Thomas Moynihan, a research affiliate at the University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, recently penned a thoughtful essay in Aeon magazine, “The bookends of time: Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives.”
Moynihan argues that our death, the death of the Earth, and ultimately the universe should cause us to realize the importance of our actions, for there is no eternity to undo the mistakes we make. Furthermore, if we are the only intelligent species in the universe then everything we do takes on unimaginable significance. (This reminds me of the dilemma posed in the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.“)
Moynihan concludes his essay,
Up until recently, thinkers took deep time as indication of the present’s triviality. Within such magnitudes, ‘now’ seemingly shrinks to nullity, with its legacies being laundered away in the longer term.
But such a view is wrong. What’s currently unfolding might leave legacies that cannot be taken back, and were not inevitable, but still will be felt aeons hence. Time isn’t just deep; it’s deeply fragile. This dizzying knowledge needs, urgently, to sink in. Either we apply it now, just in time, and secure our future, or there might not be one. We don’t have the luxury of infinite retries.
Some may find it depressing to consider that, inevitably, everything dies. But they are missing one truth: it is only in a mortal world that consequences can resonate indelibly … Selecting one action over any others possible, therefore, leaves an indelible cosmic legacy, regardless of how trifling. Because, though legacies can be reversed, this itself also expends effort, and energy isn’t infinite.
So, though the first lesson is that existence itself is bookended, the second – more profound – lesson is that this makes actions enduring in a newly cosmical sense. It is the dying of the world that secures the immortality of our influence.
While I agree with much of what Moynihan writes I can’t accept his conclusion. Perhaps I don’t fully understand his argument but I just can’t feel in my bones how the final annihilation of the universe adds anything to the meaning of our lives. As I’ve written previously,
… cosmic death seemingly eliminates both the meaning in and of life. The meaning we find in life might have had some small significance while we were living but cosmic death largely if not completely undermines that meaning. As for the meaning of life, it’s impossible to see how there can be one if everything fades into nothingness.
Now we might avoid our cosmic descent into nothingness and its implications if, for example, one of these conjectures is true: the death of our universe brings about the birth of another one; the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true; other universes exist in a multiverse; or, if all descend into nothingness, a quantum fluctuation brings about something from this nothing. Or maybe nothingness is impossible as Parmenides argued long ago.
Such speculative scenarios lead us back to the idea that something must be eternal for there to be a meaning of life. For if nothingness is our fate—no space, no time, nothing for all eternity—then all seems futile. We may have experienced meaning while we lived, and the cosmos may have been slightly meaningful while it existed, but if everything vanishes for eternity isn’t it all pointless?
Very interesting article.
Thank you for the thoughtful post (as always). When you wrote your reasoning for not being able to agree with Moynihan, and (if everything fades into nothingness, meaning is irrelevant, my first thought was quantum mechanics has an answer… only to read this in the following paragraph. Also, thank you for the brief mention of Parmedices; I like the thought that “nothingness is impossible…”
Moynihan appears to be taking a long view. But, that view seems merely nihilist at bottom. So, if that IS his point, then he knows something none of the rest of us know. Perhaps this is what he means. It is hard to get a sense of it, without talking with him.
Finitude is the fate of living things, everything dies. Infinity is that seventh valley my Baha’i friends used to ponder—that *place* of “absolute nothingness”—which is unknowable. And, so it is with God. I don’t know if Moynihan wrote anything about God in the book. If he did and if it is profound, then kudos to him. Life, itself, is only as meaningful as we make it. It is really up to us, as individuals. No free lunches.
Erratum: I don ‘t think finitude , per se, confers meaning on life. I can’t cross that bridge. Moreover, I can’t find it, in the first place. One must ACT accordingly. If one utters the old saw: “life is short”, that further means something like get off your duff, pay attention, figure out what you must do, and DO it. Or, try harder, think better and do the best you can with what you have and know. Finitude is not an impediment…it is an ultimatum.
thanks for the nice remarks.
I certainly wish to believe our lives have indelible meaning but must always try to distinguish my beliefs from the overwhelming evidence. The only bookends I recognize are my conscious years. However within those bookends actions have consequences. While murdering my neighbor may not make a difference on a cosmic scale it matters on a finite scale the only one we experience. In that respect I agree with Moynihan.
You are welcome. And/or/but/if *cosmic death*= oblivion,meaning we are gone, right? Because everything else is gone. That is, as is said, …end of story. Can’t see much point in writing a book about it. Ouroboros devours itself. Physiologically impossible…A trapped animal will gnaw its’ leg off and hobble away…It has learned something. Survival. Injured animals do not *bleed out* the way we do.Physiologically possible. Chance and fate are, more or less, equal for the survival of the escaped animal. Nearly equal for every unharmed, healthy animal. Chance, see…, or, synchronicity.
There has been a notion around synergism, or , synergistic effect. So, here it is: I understand there may be such proposed energies. I just don’t know HOW.
As a supporting point for Moynihan’s contention, I stumbled across this from Raymond Tillis:
” The thought of our non-existence may save us from triviality, from entrapment in secondary things.”
I thought Paul’s comment of finitude being an ultimatum as saying much the same.
Having recently finished Sean Carroll’s “The Big Picture”, he influences me to accept that, eventually after the evaporation of the last black hole, the universe will be nothing but subatomic particles, at absolute zero, in an elsewise empty void.
There would be no information to share, absolute maximum entropy, true and total ‘death’.
Not a cheery thought, but so far in the future as to approach the best we probably can do towards imaging eternity.
Showing my bias towards life, and sentient life at that, I am much more interested in it’s life span. While obviously much shorter than the universe, if it exists outside our planet, it likely would still exist as a stupefying period of time. Perhaps approaching our ability to imagine immortality, Zeus like, rather than Yahweh type eternity.
I always found the idea of the universe expanding to a limit, then returning to collapse…another big bang….do it all over again, to be a rather appealing idea. (other than it provided no explanation of the original Big Bang,-details) An endless cycle.
Unfortunately, I gather that for some years the data points to an open universe. Leading to the one Prof. Carroll describes.
With irrational and undisciplined logic, I don’t like that information.. But the reality of the Universe is indifferent to my likes and dislikes.
Will write another comment, as this one is getting too long.
So far I haven’t commented on what I understand to be the discussion by Mr. Moynihan and Prof. Messerly.
Largely because I don’t really know.
Does ultimate death: Our own. Our species. Our planet. Our galaxy. Our universe.
Does it render everything as irrelevant and pointless, or does it add importance to all that we call “everything”?
I will (for the moment anyway) lean towards everything’s importance because I think Good and Evil does exist, even if a materialist can’t measure it. That finitude doesn’t matter.
And what each of us does, or doesn’t, do contributes to that pool of Good and Evil. Our actions can add to, or diminish, the suffering of other living creatures. Pain and suffering is real, and even if it is no longer remembered as time moves forward, for a period it mattered to whomever experienced it, or was affected by it.
To add a bit more to it, a few years back I read Hannah Arendt’s “The Human Condition”. She pointed out something I should have always known, but had never really thought of. That any action never ends. (Carroll gave it materialist backing, and I will ignore that it probably becomes irrelevant with the demise of the planet, but I liked Arendt’s conceptual idea of it).
Some essays ago you discussed our continuing past our death in the form of our influence on those who follow in the future. All of it adding up to our collective memory and continuity. And that our lives, and lives of others, were in the same way a continuation of the effects that were created by all before us. Their actions that have no ending.
So I guess that as I write this I am convincing myself that death…individual, species or more, doesn’t affect the meaning of myself or others. We have meaning because we are. Even if the meaning is temporary, for the moment it exists. Because we can experience pain and suffering, or joy and pleasure. And partake in it with others.
With time it will be forgotten. But today it exists.
thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Good work, Lyle. Very good work.