My last post about Brexit was by far the most successful one I've had in terms of Facebook readership, and this tempts me to stray from continuing my plan to write about philosophy thought experiments. But my Brexit post was still just a drop in the ocean of coverage for that issue, so I should really step back and look at things from a wider perspective before making any changes. Good thing this week's thought experiment is encouraging me to do exactly that!
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Ian Ferrier had for years dreamed of building the total perspective vortex. But now, as he stood ready to test it out, he was questioning whether the whole endeavour was a terrible mistake.
The machine, which he had first come across as a piece of science fiction in a late twentieth-century radio programme, would enable whoever went into it to see their true place in the universe. The idea of the original fiction was that anyone who used the machine would find the fact of their own insignificance so crushing that it would destroy their very soul.
Ferrier had cheated a little in building the machine: everyone would see the same thing, since, he reasoned, we are all more or less as insignificant as each other. But throughout the project he had been convinced the machine would not crush his soul at all. He, like Camus's Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder endlessly uphill only to see it roll back down again, would be able to confront the absurdity of his own insignificance and prevail.
And yet, now he was about to test it out, he did feel more than a little apprehensive. Could he really accept his own infinitesimal smallness in the grand scheme of things? There was only one way to find out...
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, 1980.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 166.
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So what do you think? Could anything we ever do actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things? I'll be back on Friday with thoughts on this....as long as I am able to pull myself back from the nihilistic brink.
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Ian Ferrier had for years dreamed of building the total perspective vortex. But now, as he stood ready to test it out, he was questioning whether the whole endeavour was a terrible mistake.
The machine, which he had first come across as a piece of science fiction in a late twentieth-century radio programme, would enable whoever went into it to see their true place in the universe. The idea of the original fiction was that anyone who used the machine would find the fact of their own insignificance so crushing that it would destroy their very soul.
Ferrier had cheated a little in building the machine: everyone would see the same thing, since, he reasoned, we are all more or less as insignificant as each other. But throughout the project he had been convinced the machine would not crush his soul at all. He, like Camus's Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder endlessly uphill only to see it roll back down again, would be able to confront the absurdity of his own insignificance and prevail.
And yet, now he was about to test it out, he did feel more than a little apprehensive. Could he really accept his own infinitesimal smallness in the grand scheme of things? There was only one way to find out...
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, 1980.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 166.
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So what do you think? Could anything we ever do actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things? I'll be back on Friday with thoughts on this....as long as I am able to pull myself back from the nihilistic brink.
