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Oliver Burkeman created a term called "Cosmic Insignificance Therapy" that is related to this realization. "…it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insign

by bumby 4y ago

Oliver Burkeman created a term called "Cosmic Insignificance Therapy" that is related to this realization. "…it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance: it’s the feeling of realizing that you’d been holding yourself, all this time, to standards you couldn’t reasonably be expected to meet. And this realization isn’t merely calming but liberating, because once you’re no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a “life well spent,” you’re freed to consider the possibility that a far wider variety of things might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time. You’re freed, too, to consider the possibility that many of the things you’re already doing with it are more meaningful than you’d supposed—and that until now, you’d subconsciously been devaluing them, on the grounds that they weren’t “significant” enough. (Burkeman 2021, p 212)"

e12e 4y ago
Interesting take, and somewhat at odds with Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide: > The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. > To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. > The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. > Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. > And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. > “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. > And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her. > And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. > To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- jamiek88 4y ago
  God damn I miss Douglas Adams. Taken from us way too soon. Way, way, way too soon.

by bumby 4y ago

e12e 4y ago

Interesting take, and somewhat at odds with Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide: > The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. > To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. > The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. > Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. > And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. > “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. > And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her. > And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. > To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

jamiek88 4y ago
God damn I miss Douglas Adams. Taken from us way too soon. Way, way, way too soon.