Human insignificance

The constant swirl of world news and world crises gives the impression that human events are significant, are important, are crucial. We have just spent ten days in Glacier National Park, surrounded by 10,000 foot peaks that have been created by the entire earth buckling and moving a block of mountains 60 miles East, and then shaping them with mile-thick glaciers. The forces involved are so immense that everything that humans have done since our species emerged from the trees is dwarfed by comparison. The time scale involved is so immense (the oldest rocks exposed are at least 1.6 BILLION years old) that all of human history is just a small footnote to a minor marginal note in the story of the world's history.

It is useful now and then to have these experiences, and recall again how minor, how insignificant human affairs are in the entire galactic scheme of things. It puts the yammering of tinpot politicians in Washington and Tehran and Moscow in proper perspective.