On Valentine’s Day 1990, the little spacecraft Voyager I, which was exploring the outer rims of our Solar System, turned its camera around to take a picture of Earth as seen from afar. The picture shown above became known as “Pale Blue Dot” because it depicts Earth as what it is: a grain of dust floating in the vastness of space – do you see it? At the same time, this is everything we got. Bar some space debris, this grain in the universe contains all of us and everything we have.

Now taking this perspective, let’s do a thought experiment: by some small cosmic event, a little accident in space, our precious grain of dust is shattered with no discernible trace of us or anything of us left, just a bit of cosmic powder. For those concerned about the scenes this would cause on Earth, let’s just assume it happened really quickly, and nobody felt any pain in the event – like in a modern slaughter house.

So, what’s the outcome, what has changed in the universe after our grain of dust got dissolved with all of us and everything we ever had or were into the vast nothingness? Right, nothing changed in any material manner thinking of any grander schemes of things I can imagine, like galaxies, or clusters of galaxies, or the cosmic web made out those. Nothing changed, other than the dynamics of some tiny bit of dust in the universe.

The logical conclusion is that nothing we are, have, or could possibly influence really matters – and thinking otherise seems a preposterous homo-centric worldview. Or put differently, nobody can give you an argument about anything what you should think or do that would have absolute meaning or importance. Everything we care about is for some reason within the personal or societal constructs we live in, like our family, job, community, nation, religion, and so on. Every such construct does not have any meaning beyond our own boundaries.

This argument doesn’t seem to have any practical value though, because everything I personally care about (for some reason) is within some of these constructs, sometimes multiple. However, the point is about limited importance. Once, I step back and realize this finiteness, I can take a different perspective, seeing things like the Pale Blue Dot. This can be particularly useful in heated high-stakes conflicts.

We live in a world of rising geopolitical tensions about economic and military power, religious strive, where my imaginary friend is more import or real than yours (LOL!), and societal divisions, where my values are better than yours! While my general suggestion, which some may find naïv, would be one of tolerance and mutual respect by the motto “Live and let live”, as soon as life and livelihoods are at stake, stepping back to take this nihilistic perspective may help with de-escalation. I am sure that outcomes would be better if everybody in a difficult conflict would do this, not necessarily all together (though this could be interesting to observe, like on a G20 meeting), but just personally and privately- step back, relax, and get back to the discussion table.

I would call this a truly constructive nihilism, one that does not want to destroy but to build together respecting everybody’s needs, or at least to find better compromises where not all needs are compatible, and to start building from there. What else would have any purpose?!

This was the first of two pieces on big questions about meaning in life. The macro perspective here takes the nihilistic view putting boundaries on all meaning. The second piece will take a look from the micro perspective of the individual, and how to potentially find personal meaning in things smaller than the universe.