your universe, the whole universe from your perspective (which is all you can have). I can imagine eternity from the Big Bang (creation) to the infrared death of the universe in about 400 trillion years (armageddon). Imaginary things occur in my universe, yours too. That's what "life everlasting" means, the ability to imagine the alpha and omega, creation, decay, life, death, right, wrong, love, hate, meaning, God and all other indefinable things, NOW IS ETERNITY.
These two views seem irreconcilable. As a mote, my whole universe is woefully incomplete and ephemeral. My genes live on through the generations, so does my teaching even more diffusely, perhaps dying out in both cases. What will remain of “me” except for memories of my works?
My works are delusional, illusional “parts” of “me”. Most of my works are on paper, wood, or plastic, many stored on the current “best” (i.e. most common) digital media. The works are all ephemeral. The only way for them to survive is for someone to copy them into a future “best” digital media. Someone must pay attention enough to my ideas to want to preserve them. I think some of my words or other works deserve attention, but don’t we all?
So am I just a mote whose influence exponentially dissipates in the ether of entropic decay? Or am I the entire universe including God, Ananke and Chronos, the center of the universe, all eternity?
I answer yes to both, therein lies my cognitive dissonance (to use a currently popular term).
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