Stupid Baby Universe
As humans it’s natural to attempt to personify inanimate objects.
We do it so often we have a word for this: anthropomorphism. Because we can’t relate to things outside of the human experience, we attribute “human” qualities to things in vain attempts to understand them (and ourselves) better. The sea was “angry.” The wind was “calm.” The sun “smiled gently.”
Nowhere is this tendency more abused than when attempting to describe The Universe.
The Universe is kind. The Universe is cruel. The Universe is indifferent. The Universe is all-knowing; trust the Universe. These are things we say because maybe, if we personify the Universe, we can attempt to make some sense of our place in it. Except, few truly bother to go deep enough down this rabbit hole.
If you truly attempt to anthropomorphize the Universe, it’s equal parts “well that makes sense” and “holy shit that’s terrifying.”
The Universe has a predicted age of 100 trillion years. Evidence suggests the Universe in which we currently exist has been around for around 13.9 billion years. That means if the Universe were a human who lived to be 100 years old, our Universe has been around for approximately 1.3 seconds.
We live in a baby Universe.
Not a toddler. Not even an infant. From the perspective of an anthropomorphized Universe, the Big Bang JUST happened. It’s naked, cold, and confused. It has no idea where it is, what it’s doing, how it got there. It can’t feed itself, it can’t clean itself, it can’t walk or communicate without screaming. That’s the Universe we live in. It’s not kind or cruel or indifferent.
It just lacks experience. That’s where YOU come in.
Sentient life–YOUR life–is one thing you can offer the Universe no one else in existence can. The first law of thermodynamics teaches that energy can’t be created or destroyed, so why would it dispose of the PETABYTES of information provided by sentient life, YOUR life? The price you pay for having existed is the gift of experience you give the Universe for having lived.
No one who has ever lived, or who ever will live, will experience the Universe quite the way you do.
As trillions of sentient lives flash in and out of existence, the Universe learns, and grows. Except, because it was just born one universal second ago, it can only produce US. It can’t tell us about itself yet, because it doesn’t know who it is or how it got here. It can’t make better than us yet, because it doesn’t know any better. We don’t know how to people, because we are the newborn screaming baby Universe’s idea of life. You think it’s hard learning how to properly human?
Imagine having to learn how to Universe.
Kind of explains a lot about how messed up we are. You are a baby Universe’s idea of “sentient life.” You know that picture your kid drew? The crayon drawing of a horse that in no way resembled any horse in nature but you didn’t want to hurt your kid’s feelings so you stuck it on the refrigerator?
Yea not even that. Not a preschooler; a newborn infant.
Still, we’re probably better than the sentient life that the Universe will produce for the next 20 trillion years or so. Imagine the Universe’s idea of life during its terrible twos. Or mean girl Universe’s idea of living things. Imagine the absolute shitshow of humans teenage Universe is going to produce.
Don’t get me started on sentient life during the Universe’s fuckboy eons.
In 30 trillion years, the Universe will finally start trying to get its shit together. In 40 trillion years or so the Universe (thanks to the contributed lived experience of countless trillions of sentient lives) will finally start producing finite species that aren’t assholes.
There may even be a Universal midlife crisis.
50–70 trillion years from now, the universe is gonna be MAD productive. Finite species that understand cooperation over competition, that are okay with being alone AND understand how partnerships can help them grow, will exist. Nothing left to prove, just existing as creators in dopeness.
Fermi’s Paradox will cease, as there will be no need for sentient life to “hide in the dark forest.”
80–100 trillion years from now, the Universe will create finite species that are thinking about legacy. By now it will have lost some of its multiversal friends to entropy. It will produce contemplative sentience, aware of their finite nature, focused on what they are going to leave the NEXT Universe.
And then the Universe will start dying.
The sentient life the Universe will produce from 80–100 trillion years of age will be mature, and silly, and melancholy. They will be born with the innate knowledge they exist in a universe nearing its end, a place where things don’t function as they once did, where you have the knowledge and lack the physical capacity to act on it. It will be calm, it will reminisce on its youth.
It likely won’t recall us (that’s probably for the best). And then the Universe will die.
In 100 trillion years, the last star in the Universe will go dark, and then there will be nothing. Literal endless darkness and nothingness for 10 duodecillion years (10 duodecillion is a number equal to 10 followed by 72 zeros). The length of time nothing will exist, before the next universe is born, dwarfs the length of times things will have existed by incomprehensible factors of magnitude.
The Universe we will have lived in will be as if someone confined to a dark room for ten thousand years lit a match, and in the time it takes for that match to burn down to the fingertips, all that can ever be known will have existed. And then?
Ten thousand quadrillion years of nothing.
And here we are. Stuck inside this stupid baby Universe. Trying to be loved. Paying rent. Waiting for that text back. The total sum of all of our dreams, desires, ambitions and failures combined:
So this stupid baby Universe can grow the fuck up.
© j summers 2024
