That's just rephrasing it. "Putting things into perspective" means noticing that those things are bigger. But a giant is not necessarily more important than a d

That's just rephrasing it. "Putting things into perspective" means noticing that those things are bigger. But a giant is not necessarily more important than a dwarf, a cow is not more important than a human, and the rest of the universe, if it turns out to be composed entirely of rocks and gas and dust and devoid of meaning, is not more important than Earth. But people really love the pale blue dot meme, and showing off their humility. Look how aware we are ... aware of relative sizes. In Tolkien's world the star probably really does have some magical protective or reassuring force via the powers of elves. In reality, if we get reassurance from the bigness and distance of a star, we're just staring at a nuclear furnace and imagining some such magical influence emanating from it, or some nurturing, godly importance. No. Balls. It's gas. People are what matter, in all their annoying pettiness. There is no escape from this. History, mind you ... one could contemplate the vastness of human history and derive from that a sense of reassuring triviality about the present. "This too will pass," sort of thing. That would make sense. Getting reassurance from the size of space really doesn't. It's big, and it's dumb. It's where everything meaningful is, so far as we know, not happening. Nothing reassuring in that.