Love, The Universe, And Everything

[joreth]

Carl Sagan said that we are made of star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  In the movie The Ledge, the atheist protagonist talks with a Christian woman about the nature of the universe.  She wants to believe in a god because she wants to believe in something bigger than herself.

So he lays down next to her on the apartment rooftop and shows her the night sky, and says something to the effect of "you want something bigger than yourself to connect to?  There, the whole universe, how much bigger can you get than that?"

So she says, basically, that it's a pretty concept, but she wants more than just to be connected to a cold and uncaring universe.  She wants to be loved.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a good answer to that.

I turn back to Carl Sagan, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, and all the other science popularizers out there, and that's comforting to me.  I am made of star stuff.  I am part of the universe and therefore I am connected to the whole of the universe.  I am the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.

But there's one more part to that.

If we humans are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself, we are also the part of the universe capable of loving itself.

If I want to be connected to something larger than myself, what's larger than the universe?  If I want to be loved by something greater than myself, what's greater than the universe?  Except that the universe doesn't love.

But people do.  And people are part of the universe.  We are star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  We are the part of the universe capable of loving itself.  We are the universe, and we love.

There is one thing greater than the will to live, and that's the will to love.  We are star stuff.  I am connected to something greater than myself.  What's greater than the universe?  I am loved by something greater than myself, and that is because I am loved by people, and people are star stuff.

Comments

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

Amen, brother! :-)
(And this bit of the universe loves the bit of the universe that makes up you.)

[joreth]

:-* ditto!

[terryo.livejournal.com]

Great essay! I kind of got stuck near the beginning, where the movie scene was described, and the christian woman said she wanted to be loved and the protagonist doesn't have an answer. I have never understood how christians (or any other faith) feel that their god loving them is expressed other than through the world around them. If that purported love can be 'felt', saying it 'comes from god' doesn't really change it. What using the symbol of a god does, in my mind, is to give a focus to that diffuse 'love'. The christian and every other person alive IS alive and exists because of all the world and universe around them, including other thinking people. I don't call that 'love', but it sure is appreciated!

[joreth]

That's a very good point, and I don't think I had thought it out in that manner.

[margoeve.livejournal.com]

What happens when love leaves you?

[joreth]

There is always more love as there are always more people, it is not a scarce resource

[margoeve.livejournal.com]

Some days I wonder.