First, did you ever stop and think where the term universe came from? Uni = one; verse = song; universe = one song.
We don't know thats true! It's a metaphysical term, ie "spiritual", and has nothing to do with science as we think of science in our hypertech ultramodern world of today.
So why are we still using the term Universe? Can't we up the game a bit with a science word?
The problem is we don't know "scientifically" if there is one verse. There might be two, or three or an infinite number of them.
Ah, I get it, if there's an infinite number of them, all of them would be one thing, all the songs. A body of songs.
Humm, back to metaphysics again, and metaphysics is a branch of philosophy, and definitely not the cold hard facts of science!! Maybe Einstein (definitely a scientist) had it figured out: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Shit. Now we're falling deeper into the quagmire of infinity (whatever that is). Does that mean we have to be either atheist or religious? What if I want to be both?
Humm, I guess that would be pantheistic agnosticism. Which I guess translates roughly to "I know there is life, but I can't really say I understand it completely".
How do I know? I don't know, I just know that I know we are definitely "here". It's a feeling.
Perhaps the word science isn't really "grounded" unless we can turn a specific scientific principle into a technology. Like Einstein: e=mc2, et voila, nuclear energy.
That word bugs me, sounds a bit like "new clear", doesn't it?
Which brings us back to biology, ie life, and the question: how rare is it...?
Or how common? How common is biology in the universe?
Obviously we have absolutely no idea. We at least know there is one example, and we are it, living, as we are, in the "known" universe.
So there is at least one, and I think it's likely if there's one there's more. But since there is only one in the "known" universe, and since that's a relatively big space, it is rare.
So "biology is rare" is a ground plane of understanding. Let's look further at why it is relatively rare.
How far is the earth from the sun? 92 million miles. How far is the equator to the poles? 6000 miles. Apparently the "star to planet ratio" is pretty exact since none of the other planets in "our" solar system (yes we own it:) have biological life. Why not?
The star to planet ratio has to do with strength of radiation, heat and light, and very likely other forms of radiation also. The heat and illumination ratio has to be pretty damn exact...and how do we know that?
Well, think about the distance of the earth to the sun, 92 million miles. Now think about the distance of the equator to the poles, 6 thousand miles. Now think about the fact the proliferation of species of biology on the equator is VASTLY (some unknown orders of magnitude) greater than the the proliferation of biology on the poles. In a measly 6000 miles is the difference between almost too hot to almost too cold for biology to exist. And 6000 compared to 92 million? Relative to that number, if the earth was just a tiny bit further or closer to the sun biology would not exist, it would be too cold or too hot.
No wonder Earth is the only planet in nine where the extremely rare miracle of biology occured.
And how is it the earth hit that exact sweet spot? What are the oods?
You'd think we would be more careful with that rare miracle, right?
We already know there are enough nukes on the planet to destroy most of the biology on the planet (including us), and now we are worried artificial intelligence has the potential (according to the brainiacs who invented it) to end the human species!
Double trouble.
So why in the name of creation are we disrupting the ecology with man made technology to the point the so-called 6th mass extinction has begun?
I'll give you the short version, and it's something we humans really don't like admitting to ourselves. We are "driven" mostly by the unconscious (instinctual) mind, not the rational "conscious" mind. But not only that, the "processing" of the unconscious mind (brain, brain stem, and nervous system) takes up about 10x more space in the entire "autonomic nervous system" than the conscious mind's processing does.
Which makes us closer to the "lower animals" than we like to admit.
You know the one "we only use about 10% of our brain"? Well that's what it is referring to. And the incredible thing is that it takes up so much "room", and yet we are completely unconscious of it.
So the unconscious drive behavior that probably gets us in more trouble than the others is greed. Buddhists have a solution for that! But how many of us are Buddhists...
That aside, the better we personally become with loving behavior, the more likely we will individually become a net positive in our "impact" on the planet and all of our brothers and sisters across the planet.
Will that save our species? Who knows, but one thing is for certain, it just feels better living that way, and that is reason enough.