Perspective

We'll start this little journey someplace familiar. Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, MO! Home of the Kansas City Chiefs! They beat the Broncos on Thanksgiving. That makes them 7-4 for the season. They have a shot. Go Chiefs.



It sits right next to Kauffman Stadium. Home of the Kansas City Royals who haven't won a game since 1985. Fucking losers.



This is Kansas City. Can you spot the stadium complex? I purposely made sure that you couldn't see my house in this shot because I don't need all you motherfuckers dropping by unannounced wanting to eat my food, drink up all my liquor and watch my big TV. You know you would.





This is the "Midwest". Some people try to lump places like Ohio, Indiana and Illinois into the midwest. That's bullshit. The midwest is Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. That's it. Hell, St. Louis barely qualifies as midwestern. They have that Gateway Arch and like to bill themselves as the place where the West begins. My ass. St. Louis is just where the East finally peters out.



This is most of the U.S. I sliced off a bit of California, but who gives a shit. That's pretty much what it will look like when the San Andres gives way.



Earth. At least the North-American-Centric view of Earth. Look at how close Cuba is to the tip of Florida. Now look how far away Alaska and Hawaii are from, well, fucking everything. How is it that Hawaii and Alaska are states, but Cuba ain't? I say somebody screwed the pooch on that one.



These are some of the smaller planets orbiting the sun. We are the largest of them. After 4 million years of hominid habitation, we still haven't completely explored our own planet. We are continually making new discoveries. We've only visited these other planets briefly and with robots.



These are the largest planets orbiting our sun. There is a huge, 300 year old, hurricane-like storm on Jupiter that could swallow our entire planet whole. There are also moons of Jupiter and Saturn with atmospheres and oceans possibly harboring life. Hundreds of exotic places that we have barely even discovered, let alone explored, right in our own Solar system.



This is the sun. Our sun. The same one you see shining outside your window right now. From this perspective, the earth is a grain of sand and we are dust mites. Everyone and everything that has ever lived and died, did it on that little bitty fucking grain of sand. In a few billion years, the sun will explode, as all good stars do, and incinerate our little pebble...whether we are still on it or not. The sun doesn't care. A stars got to do what a stars got to do...go supernova.



Our sun isn't even that big. It's a type of star called a Yellow Dwarf. Now you know why. Arcturus is an Orange Giant.



But "giant" is a relative term. Depends on your perspective.



This is a typical spiral galaxy, pretty much like the one we are in. Every point of light you see is a star or a cluster of stars. Contains at least one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) stars, like the ones I described above. Maybe more. Multiply 1,000,000,000,000 stars by the number of likely planets, moons, comets and strange objects in our own solar system. If you were standing at the far right hand side of this galaxy and turned on a really powerful flashlight, the people on the left hand side of the galaxy wouldn't see it for 170,000 years. That's pretty fucking big. Gotta be a whole lot of weird, cool and amazing shit out there.




This is a small galactic cluster.



This is a medium sized galactic cluster.



This is a large galactic cluster.

There are trillions of galaxies in the universe. Each with it's own individual star systems, planets, moons, comets, astroids and most likely, critters of some sort. Given the incredible diversity in the universe, I have to think that it is an absolute certainty that there is life out there. Probably lots of it. Probably smarter than us. I sure as fuck hope so. I'd hate to think we were as good as it gets.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that a universe this vast, and this spectacular could not be a random occurence. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being one big coincidence. But, let's just say it's not.

Do you really think that a hypothetical all-powerful, all-knowing God, responsible for the creation of EVERYTHING in this incredibly vast universe would really give a flying fuck how you voted in the last election? Whether or not a couple of gay guys get married? Whether or not you keep Kosher or go on The Hajj?

Get over yourselves. You're not that fucking important. You need to look at the Big Picture and put things in perspective.

If there is a God, he/she/it doesn't care who scores the touchdown in next Sunday's football game, whether or not your cousin's neice gets an abortion, or if we conduct research on embryonic stem cells.

The universe is an incredibly vast, chaotic and violent place where things do not always happen for a reason.

Whether there is a god or not, we are on our own, folks. We have to figure out how to live together on this planet (and hopefully other planets) without killing each other over who has the coolest god or the most oil. There isn't going to be any divine intervention (on either side) that will swoop down and make everything OK.

It's up to us.

So there. You have your homework assignment. Start working on figuring out a way that everyone in the world can live together in peace and not be killing each other over stupid shit all the time. Better get busy. It might take you a while.

Me? I'm going to fix myself a turkey sammich and go for a walk.

Have a nice day.